Leo Braudy


Leo Braudy is University Professor and Bing Professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he teaches 17th- and 18th-century English literature, film history and criticism, and American culture. He has previously taught at Yale, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins University. He is best known for his cultural studies scholarship on celebrity, masculinity, and film, and is frequently sought after for interviews on popular culture, Hollywood cinema, and the American zeitgeist of the 1950s.

Background

Braudy was born in Philadelphia, PA. He is the son of Edward and Zelda Braudy; he received his B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1963 and his M.A. 1963 and Ph.D. 1974 from Yale University. He is married to the painter Dorothy McGahee Braudy. They live and work in Los Angeles.

Scholarship

Leo Braudy's books cover topics spanning literature, film, and other art forms, often with an eye toward understanding the impact of history on artistic form and the cultural expression of feelings. His books have been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and have been included among the Los Angeles Times' "Best of the Best Books of the Year" and the New York Times' "Outstanding Books of the Year." He is best known for The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its History ; and From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity. His most recent book is Haunted: On ghosts, witches, vampires, zombies and other monsters of the natural and supernatural worlds.
Each of these works address changing cultural and historical definitions of what otherwise seem to be innate and unchanging emotions and attitudes—the desire for fame, the concept of masculinity, the shape of fear.
Along with Marshall Cohen, he also co-edits the widely used anthology Film Theory and Criticism.
His 2006 book, On the Waterfront, is a study of the film's production, the post-war values it reflects, and the controversy surrounding Elia Kazan's testimony before the House Unamerican Activities Committee. In 2011 The Hollywood Sign appeared in Yale University Press's American Icons series. It traces the intertwined history of Hollywood and the Sign from the founding of the city as a prohibitionist enclave in the 1880s through the beginnings of the movies, the construction of the Sign in the 1920s as a real estate advertisement, and the mixed fortunes of both the Sign and the film business down to the present.
In a departure from his scholarly work, Braudy published in 2013 a memoir of his life as a teenager entitled Trying to be Cool: Growing Up in the 1950s. Subtitled "based on a true story," the book merges scenes from his life in the decade with observations about rock 'n' roll music, science fiction movies, the domestic Cold War, and other aspects of the period.
In 2016, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Swarthmore College and was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Central High School of Philadelphia, the second oldest continuously public high school in the United States.

Film and television appearances

Braudy frequently appears as a commentator on popular culture, cultural history, and films on a variety of television shows, including Crossfire, World of Wonder, The Maria Shriver Show, and The South Bank Show. A transcript of his interview with Bill Moyers on Moyers's PBS series appeared in The World of Ideas. He has acted in John Waters' Polyester, and Robert Kramer's underground classic Ice.
Other film appearances include: