Winner, 2024 Culbert Family Book Prize, International Association for Media and History Winner - 2022 Richard Wall Memorial Award, Theatre Library Association Beginning in the 1920s, audiences around the globe were seduced not only by Hollywood films but also by lavish movie theaters that were owned and operated by the major American film companies. These theaters aimed to provide a quintessentially “American” experience. Outfitted with American technology and accoutrements, they allowed local audiences to watch American films in an American-owned cinema in a distinctly American way. In a history that stretches from Buenos Aires and Tokyo to Johannesburg and Cairo, Ross Melnick considers these movie houses as cultural embassies. He examines how the exhibition of Hollywood films became a constant flow of political and consumerist messaging, selling American ideas, products, and power, especially during fractious eras. Melnick demonstrates that while Hollywood’s marketing of luxury and consumption often struck a chord with local audiences, it was also frequently tone-deaf to new social, cultural, racial, and political movements. He argues that the story of Hollywood’s global cinemas is not a simple narrative of cultural and industrial indoctrination and colonization. Instead, it is one of negotiation, booms and busts, successes and failures, adoptions and rejections, and a precursor to later conflicts over the spread of American consumer culture. A truly global account, Hollywood’s Embassies shows how the entanglement of worldwide movie theaters with American empire offers a new way of understanding film history and the history of U.S. soft power. This is nothing short of a sterling book, an assiduously researched compendium of notable facts and compelling anecdotes culled from public archives, personal memorabilia collections, and old-time newspaper morgues all over the map. -- Kevin Canfield ― Cineaste The political and cultural repercussions of this exhibition strategy for both Hollywood and the national film industries “invaded” by these foreign-owned movie theaters are explored in great detail by Ross Melnick in his new book, Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power around the World . -- Bruno Guaraná ― Film Quarterly If there’s anyone who still holds the view that entertainment, art and politics are separate realms, Ross Melnick’s exhaustively researched book should set them straight. -- Tom Ryan ― The Sydney Morning Herald This volume is highly recommended for those interested in film studies, theater architecture, global affairs and American Studies and it may easily become a standard title on the reception of American films abroad. -- Dr. A. Ebert ― Popcultureshelf.com Hollywood's Embassies offers a unique history of movie theaters “as cultural embassies.” The scale of research and insight here is staggering. ― The Film Stage Melnick's book is a masterful achievement. -- Klaus Dodds ― Business History Review A work of vast scope and synoptic power, Ross Melnick’s Hollywood’s Embassies is required reading for anyone seeking to understand how American cinema came to dominate most of the planet’s screen space. With pinpoint global positioning, Melnick tracks how Hollywood planted its flag from Cairo to Rio and beyond, transmitting American values, colonizing consciousnesses, and raking in cash. It is a fascinating story, splendidly told. -- Thomas Doherty, author of Little Lindy Is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century A brilliantly conceived and trailblazing work, this is a must-read history of Hollywood studios’ perennial and always complicated efforts to create a globalized presence via theaters that promoted American values around the world. Melnick’s impeccable research and lively writing style raises the curtain on this largely neglected aspect of theater history, providing vivid, fascinating accounts of specific endeavors as well as an incisive framework for understanding them. Hollywood’s Embassies confirms Melnick’s stature as the leading historian of American film exhibition of his generation. -- Matthew H. Bernstein, author of Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent Captivating and ambitious, Hollywood’s Embassies covers a fascinating breadth of global territory as it explores the way Hollywood displayed America to the world. -- Kathy Fuller-Seeley, author of Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy Melnick reveals a world-spanning exhibition strategy that major U.S. film companies continuously updated and coherently pursued for most of the twentieth century. All scholars of Hollywood will have perceived some aspect of this strategy, but none of us can possibly have appreciated its scope before now. A tour de force. -- Mark Garrett Cooper, author of Universal Women: Filmmaking and Institutional Change in Early Hollywood A fascinating book. ― The Spectator An essential volume that provide