ReFocus: The Films of Wallace Fox

Gary D. Rhodes is Professor of Media, Oklahoma Baptist University. He is the author of Emerald Illusions: The Irish in Early American Cinema (2012), The Perils of Moviegoing in America (2012), and The Birth of the American Horror Film (2018). He is a founding editor of Horror Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Rhodes is also the writer-director of the documentary films Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula (1997) and Banned in Oklahoma (2004). Joanna Hearne is the Jeanne Hoffman Smith Professor in the Film and Media Studies department at the University of Oklahoma. Her books on Indigenous images and image-making in American film history include Native Recognition: Indigenous Cinema and the Western (2012) and Smoke Signals: Native Cinema Rising (2012).

Wallace Fox, a forgotten B-movie director who was one of the first Indigenous filmmakers to establish a career in American cinema, receives the Refocus treatment! Gary D. Rhodes and Joanna Hearne bring together eleven brilliant chapters that do much more than fill in a gap in film history; they expand and often rewrite it!

• Introduction: Wallace Fox and the B FilmBetween Compliance and Resistance: Mapping the Careers of Wallace Fox and Nipo Strongheart in Early HollywoodIndian Agents and Indigenous Agency at Universal: Wild Beauty (1946) and Gun Town (1946)Neglected Western Traditions and Indigenous Cinema in the 1945-46 Series Westerns of Wallace FoxThe Corpse Vanishes and the Case of the Missing Brides“Like a crazy nightmare”: Noirish Vampirism and Deviance in Bowery at MidnightVoices and Vaults: Pillow of DeathWallace Fox and America’s “Career Girls”She Made Her Own Deadline: Fox’s Brenda Starr, ReporterBathos in the BoweryInfernal Devices: Wallace Fox’s Aeroglobe, Cosmic Beam Annihilator, and the Pit of Everlasting FireA Fox in the Wild: Ramar of the Jungle and the Crisis of Representation