Let me firstly thank Yoram Allon, Commissioning Editor at Wallflower Press, and his devoted team for undertaking the publication of this book. Research travel for the book was made possible by generous funding from the College of Humanities and Center for the Study of Europe at Brigham Young University.
Thanks to experts and institutions: Mark Quigley of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, Elena Cazzaro of the Archivo Storico delle at the Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, the Inathèque of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and Kathleen Dickson of the British Film Institute. I add my gratitude to the family of Sir Michael Balcon for granting me access to the Balcon Collection at the British Film Institute.
I am grateful to my students Allison McCall and especially Jonathan Smith for their thoughtful assistance in research, and to my students in my crime film courses. I received constructive feedback on parts of my manuscript from the Brigham Young University Film Studies Group, and from colleagues and friends: Travis Anderson, Brent Bingham, Bruce Burningham, Corry Cropper, Bob Hudson, Chip Oscarson, Laura Rawlins and Steve Riep.
I reserve my warmest gratitude for my wife, Mary, and our children, Sophie, Maude, Henry, Theo and Cy, who sacrificed much for this book to be completed.
Lastly, I dedicate it to my parents, the origin of my interest in movies: Pat Lee, a movie buff and projectionist during a lonely year in Thule, Greenland, and Carla, who had a hand in getting movies to US military personnel abroad in the 1960s.