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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It was with a great deal of excitement that I accepted the assignment as General Editor for the ABC-CLIO offering Movies in American History: An Encyclopedia, during the summer of 2008. The project had been proposed by James Sherman, the Editorial Manager for ABC-CLIO’s American History products, and I was pleased that he entrusted me with seeing the project through to its end. I would like to thank James for his patience in guiding me through the initial stages of the project—his advice and firm hand were invaluable. As with every encyclopedia project, Movies in American History had a great number of contributors, some 150, all of whom must be contracted for the work that they submit and registered with the publishing house. I would like to thank the Project Coordinator for our encyclopedia, Barbara Patterson, who took on the monumental task of gathering together and coordinating the vast amount of materials from contrib- utors that flowed into the Santa Barbara offices of ABC-CLIO. I would also like to thank all of the technical wizards who keep the ABC-CLIO Author Center site up and running—having access to this site made my job, and those of my contributors, immeasurably easier. Anyone who has written or edited a book understands how important a good editor is thankfully, I had the very best, my Submissions Editor, Kim KennedyWhite. Over the past 18 months, Kim, who has now accepted a position at ABC-CLIO as an Acquis- itions Editor for products on Race, Ethnicity, and Multicultural Studies, has read and commented on each and every entry that has come in from my contributors—some 450. She has also shepherded me through every moment of the project, from advising me on how to make the materials for Movies in American History more powerful to lifting my spirits when I grew discouraged about my progress on the encyclopedia. I congratu- late her on her new position and very much hope that I will have another opportunity to work with her in the future. Perhaps the part of the editorial process that is least noted when a book is published is that of copy editing. Copy editors have the often tedious task of insuring that the technical aspects of a project—the spelling, grammar, style, and attributions—are all xvii