The Independent Producers of Classic Cinema

Cobblestone Entertainment to Publish Aberdeen's "Hollywood Renegades"

Los Angeles-based publisher Cobblestone Entertainment has announced that it will release J. A. Aberdeen's "Hollywood Renegades: The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers'' as part of its Fall 2000 lineup. This highly anticipated movie book, which has generated discussion in film circles months before its publication, offers an inside look at the little-known association formed in the 1940's by legendary Hollywood filmmakers Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, David O. Selznick, Samuel Goldwyn, Alexander Korda, Walter Wanger, and Orson Welles.

"It is one of those great Hollywood mysteries finally answered,'' Aberdeen explains. "SIMPP was one of the most important trade organizations during the Forties and Fifties. The members were all household names; but the organization itself became forgotten over the years.''

"Hollywood Renegades'' discusses the secret mission of the independent producers to bring an end to the studio system of Hollywood at a time when large studios like Paramount and MGM controlled all aspects of film from movie stars to movie theaters. Aberdeen explains how the independent society brought pressure on the antitrust division of the U.S. government to take the major Hollywood corporations to court to break up one of the largest entertainment cartels ever.

The 336 page "Hollywood Renegades,'' the only full-length account of the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, is the result of five years of dedicated research by J. A. Aberdeen. The book explains how the independent producers reinvented Hollywood, bringing the movie industry out of the studio era and into the modern age. Using never-before-published original SIMPP records, the author explains many of the little known facts about the group that was eventually taken over by the Walt Disney Studio.

In response to the demand for prepublication copies of this landmark study of cinema, Cobblestone Entertainment has established an online information base for "Hollywood Renegades: The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers'' at http://www.cobbles.com.