Ronald L. Davis

RONALD L. DAVIS, professor of history emeritus at Southern Methodist University who now lives in Wimberley, Texas, is a native of Dallas who grew up in the Oak Cliff section of the city. He holds three history degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, including the PhD, and is the author of numerous books about American culture, particularly film history and biography. During a teaching career that lasted more than three decades, Davis interviewed countless of the world's most famous entertainers and film stars, placing the transcripts in Southern Methodist University's DeGolyer Library as the Ronald L. Davis Oral History Collection.

Davis's books include A History of Opera in the American West (1965); Opera in Chicago (1966); The Social and Cultural Life of the 1920s (ed., 1972); A History of Music in American Life (1980-82); Hollywood Anecdotes (with Paul Boller, 1987); Hollywood Beauty: Linda Darnell and the American Dream (1991), John Ford: Hollywood's Old Master (1995), Duke: the Life and Image of John Wayne (1998), winner of the 1999 Spur Award; The Glamour Factory: Inside Hollywood's Big Studio System (1993), Celluloid Mirrors: Hollywood and American Society Since 1945 (1996); and La Scala West: The Dallas Opera Under Kelly and Resigno (2000), and John Rosenfield's Dallas (2002).