Download or read book Deanna Durbin Judy Garland and the Golden Age of Hollywood written by Melanie Gall and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-08-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1930s was a magical age in Hollywood, with Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney, Bette Davis and Clark Gable lighting up the silver screen. But Deanna Durbin's fame surpassed them all. Born in Canada, Deanna was “discovered” by starmaker Eddie Cantor, producer Joe Pasternak and director Henry Koster, and she quickly became the world’s most celebrated star. She saved Universal Studios from ruin, she was a favourite of Winston Churchill and Anne Frank, and she became the highest-paid woman in America. From the start, Deanna’s life was irrevocably connected with that of another young ingénue, Judy Garland. Deanna and Judy were wildly talented, ambitious, and strong-willed young women who followed vastly different paths to stardom. While fame was thrust upon Deanna, Judy spent years struggling for success and their early friendship soon turned into a lifelong rivalry. Despite her tragic life, Judy Garland is remembered as an entertainment icon, beloved by millions. However, Deanna Durbin—who turned her back on Hollywood at the age of twenty-eight to pursue love and happiness—has been largely forgotten. But Deanna’s legacy endures, and this first-ever biography tells of how her gorgeous voice and winning charm vaulted her to worldwide fame and how a thirteen-year-old girl transformed moviemaking and influenced a generation of fans as the first teenage superstar.
Download or read book Deanna Durbin in Hollywood written by Barry Lowe and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-03-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known as the first film teenager, Deanna Durbin was one of the most popular actresses of the 1930s and 1940s. From starring alongside legends like Judy Garland to playing the lead role in classic film musicals, her rise to fame seemed almost like fantasy. But her life behind the scenes was anything but glamorous. Though Durbin was a princess to the public, she was a puppet to film studios and producers and a punching bag for critics and gossip columnists. At the end of her twelve-year career, her only wish was to be forgotten. Impossible. This book pays tribute to Deanna Durbin by detailing her life and career in the context of her time and appraises her film work from both a contemporaneous and a modern view. It includes a short biography, an in-depth discussion of her films, and an extensive filmography and bibliography of her work. Readers will discover the true identity behind the people's Cinderella and how Durbin's career opened Hollywood's studio gates to a generation of adolescent performers.
Download or read book Deanna Durbin written by William Harper and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these pages you will find biographical information as well as a look at every movie in which Deanna Durbin starred.
Download or read book Deanna Durbin written by William Harper and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these pages you will find biographical information as well as a look at every Deanna Durbin movie.
Download or read book Deanna Durbin in Hollywood written by Barry Lowe and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-02-09 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known as the first film teenager, Deanna Durbin was one of the most popular actresses of the 1930s and 1940s. From starring alongside legends like Judy Garland to playing the lead role in classic film musicals, her rise to fame seemed almost like fantasy. But her life behind the scenes was anything but glamorous. Though Durbin was a princess to the public, she was a puppet to film studios and producers and a punching bag for critics and gossip columnists. At the end of her twelve-year career, her only wish was to be forgotten. Impossible. This book pays tribute to Deanna Durbin by detailing her life and career in the context of her time and appraises her film work from both a contemporaneous and a modern view. It includes a short biography, an in-depth discussion of her films, and an extensive filmography and bibliography of her work. Readers will discover the true identity behind the people's Cinderella and how Durbin's career opened Hollywood's studio gates to a generation of adolescent performers.
Download or read book Precocious Charms written by Gaylyn Studlar and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Precocious Charms, Gaylyn Studlar examines how Hollywood presented female stars as young girls or girls on the verge of becoming women. Child stars are part of this study but so too are adult actresses who created motion picture masquerades of youthfulness. Studlar details how Mary Pickford, Shirley Temple, Deanna Durbin, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Jones, and Audrey Hepburn performed girlhood in their films. She charts the multifaceted processes that linked their juvenated star personas to a wide variety of cultural influences, ranging from Victorian sentimental art to New Look fashion, from nineteenth-century children’s literature to post-World War II sexology, and from grand opera to 1930s radio comedy. By moving beyond the general category of "woman," Precocious Charms leads to a new understanding of the complex pleasures Hollywood created for its audience during the half century when film stars were a major influence on America’s cultural imagination.
Download or read book The Star Machine written by Jeanine Basinger and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S 100 GREATEST FILM BOOKS OF ALL TIME • From one of our most distinguished film scholars, comes a rich, penetrating, amusing book about the golden age of movies and how the studios worked to manufacture stars. With revelatory insights and delightful asides, Jeanine Basinger shows us how the studio “star machine” worked when it worked, how it failed when it didn't, and how irrelevant it could sometimes be. She gives us case studies focusing on big stars groomed into the system: the “awesomely beautiful” (and disillusioned) Tyrone Power; the seductive, disobedient Lana Turner; and a dazzling cast of others. She anatomizes their careers, showing how their fame happened, and what happened to them as a result. Deeply engrossing, full of energy, wit, and wisdom, The Star Machine is destined to become an classic of the film canon.
Download or read book The Movie Musical written by Jeanine Basinger and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irresistible and authoritative, The Movie Musical! is an in-depth look at the singing, dancing, happy-making world of Hollywood musicals, beautifully illustrated in color and black-and-white--an essential text for anyone who's ever laughed, cried, or sung along at the movies. Leading film historian Jeanine Basinger reveals, with her trademark wit and zest, the whole story of the Hollywood musical--in the most telling, most incisive, most detailed, most gorgeously illustrated book of her long and remarkable career. From Fred Astaire, whom she adores, to La La Land, which she deplores, Basinger examines a dazzling array of stars, strategies, talents, and innovations in the history of musical cinema. Whether analyzing a classic Gene Kelly routine, relishing a Nelson-Jeanette operetta, or touting a dynamic hip hop number (in the underrated Idlewild), she is a canny and charismatic guide to the many ways that song and dance have been seen--and heard--on film. With extensive portraits of everyone from Al Jolson, the Jazz Singer; to Doris Day, whose iconic sunniness has overshadowed her dramatic talents; from Deanna Durbin, that lovable teen-star of the '30s and '40s; to Shirley T. and Judy G.; from Bing to Frank to Elvis; from Ann Miller to Ann-Margret; from Disney to Chicago . . . focusing on many beloved, iconic films (Top Hat; Singin' in the Rain; Meet Me in St. Louis; The Sound of Music) as well as unduly obscure gems (Eddie Cantor's Whoopee!; Murder at the Vanities; Sun Valley Serenade; One from the Heart), this book is astute, informative, and pure pleasure to read.
Download or read book Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas written by Alonso Duralde and published by Limelight Editions. This book was released on 2010 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles noteworthy Christmas films of all types, including movies for children and for grownups, comedies, sad movies, crime and adventure films, horror movies, versions of "A Christmas Carol," the worst movies, and the classics.
Download or read book Starstruck written by Leonard Maltin and published by Paladin Communications. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hollywood historian and film reviewer Leonard Maltin invites readers to pull up a chair and listen as he tells stories, many of them hilarious, of 50+ years interacting with legendary movie stars, writers, directors, producers, and cartoonists. Maltin grew up in the first decade of television, immersing himself in TV programs and accessing 1930s and '40s movies hitting the small screen. His fan letters to admired performers led to unexpected correspondences, then to interviews and publication of his own fan magazine. Maltin's career as a free-lance writer and New York Times-bestselling author as well as his 30-year run on Entertainment Tonight, gave him access to Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, Shirley Temple, and Jimmy Stewart among hundreds of other Golden Age stars, his interviews cutting through the Hollywood veneer and revealing the human behind each legend. Starstruck also offers a fascinating glimpse inside the Disney empire, and Maltin's tenure teaching USC's popular film course reveals insights into moviemaking along with access to past, current, and future stars of film, such as George Lucas, Kevin Feige, Quentin Tarantino, and Guillermo del Toro.
Download or read book Edmond O Brien written by Derek Sculthorpe and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most versatile actors of his generation, Edmond O’Brien made a series of iconic noir films. From a man reporting his own murder in D.O.A. (1949) to the conflicted title character in The Bigamist (1953), he portrayed the confusion of the postwar Everyman. His memorable roles spanned genres from Shakespeare to westerns and comedies—he also turned his hand to directing. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor as the harassed press agent Oscar Muldoon in Joseph Mankiewicz’s bitter Cinderella fable The Barefoot Contessa (1954). This first in-depth study of O’Brien charts his life and career from Broadway to Hollywood and to the rise of television, revealing a devoted family man dedicated to his craft.
Download or read book This Was Hollywood written by Carla Valderrama and published by Running Press Adult. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this one-of-a-kind Hollywood history, the creator of Instagram's celebrated @ThisWasHollywood reveals the forgotten past of the film world in a dazzling visual package modeled on the classic fan magazines of yesteryear. From former screen legends who have faded into obscurity to new revelations about the biggest movie stars, Valderrama unearths the most fascinating little-known tales from the birth of Hollywood through its Golden Age. The shocking fate of the world's first movie star. Clark Gable's secret love child. The film that nearly ended Paul Newman's career. A former child star who, at ninety-three, reveals her #metoo story for the first time. Valderrama unfolds these stories, and many more, in a volume that is by turns riveting, maddening, hilarious, and shocking. Drawing on new interviews, archival research, and an exhaustive library of photographs, This Was Hollywood is a compelling and visually stunning catalogue of the lost history of the movies.
Download or read book Movie Love in the Fifties written by James Harvey and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2001 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of "Romantic Comedy ("brilliant, meticulous, a monumental work of scholarship" --Margo Jefferson, "New York Times), a fresh, illuminating look at the films of the 1950s. Harvey begins by mapping the progression from 1940s film noir to the living-room melodramas of the 1950s. He shows us the femme fatale of the 1940s (Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Bennett) becoming blander and blonder (Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds) and younger and more traditionally sexy (Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly) in the 1950s. And he shows us how women were finally replaced as objects of desire by the new boy-men--Clift, Brando, Dean, and other rebels without causes. Harvey discusses the films of Hitchcock ("Vertigo), Ophuls ("The Reckless Moment), Siodmak ("Christmas Holiday), and Welles ("Touch of Evil, perhaps the single greatest influence on the "post-classical" movies). He writes about the quintessential 1950s directors: Nicholas Ray, who made movies in the old Hollywood tradition "(In a Lonely Place, "Johnny Guitar), and Douglas Sirk, who portrayed suburbia as an emotional deathtrap ("Imitation of Life, "Magnificent Obsession). And he discusses the "serious" directors, such as Stanley Kramer and Elia Kazan, whose films exhibited powerful new realism. Comprehensive, insightful, written with intelligence, humor, and affection, Movie Love in the Fifties is a masterful work of American film, and cultural, history.
Download or read book A Life of Barbara Stanwyck written by Victoria Wilson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-11-24 with total page 1056 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifteen years in the making, “860 glittering pages” (The New York Times), the first volume of the astonishing life of Barbara Sanwyck—one of our greatest screen actresses—explores her extraordinary range of eighty-eight motion pictures, her work, her world, and her Hollywood through an American century. Frank Capra called her “the greatest emotional actress the screen has yet known.” Yet Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990) was also one of its most underrated stars. Now, Victoria Wilson gives us the most complete portrait of this magnificent actress, seen as the quintessential Brooklyn girl whose family was in fact of old New England stock…her years in New York as dancer and Broadway star…her fraught marriage to Broadway genius, Frank Fay…the adoption of a son; her partnership with Zeppo Marx, with whom she created a horse breeding farm; her fairytale romance and marriage to Robert Taylor, America's most sought-after male star… Here is the shaping of her career working with Hollywood's most important directors, all set against the times—the Depression, the rise of the unions, the coming of World War II, and a fast-evolving motion picture industry. At the heart of the book is Stanwyck herself—how she transformed herself from shunned outsider into one of America's most revered screen actresses. Volume One is the result of more than 100 exhaustive interviews with those who knew Stanwyck, many who never before had agreed to be interviewed: her family, friends, and co-workers from Lauren Bacall, Jane Fonda, and Jackie Cooper to Patricia Neal, Milton Berle, and Kirk Douglas; from Billy Wilder, Bruce Dern, and Anthony Quinn to Jane Powell, Charlton Heston, Arthur Laurents, and Sydney Lumet. “An epic Hollywood narrative,” A Life of Barbara Stanwyck includes never-before-seen letters, journals, and photographs.
Download or read book Film Noir 101 written by Mark Fertig and published by Fantagraphics Books. This book was released on 2014-08-06 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collecting 101 noir movie posters of, arguably, the greatest noir films ever made (including classics The Maltese Falcon, Laura, and Double Indemnity). Reproduced in a stunningly designed, over-sized format that shows off the spectacular visual elan of Hollywood movie posters at their best, the book is not only a spectacular showcase of film noir art, but also establishes the crucial films and identifies their key characteristics, with critical commentary on each film by author and scholar Mark Fertig. This is an ideal handbook for noir rookies, a valuable resource for old-hats, and a visual feast for fans of film noir and American entertainment art.
Download or read book Straight Shooting written by Robert Stack and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Straight Shooting is a wry, amusing, affectionate look at Hollywood over the years – the public drama and private feuds, the tyrannical reigns of the big studio bosses, the larger-than-life exploits of the big male stars – and what it was like to be part of that world. Stack is renowned for his Emmy Award-winning performance in TV’s “The Untouchables” and for films like “The High and the Mighty” and “Written on the Wind”. Less well known are the other roles this hard-working actor excelled in over the years: son, husband, father, friend to some of Hollywood’s most admired stars, and a consummate sportsman especially skilled in skeet shooting -- National Skeet Shooting Champion at seventeen and a member of the Skeet Shooting Hall of Fame. Stack was the son of a dazzling California socialite and an advertising giant (the man responsible for slogans like “The beer that made Milwaukee famous"). Among their friends, the elder Stacks numbered many well-known Hollywood personalities – lovingly described by the actor as he remembers them from his adolescent years. Each step in Stack’s career brought him in contact with fascinating people who became legends -- story after story rolls by, each more memorable than the last, told with unceasing admiration for the personal style these stars projected and the often profound effect many of them had upon Stack’s life. “The Untouchables” years are depicted with wonderful candor as Stack recalls many fine co-stars and hilarious behind-the-scenes episodes. In addition there are cameo appearances by luminaries Ernst Lubitsch, Betty Grable, W.C. Fields, the Ritz Brothers, Joe Pasternak, “Archie Bunker”, and Lauren Bacall, to make this a rich, engrossing reading experience. Straight Shooting is filled with good feeling, friendship, and a sense of a job well done – as was Stack’s own career and life. Through it all, Robert Stack emerges on target, a straight-shooter in every sense of the word.
Download or read book The Deanna Durbin Scrapbook written by Kate Gaddis and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-07 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, learn about actress Deanna Durbin
