Designs on the Past: How Hollywood Created the Ancient World

In the period 1916-1966, during its so-called Golden Age, Hollywood developed a passion for the ancient world and produced many epic movie blockbusters. The studios used every device they could find to wow audiences with the spectacle of antiquity.

In this unique study, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones shows how Hollywood carefully and skilfully created the popular modern perception of the ancient world. He analyses how producers, art directors, costumiers, publicity agents, movie stars, and inevitably, 'a cast of thousands' literally designed and crafted the ancient world from scratch.

This lively book offers a technical as well as a theoretical guide to a much-neglected area of film studies and reception studies that will appeal to anyone working in these disciplines.

Key Features:

• This is the first study of the mechanisms and ideologies behind the making of epic movies in Hollywood
• Lavishly illustrated including rare and fascinating marketing material and production stills produced by Hollywood at the time
• Explores the casting and consequences of movie stars in historical roles
• Sets a new agenda for exploring the relationship between history and film and between history and visual culture.

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University.

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University and a specialist in the histories and cultures of ancient Iran and Greece. He also works on dress and gender in antiquity and on the ancient world in popular culture, especially Hollywood cinema. He is the author of Designs on the Past: How Hollywood Created the Ancient World, Aphrodite's Tortoise: The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece, King and Court in Ancient Persia 559 to 331 BCE and Ctesias' History of Persia. He is editor of Women's Dress in the Ancient Greek World, Greek Notions of the Past in the Archaic and Classical Eras, Creating a Hellenistic World and The Hellenistic Court as well as numerous articles on Greek and Persian culture. He is the series editor of Edinburgh Studies in Ancient Persia and co-series editor of Screening Antiquity.