Download or read book The Golden Age Musicals of Darryl F Zanuck written by Bernard F. Dick and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2022-03-30 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with The Jazz Singer (1927) and 42nd Street (1933), legendary Hollywood film producer Darryl F. Zanuck (1902–1979) revolutionized the movie musical, cementing its place in American popular culture. Zanuck, who got his start writing stories and scripts in the silent film era, worked his way to becoming a top production executive at Warner Bros. in the later 1920s and early 1930s. Leaving that studio in 1933, he and industry executive Joseph Schenck formed Twentieth Century Pictures, an independent Hollywood motion picture production company. In 1935, Zanuck merged his Twentieth Century Pictures with the ailing Fox Film Corporation, resulting in the combined Twentieth Century-Fox, which instantly became a new major Hollywood film entity. The Golden Age Musicals of Darryl F. Zanuck: The Gentleman Preferred Blondes is the first book devoted to the musicals that Zanuck produced at these three studios. The volume spotlights how he placed his personal imprint on the genre and how—especially at Twentieth Century-Fox—he nurtured and showcased several blonde female stars who headlined the studio’s musicals—including Shirley Temple, Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Vivian Blaine, June Haver, Marilyn Monroe, and Sheree North. Building upon Bernard F. Dick’s previous work in That Was Entertainment: The Golden Age of the MGM Musical, this volume illustrates the richness of the American movie musical, tracing how these song-and-dance films fit within the career of Darryl F. Zanuck and within the timeline of Hollywood history.

Download or read book The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin written by Robert Kimball and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2005 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Applause Books). Gathered together in one volume for the first time, here are all of the incomparable song lyrics of Irving Berlin the lyrics of more than 1,200 songs, 400 of which have never before appeared in print along with anecdotal, historical, and musicological commentary and dozens of photographs. Berlin came from a poor immigrant family and began his career as a singing waiter, but by the time he was nineteen he was publishing his songs and quickly found fame with "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911. In the extraordinary six decades that followed, Berlin wrote one popular hit after another: Blue Skies * Always * Cheek to Cheek * White Christmas * God Bless America * There's No Business Like Show Business * and many more. He also wrote a number of the classics of musical theater's Golden Age, climaxing with Annie Get Your Gun . He penned three Astaire and Rogers films Top Hat, Carefree , and Follow the Fleet as well as the scores of Holiday Inn, Easter Parade , and other films. The breadth of his accomplishment is staggering.

Download or read book Broadway written by Ken Bloom and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 679 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is another example in the Routledge tradition of producing high-quality reference works on theater, music, and the arts. An A to Z encyclopedia of Broadway, this volume includes tons of information, including producers, writer, composers, lyricists, set designers, theaters, performers, and landmarks in its sweep.

Download or read book The Oxford Companion to the American Musical written by Thomas S. Hischak and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-02 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the silver screen to the Great White Way, small community theatres to television sets, the musical has long held a special place in America's heart and history. Now, in The Oxford Companion to the American Musical, readers who flocked to the movies to see An American in Paris or Chicago, lined up for tickets to West Side Story or Rent, or crowded around their TVs to watch Cinderella or High School Musical can finally turn to a single book for details about them all. For the first time, this popular subject has an engaging and authoritative book as thrilling as the performances themselves. With more than two thousand entries, this illustrated guide offers a wealth of information on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers, and much more. Biographical entries range from early stars Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Mary Martin, and Mae West to contemporary show-stoppers Nathan Lane, Savion Glover, and Kristin Chenoweth, while composers Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, and Andrew Lloyd Webber all have articles, and the choreography of Bob Fosse, Tommy Tune, and Debbie Allen receives due examination. The plays and films covered range from modern hits like Mamma Mia! and Moulin Rouge! to timeless classics such as Yankee Doodle Dandy and Show Boat. Also, numerous musicals written specifically for television appear throughout, and many entries follow a work-Babes in Toyland for example-as it moves across genres, from stage, to film, to television. The Companion also includes cross references, a comprehensive listing of recommended recordings and further reading, a useful chronology of all the musicals described in the book, plus a complete index of Tony Award and Academy Award winners. Whether you are curious about Singin' in the Rain or Spamalot, or simply adore The Wizard of Oz or Grease, this well-researched and entertaining resource is the first place to turn for reliable information on virtually every aspect of the American musical.

Download or read book Any Resemblance to Actual Persons written by Hal Erickson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-12-25 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most film buffs know that Citizen Kane was based on the life of publisher William Randolph Hearst. But few are aware that key characters in films like Double Indemnity, Cool Hand Luke, Jaws, Rain Man, A Few Good Men and Zero Dark Thirty were inspired by actual persons. This survey of a clef characters covers a selection of fictionalized personalities, beginning with the Silent Era. The landmark lawsuit surrounding Rasputin and the Empress (1932) introduced disclaimers in film credits, assuring audiences that characters were not based on real people--even when they were. Entries cover screen incarnations of Wyatt Earp, Al Capone, Bing Crosby, Amelia Earhart, Buster Keaton, Howard Hughes, Janis Joplin and Richard Nixon, along with the inspirations behind perennial favorites like Charlie Chan and Indiana Jones.

Download or read book The 1931 1940 American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States written by American Film Institute and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 1198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The entire field of film historians awaits the AFI volumes with eagerness."--Eileen Bowser, Museum of Modern Art Film Department Comments on previous volumes: "The source of last resort for finding socially valuable . . . films that received such scant attention that they seem 'lost' until discovered in the AFI Catalog."--Thomas Cripps "Endlessly absorbing as an excursion into cultural history and national memory."--Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Download or read book Catalog of Copyright Entries written by Library of Congress. Copyright Office and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 948 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Vitaphone Films written by Roy Liebman and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-05-20 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The headline of the Variety extra on October 27, 1926, proclaimed "Vitaphone1 Thrills L.A.!" Vitaphone, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. formed in association with Western Electric, was one of the major producers of talkies, even though its sound-on-disc technology barely lasted four years. The Vitaphone features and shorts that have survived intact, or that have been so carefully restored, preserve much of the show business history that might otherwise have been lost with the industry's fast-paced advances in movie making. This book is a catalogue of Vitaphone features and shorts. The first section lists the features and shorts by release number. The New York productions (1926-1940) are listed first, followed by the West Coast productions (1927-1970). For shorts, the following particulars, if known and if applicable, are given: title, alternate title(s), instrumental and vocal selections performed on screen, composer(s) and performers of instrumental and vocal selections, release date and synopsis of the film, names of major cast members and directors, set information if two or fewer sets were used, and the amount paid to early performers. For features, entries list release dates, genre, and major cast members. The section on performers includes only those who appeared in shorts, listing dates and places of birth when known.

Download or read book Real Men Don t Sing written by Allison McCracken and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-17 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The crooner Rudy Vallée's soft, intimate, and sensual vocal delivery simultaneously captivated millions of adoring fans and drew harsh criticism from those threatened by his sensitive masculinity. Although Vallée and other crooners reflected the gender fluidity of late-1920s popular culture, their challenge to the Depression era's more conservative masculine norms led cultural authorities to stigmatize them as gender and sexual deviants. In Real Men Don't Sing Allison McCracken outlines crooning's history from its origins in minstrelsy through its development as the microphone sound most associated with white recording artists, band singers, and radio stars. She charts early crooners’ rise and fall between 1925 and 1934, contrasting Rudy Vallée with Bing Crosby to demonstrate how attempts to contain crooners created and dictated standards of white masculinity for male singers. Unlike Vallée, Crosby survived the crooner backlash by adapting his voice and persona to adhere to white middle-class masculine norms. The effects of these norms are felt to this day, as critics continue to question the masculinity of youthful, romantic white male singers. Crooners, McCracken shows, not only were the first pop stars: their short-lived yet massive popularity fundamentally changed American culture.

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater written by James Fisher and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 1233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater. Second Edition covers theatrical practice and practitioners as well as the dramatic literature of the United States of America from 1930 to the present. The 90 years covered by this volume features the triumph of Broadway as the center of American drama from 1930 to the early 1960s through a Golden Age exemplified by the plays of Eugene O’Neill, Elmer Rice, Thornton Wilder, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge, Lorraine Hansberry, and Edward Albee, among others. The impact of the previous modernist era contributed greatly to this period of prodigious creativity on American stages. This volume will continue through an exploration of the decline of Broadway as the center of U.S. theater in the 1960s and the evolution of regional theaters, as well as fringe and university theaters that spawned a second Golden Age at the millennium that produced another – and significantly more diverse – generation of significant dramatists including such figures as Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Maria Irené Fornes, Beth Henley, Terrence McNally, Tony Kushner, Paula Vogel, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Ruhl, and numerous others. The impact of the Great Depression and World War II profoundly influenced the development of the American stage, as did the conformist 1950s and the revolutionary 1960s on in to the complex times in which we currently live. Historical Dictionary of the Contemporary American Theater, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 1.000 cross-referenced entries on plays, playwrights, directors, designers, actors, critics, producers, theaters, and terminology. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about American theater.

Download or read book Impresario written by James Maguire and published by Billboard Books. This book was released on 2011-11-23 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • Sullivan has nearly 100% name recognition among people 40 and older • In a survey of the fifty most influential programs in the U.S., TV Guide ranked The Ed Sullivan Show #10 • Show still appears on PBS and on cable stations across the country • Sixty million baby boomers grew up watching The Ed Sullivan Show For more than twenty years, from 1948 to 1971, fifty-five million viewers watched The Ed Sullivan Show religiously every Sunday night. Everyone who was anyone appeared—the Beatles and Elvis, of course, and Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, and Elizabeth Taylor, plus public figures such as Fidel Castro, David Ben-Gurion, and Martin Luther King, Jr. More than thirty years later, the program remains a pop-culture icon. But despite Ed Sullivan’s prominence, little was known about the private man...until now. Impresario reveals what the Sullivan viewers never saw: nasty, hot-tempered, craven, yet also capable of high ideals and, above all, hugely ambitious. At a time when Americans are looking back, The Ed Sullivan Show stands out as a shining example of television during the golden era. Impresario lets readers look behind the screen to see the man who made it happen.

Download or read book The Guest List written by Ethan Mordden and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-09-28 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 1920s to the early 1960s, Manhattan was America's beacon of sophistication. From the theatres of Broadway to the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel to tables at the Stork Club, intelligence and wit were the twinned coins of the realm. Alexander Woolcott, Irving Berlin, Edna Ferber, Arturo Toscanini, Leonard Bernstein, Cole Porter, Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, the Lunts and Helen Hayes presided over the town. Their books, plays, performances, speeches, dinner parties, masked balls, loves, hates, likes and dislikes became the aspirations of a nation. If you wanted to be sophisticated, you played by Manhattan's rules. If you didn't, you simply weren't on the guest list. The Heartland rebelled against Manhattan's dictum, but never prevailed. In this lively cultural history, Mordden chronicles the city's most powerful and influential era.

Download or read book Vixens Floozies and Molls written by Hans J. Wollstein and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-10-14 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The floozy, the gangster's moll, the nasty debutante: Most Hollywood actresses played at least one of these bad girls in the 1930s. Since censorship customarily demanded that goodness prevail, vixens were in mainly supporting roles--but the actresses who played them were often colorful scene stealers. These characters and the women who played them first began to appear in film in 1915 when Theda Bara played home-wrecker Elsie Drummond in The Vixen. Movie theaters filled and the industry focused on heaving bosoms and ceaseless lust. Bara never shed the vamp image. The type evolved into the flapper, the gangster's moll, the "dame," and the "bad girl." This work covers the lives and careers of 28 actresses, providing details about their lives and giving complete filmographies of their careers.

Download or read book Crime Wave written by Howard Hughes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2006-05-26 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crime movies inhabit dark and desperate worlds, yet they account for many of Hollywood's most triumphant successes. In full acknowledgement of this achievement, "Crime Wave" offers an authoritative and informative, stimulating and entertaining guide to the crime movie phenomenon, from its early days to the present, charting its history and celebrating the people who have given it a special and enduring place in cinema goers' affections. Chapters focus on landmark Hollywood films - from 1931's "The Public Enemy", through "The Maltese Falcon", "Point Blank", "Dirty Harry", "The Godfather" trilogy and "Goodfellas", to "LA Confidential" and "Oceans 11" - telling their stories and on the way discussing many more crime movies, both major and lesser known. "Crime Wave" represents and investigates gangster and heist movies, blaxploitation and noir, murder mysteries, vehicles for vigilante or buddy cops, even a gangster love story. It features biographies and filmographies detailing the key participants and background details of the film's making, locations and sets. It also explores each film's sources and influences, its impact on the crime genre and current fashion, including spin-offs, copies and sequels. It examines the films' themes, style and box office fortunes. Detailed cast list information is provided for each of the main featured films. Written with passion, for those who love this cinema, "Crime Wave" is the perfect partner in crime.

Download or read book The BFI Companion to Crime written by Phil Hardy and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A complete and detailed guide to crime on film: prison dramas, film noir, heist movies, juvenile delinquents, serial killers, bank robbers, and many other subgenres and motifs. The historical and social background to movie crime is covered by articles on the FBI, the Mafia, the Japanese yakuza, prohibition, boxing, union rackets, drugs, poisoning, prostitution, and many other topics."--Cover.

Download or read book Gangsterland written by David Pietrusza and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2023-11-14 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WELCOME TO JAZZ-AGE MANHATTAN’S KALEIDOSCOPIC UNDERWORLD. A site by site, crime by crime, outlaw by outlaw walking tour through the seedy underbelly of Roaring Twenties Manhattan—where gamblers and gangsters, crooks and cops, showgirls and speakeasies ruled the day and, always, the night. In Gangsterland, historian David Pietrusza tours the Big Apple’s rotten core. The Roaring Twenties blaze and sparkle with Times Square’s bright lights and showgirls, but its dark shadows mask a web of notorious gangsters ruling New York City. At the heart of this wickedness nests a “Prince of Darkness,” Arnold Rothstein, the kingpin most noted for fixing baseball’s infamous 1919 World Series, who also bankrolled high-stakes gambling dens, speakeasies, trigger-happy bootleggers, and even a record setting Broadway show. Sharing center stage are con artists Nicky Arnstein and “Dapper Don” Collins; crooked cop Lt. Charles Becker; politicians Mayor “Gentleman Jimmy” Walker and “Big Tim” Sullivan; master drug smugglers George Uffner and Sidney Stajer; murderous racketeers Lucky Luciano and Legs Diamon; show biz legends Flo Ziegfeld, Fanny Brice, and Texas Guinan; and many more. As Pietrusza prowls city boulevards and back alleys, exposing Tammany Hall, sports, Broadway, and Wall Street, jewels are fenced, bullets fly, and unmarked bills buy bribes and silence. Readers get up close and personal with this rogues’ gallery but better check their wallets before they leave.

Download or read book The Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors written by Barry Monush and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003-04-01 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, Screen World has been the film professional's, as well as the film buff's, favorite and indispensable annual screen resource, full of all the necessary statistics and facts. Now Screen World editor Barry Monush has compiled another comprehensive work for every film lover's library. In the first of two volumes, this book chronicles the careers of every significant film actor, from the earliest silent screen stars – Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks – to the mid-1960s, when the old studio and star systems came crashing down. Each listing includes: a brief biography, photos from the famed Screen World archives, with many rare shots; vital statistics; a comprehensive filmography; and an informed, entertaining assessment of each actor's contributions – good or bad! In addition to every major player, Monush includes the legions of unjustly neglected troupers of yesteryear. The result is a rarity: an invaluable reference tool that's as much fun to read as a scandal sheet. It pulsates with all the scandal, glamour, oddity and glory that was the lifeblood of its subjects. Contains over 1 000 photos!