Chris Yogerst
"One of our best chroniclers of Hollywood history" -Sight and Sound
Chris Yogerst, Ph.D.
Writer, Professor, Historian.
Bio
Chris Yogerst is an author, columnist, and media historian who focuses on the social and cultural impact of popular culture. His research shows that popular culture often mirrors society in ways that add important context towards understanding our modern world. Yogerst has been cited as an expert in interviews published in NPR, The Times of London, Utah Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Radio, and numerous podcasts.
His work can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Washington Post, Hollywood Reporter, and numerous academic journals.
One recent book, Hollywood Hates Hitler, examines social climate of American fascism and anti-Semitism leading up to and through the 1941 Senate Investigation into Motion Picture Propaganda (University Press of Mississippi).
Yogerst's latest book, The Warner Brothers (University Press of Kentucky), was released in September 2023, and has been featured in The Hollywood Reporter, Wall Street Journal, and The New York Sun. The Warner Brothers was chosen as one of the best of 2023 by Sight and Sound magazine.
Publications
Books
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Reel West series, University of New Mexico Press, 2025).
The Warner Brothers (University Press of Kentucky, 2023).
Hollywood Hates Hitler! Jew-Baiting, Anti-Nazism, and the Senate Investigation into Warmongering in Motion Pictures (University Press of Mississippi, 2020).
From the Headlines to Hollywood: The Birth and Boom of Warner Bros. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).
Journal essays/book chapters
“Image Management and the Fall of Hollywood’s Golden Age,” Oxford Handbook on American Film History, edited by Jon Lewis, (Oxford University Press, 2025).
“Aristotle and the Wild West: The Western as Rhetorical Device,” The Good, the Bad, and the Ancient: Essays on the Greco-Roman Influence in Westerns, Edited by Sue Matheson, (McFarland, 2022). Winner: Best Edited Collection, Popular Culture Association 2023.
“Trust in the Journey: HBO’s Watchmen and Superhero Mythology,” co-authored with Mark Peterson, After Midnight: Analyzing the Post-Watchmen Sequels, (University Press of Mississippi, 2022).
“A Face in the Crowd (1957): Reception and Relevancy, From the Dawn of Television to the Digital Age,” Journal of Popular Film and Television, (Summer 2021).
“Searching for Common Ground: Hollywood Prior to the Senate Investigation on Motion Picture War Propaganda, 1938-1941,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, (April 2019).
“Individuation and the Psychology of Rebirth,” co-authored with Caitlin Yogerst, Wonder Woman Psychology: Lassoing the Truth, Edited by Travis Langley and Mara Wood, (Sterling, 2017).
“Rod Serling’s Vast Promised Land: Battling Sponsors, Debating the FCC, and Fighting for Mature Television 1959-1966,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, (September 2017).
“Hughes, Hawks, and Hays: The Monumental Censorship Battle Over Scarface (1932),” The Journal of American Culture (June 2017).
“Superhero Films: A Fascist National Complex or Exemplars of Moral Virtue?” Journal of Religion & Film (April 2017).
“Rules for Surviving a Horror-Comedy: Satiric Genre Transformation from Scream to Zombieland,” The Laughing Dead: The Horror-Comedy Film from Bride of Frankenstein to Zombieland, Edited by Cynthia Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).
Public Facing Scholarship
“Harry Warner: Jewish Warrior for Peace and Tolerance,” forthcoming from Time.
Review of Moguls forthcoming in the Washington Post.
“How Paramount’s First Big Sale Spurred a New Hollywood Era in 1966,” The Hollywood Reporter, July 8, 2024.
“The Rise of Mega Studios: How MGM Remade Hollywood 100 Years ago,” The Hollywood Reporter, April 29, 2024.
“Cass Warner, Filmmaker and Granddaughter of Warner Bros. Co-Founder, Dies at 76,” The Hollywood Reporter, March 18, 2024.
“Oscars Big Snub? Casablanca Win Marked Boiling Point at Warner Bros.,” The Hollywood Reporter, March 7, 2024.
“When Warner Bros. First Left the Family: Betrayal and High Drama in a Classic Hollywood Megadeal,” The Hollywood Reporter, December 22nd, 2023.
“Endless Culture Wars: On Kliph Nesteroff’s Outrageous,” Los Angeles Review of Books, December 1st, 2023.
“Hollywood Has Been Here Before with Antisemitism,” The Hollywood Reporter, November 27th, 2023.
“A Man Without a Country: On Scott Eyman’s Charlie Chaplin vs. America,” Los Angeles Review of Books, October 26th, 2023.
“The Long Shadow of Anti-Trust Targets from Hollywood’s Golden Age,” The Hollywood Reporter, September 4th, 2023.
“Mobsters, Union Leaders, and Studio Moguls: The Infamous 1945-46 Warner Brothers Strikes,” Los Angeles Review of Books, August 22nd, 2023.
“How the Warner Brothers Got Their Film Business Started,” The Hollywood Reporter, April 4th, 2023.
“What Studio Franchises Can Learn from the Rise, Fall and Rise of the Western,” The Hollywood Reporter, March 21st, 2023.
“A New History of the Oscars Reveals the Power Behind the Glamour,” Washington Post, February 20th, 2023.
“How Babylon Chases Hollywood’s Decadent Past,” The Hollywood Reporter, December 23rd, 2022.
“Hollywood on Hollywood,” Los Angeles Review of Books, December 5th, 2022.
“Orson Welles’ ’War of the Worlds’ Broadcast: Its Ominous Echoes For a Fractured Media,” The Hollywood Reporter, October 28th, 2022.
“When Hollywood Was Punished for its Anti-Nazism,” The Hollywood Reporter, September 22nd, 2022.
“100 Years Ago: How Hollywood’s Self-Censorship Battles Shaped the MPA,” The Hollywood Reporter, September 2nd, 2022.
Victim of His Own Celebrity: On Richard Schickel’s “The Famous Mr. Fairbanks,” Los Angeles Review of Books, August 7th, 2022.
“The Dark Side of the New Hollywood: On John Lewis’s Road Trip to Nowhere,” Los Angeles Review of Books, July 30h, 2022.
“Buster Keaton: A Timeless Comedian,” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 25th, 2022.
“The Oskar Schindler of Hollywood,” Los Angeles Review of Books, October 26th, 2021.
“Pseudo-Events in the 21st Century,” Los Angeles Review of Books, September 2nd, 2021.
“Billy Wilder’s Amerikanismus,” Los Angeles Review of Books, April 28th, 2021.
“A Man and His Persona: On Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise,” Los Angeles Review of Books, January 3rd, 2021.
“When Democratic Senators Collaborated with American Nazis to Stop Hollywood from Taking On Hitler,” Daily Beast, September 27th, 2020.
“We Had Witnessed an Exhibition: On Thomas Doherty’s Little Lindy is Kidnapped,” Los Angeles Review of Books, September 24th, 2020.
“When the U.S. Government Went After Anti-Nazi Hollywood,” Los Angeles Review of Books, July 27th. 2020.
“Forgotten Movie Royalty.” Los Angeles Review of Books, June 12th, 2020.
“A Respite for Refugees: The Sun and Her Stars.” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 31st, 2020.
“Sin, Glamour, and Photography in Hollywood’s Golden Age: On Two Books by Mark A. Vieira,” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 14th, 2020.
“Into the Archives: on Letters from Hollywood,” Los Angeles Review of Books, January 2nd, 2020.
“Why We Shouldn’t Fear Joker,” Los Angeles Review of Books, October 10th, 2019.
“The Hunt May Be a Victim of America’s Misdirected Outrage,” The Hollywood Reporter, August 21st, 2019.
“Mel Brooks: Boomer’s Comedian,” Los Angeles Review of Books, June 11th, 2019.
“A Manifesto for Connecting Personally in a Tech-Dominated World,” The Washington Post, March 29th, 2019.
“Everyone Can Benefit from Dreyer’s English – Especially Scholars,” Los Angeles Review of Books, February 12th, 2019.
“The Incredible Life of ‘Handsome Johnny,’ a Gangster Worthy of the Movies,” The Washington Post, November 22nd, 2018 (online) November 20th, 2018 (print).
“The Women Who Knew Howard Hughes,” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 21st, 2018.
“The Most Powerful Person in Hollywood Without a Studio,” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 11th, 2018.
“Wave of Anti-Semitism Today Resembles Pre-War Attitudes Towards Jewish-Led Hollywood,” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 4th, 2018.
“A Forgotten Filmmaker Who Influenced Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder Gets His Due,” The Washington Post, July 5th, 2018 (online) July 15th, 2018 (print).
“How Stan Lee Became the Man Behind Marvel,” Los Angeles Review of Books, April 21st, 2018.
“When Hollywood Caved to the House-Un American Activities Committee,” The Washington Post, April 13th, 2018 (online), April 22nd, 2018 (print).
“The Man Who Saved Movies from Thomas Edison’s Monopoly,” The Washington Post, December 5th, 2017 (online), January 28th, 2018 (print).
“Hollywood, Los Angeles Spies, and the Underground Battle Against Hitler,” Los Angeles Review of Books, October 23rd, 2017.
“The Real and Imagined in Douglas Rushkoff’s Aleister & Adolf,” Los Angeles Review of Books, October 21st, 2017.
“In An Always-On World, Maybe We Don’t Need to Watch It All – Right Now,” The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 23rd, 2015.
“Stop Calling Superheroes Fascist,” The Atlantic, December 3rd, 2013.