Download or read book The First King of Hollywood written by Tracey Goessel and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The first truly definitive biography of Douglas Fairbanks, the greatest leading man of the silent film era"--
Download or read book The First King of Hollywood written by Tracey Goessel and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre Library Association's Wall Award Finalist Silent film superstar Douglas Fairbanks was an absolute charmer. Irrepressibly vivacious, he spent his life leaping over and into things, from his early Broadway successes to his marriage to the great screen actress Mary Pickford to the way he made Hollywood his very own town. The inventor of the swashbuckler, he wasn't only an actor—he all but directed and produced his movies, and in founding United Artists with Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith, he challenged the studio system. But listing his accomplishments is one thing and telling his story another. Tracey Goessel has made the latter her life's work, and with exclusive access to Fairbanks's love letters to Pickford, she brilliantly illuminates how Fairbanks conquered not just the entertainment world but the heart of perhaps the most famous woman in the world at the time. When Mary Pickford died, she was an alcoholic, self-imprisoned in her mansion, nearly alone, and largely forgotten. But she left behind a small box; in it, worn and refolded, were her letters from Douglas Fairbanks. Pickford and Fairbanks had ruled Hollywood as its first king and queen for a glorious decade. But the letters began long before, when they were both married to others, when revealing the affair would have caused a great scandal. Now these letters form the centerpiece of the first truly definitive biography of Hollywood's first king, the man who did his own stunts and built his own studio and formed a company that allowed artists to distribute their own works outside the studio system. But Goessel's research uncovered more: that Fairbanks's first film appearance was two years earlier than had been assumed; that his stories of how he got into theater, and then into films, were fabricated; that the Pickford-Fairbanks Studios had a specially constructed underground trench so that Fairbanks could jog in the nude; that Fairbanks himself insisted racist references be removed from his films' intertitles; and the true cause of Fairbanks's death. Fairbanks was the top male star of his generation, the maker of some of the greatest films of his era: The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, The Mark of Zorro. He was fun, witty, engaging, creative, athletic, and a force to be reckoned with. He shaped our idea of the Hollywood hero, and Hollywood has never been the same since. His story, like his movies, is full of passion, bravado, romance, and desire. Here at last is his definitive biography, based on extensive and brand-new research into every aspect of his career, and written with fine understanding, wit, and verve.
Download or read book Hollywood s Stephen King written by Tony Magistrale and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-11-22 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tony Magistrale explores many of the movie versions of Stephen King's works and provides important insights into both the films and the fiction on which they are based.
Download or read book Kings of the Bs written by Todd McCarthy and published by Dutton Adult. This book was released on 1975 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Clark Gable in the 1930s written by James L. Neibaur and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-03-26 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1930s represented the strongest and most significant decade in Clark Gable's career. Later known as The King of Hollywood, Gable started out as a journeyman actor who quickly rose to the level of star, and then icon. With his ruggedly attractive looks and effortless charisma, Gable was the sort of manly romantic lead that bolstered features alongside the likes of Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, and Spencer Tracy. The decade culminated with Gable's most noted movie, Gone With the Wind. This book traces Gable's early career, film-by-film, offering background information and a critical assessment of each of his movies released during the 1930s.
Download or read book When Hollywood Had a King written by Connie Bruck and published by Random House. This book was released on 2003-06-03 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In When Hollywood Had a King, the distinguished journalist Connie Bruck tells the sweeping story of MCA and its brilliant leader, a man who transformed the entertainment industry— businessman, politician, tactician, and visionary Lew Wasserman. The Music Corporation of America was founded in Chicago in 1924 by Dr. Jules Stein, an ophthalmologist with a gift for booking bands. Twelve years later, Stein moved his operations west to Beverly Hills and hired Lew Wasserman. From his meager beginnings as a movie-theater usher in Cleveland, Wasserman ultimately ascended to the post of president of MCA, and the company became the most powerful force in Hollywood, regarded with a mixture of fear and awe. In his signature black suit and black knit tie, Was-serman took Hollywood by storm. He shifted the balance of power from the studios—which had seven-year contractual strangleholds on the stars—to the talent, who became profit partners. When an antitrust suit forced MCA’s evolution from talent agency to film- and television-production company, it was Wasserman who parlayed the control of a wide variety of entertainment and media products into a new type of Hollywood power base. There was only Washington left to conquer, and conquer it Wasserman did, quietly brokering alliances with Democratic and Republican administrations alike. That Wasserman’s reach extended from the underworld to the White House only added to his mystique. Among his friends were Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, mob lawyer Sidney Korshak, and gangster Moe Dalitz—along with Presidents Johnson, Clinton, and especially Reagan, who enjoyed a particularly close and mutually beneficial relationship with Wasserman. He was equally intimate with Hollywood royalty, from Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart to Steven Spielberg, who began his career at MCA and once described Wasserman’s eyeglasses as looking like two giant movie screens. The history of MCA is really the history of a revolution. Lew Wasserman ushered in the Hollywood we know today. He is the link between the old-school moguls with their ironclad studio contracts and the new industry defined by multimedia conglomerates, power agents, multimillionaire actors, and profit sharing. In the hands of Connie Bruck, the story of Lew Wasserman’s rise to power takes on an almost Shakespearean scope. When Hollywood Had a King reveals the industry’s greatest untold story: how a stealthy, enterprising power broker became, for a time, Tinseltown’s absolute monarch.
Download or read book King of the Sunset Strip written by Steve Stevens and published by Cumberland House Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who would have thought that an acting career that began as a teenage star on "The Mickey Mouse Club" would lead to the role of assistant to Southern California crime-boss Mickey Cohen? King of the Sunset Strip takes readers through the author's dramatic Hollywood story to the curtain call that eventually led him out of the life of crime.
Download or read book King Baggot written by Sally A. Dumaux and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-04-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: King Baggot began in films in 1909, was a major star from 1910 to 1916, and gained renown as a director in the 1920s and as a character actor in the 1930s and 1940s. But most notably, he was the first publicized leading man in America. In his two-reel Shadows--this was a first in film history--he played ten different characters and also directed. He founded the Screen Club, the first and most prestigious club strictly for film personnel, and became a star in England with Ivanhoe and in France with Absinthe. As a director, he worked on Kissed, in which Marie Prevost had her first starring role. He also directed The Home Maker, a social drama that daringly explored role reversal between a husband and wife, and Tumbleweeds, now considered a classic among westerns. This work is a biography from early childhood until his death in 1948. And it is a filmography documenting every known film in which he took part: cast and production credits, release date, length, Library of Congress registration number, places where the film can be found today, and other information.
Download or read book My First Time in Hollywood written by Cari Beauchamp and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over forty legends of the film business recount their first trip to Hollywood. Actors, directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, and editors-half of them women-recall the long joinery, their initial impressions, their struggle to find work, and the love for making movies that kept them going. Drawn from letters, speeches, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies-and illustrated with over sixty vintage photographs and illustrations-each story is intimate and unique, but all speak to our universal need to follow our passions and be part of a community that feeds the soul. This anthology is edited and annotated by award-winning author and film historian Cari Beauchamp, the only person to twice be named as an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholar. Of MY FIRST TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, Academy-Award-winning film preservationist, historian, and author Kevin Brownlow writes: "What every film fan years for-first-hand, eyewitness accounts of a Hollywood none of us can remember and all of us wish we'd known. Completely fascinating." And film critic and historian Leonard Maltin writes: "What a priceless parade of evocative and highly entertaining memories. Once you start reading you won't want to stop."
Download or read book Raoul Walsh written by Marilyn Moss and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raoul Walsh (1887–1980) was known as one of Hollywood’s most adventurous, iconoclastic, and creative directors. He carved out an illustrious career and made films that transformed the Hollywood studio yarn into a thrilling art form. Walsh belonged to that early generation of directors—along with John Ford and Howard Hawks—who worked in the fledgling film industry of the early twentieth century, learning to make movies with shoestring budgets. Walsh’s generation invented a Hollywood that made movies seem bigger than life itself. In the first ever full-length biography of Raoul Walsh, author Marilyn Ann Moss recounts Walsh’s life and achievements in a career that spanned more than half a century and produced upwards of two hundred films, many of them cinema classics. Walsh originally entered the movie business as an actor, playing the role of John Wilkes Booth in D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). In the same year, under Griffith’s tutelage, Walsh began to direct on his own. Soon he left Griffith’s company for Fox Pictures, where he stayed for more than twenty years. It was later, at Warner Bros., that he began his golden period of filmmaking. Walsh was known for his romantic flair and playful persona. Involved in a freak auto accident in 1928, Walsh lost his right eye and began wearing an eye patch, which earned him the suitably dashing moniker “the one-eyed bandit.” During his long and illustrious career, he directed such heavyweights as Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Errol Flynn, and Marlene Dietrich, and in 1930 he discovered future star John Wayne.
Download or read book The First Lady of Hollywood written by Samantha Barbas and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-10-24 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of Louella Parsons, America's premiere movie gossip columnist from 1915 to 1960, chronicles her reign over Hollywood during the studio era, her lifelong alliance with William Randolph Hearst, and her complex and turbulent relationships.
Download or read book In and Out of Hollywood written by Charles Higham and published by Terrace Books. This book was released on 2009-10-27 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a best-selling biographer of numerous Hollywood greats—Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Howard Hughes, and Cary Grant among them—Charles Higham has been privy to the public and private joys, tragedies, scandals, and desires of many of the darlings of Hollywood’s red carpet. In and Out of Hollywood is Higham’s own life story, replete with a vibrant cast that includes stars from Marlene Dietrich to Clint Eastwood to Leonardo DiCaprio. Born into a life of privilege in 1930s England, Higham endured a difficult childhood. To escape a tortured family situation, Higham married early despite his awakening homosexuality and fled to Australia with his wife to begin a new life as a poet, journalist, and editor. By the 1960s he had settled in Hollywood. It was here that he struck gold by finding and writing about the reels of Orson Welles’s legendary unfinished Latin American epic film It’s All True, long thought lost in a Paramount vault. This momentous find rocketed Higham to the A-list. He soon became a New York Times feature writer and sought-after biographer lauded for his pioneering style. In and Out of Hollywood contains Higham’s personal reflections on the stars he has known over the past forty years. From his insider perch he reveals Hollywood’s inner life: how Bette Davis influenced the death of her second husband; how Walt Disney’s dark vision devolved into bright animated features he astonishingly despised; how leading actors clandestinely participated in gay activities. Higham’s memoir also charts his work as a political commentator, historian, poet, and playwright; describes the dangers and excitements of gay life before AIDS; and recounts his eventual discovery of a lasting relationship. In and Out of Hollywood is a lively tour through several decades of changing times and personalities behind the scenes of the American film world.
Download or read book Lion of Hollywood written by Scott Eyman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-23 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lion of Hollywood is the definitive biography of Louis B. Mayer, the chief of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer—MGM—the biggest and most successful film studio of Hollywood’s Golden Age. An immigrant from tsarist Russia, Mayer began in the film business as an exhibitor but soon migrated to where the action and the power were—Hollywood. Through sheer force of energy and foresight, he turned his own modest studio into MGM, where he became the most powerful man in Hollywood, bending the film business to his will. He made great films, including the fabulous MGM musicals, and he made great stars: Garbo, Gable, Garland, and dozens of others. Through the enormously successful Andy Hardy series, Mayer purveyed family values to America. At the same time, he used his influence to place a federal judge on the bench, pay off local officials, cover up his stars’ indiscretions and, on occasion, arrange marriages for gay stars. Mayer rose from his impoverished childhood to become at one time the highest-paid executive in America. Despite his power and money, Mayer suffered some significant losses. He had two daughters: Irene, who married David O. Selznick, and Edie, who married producer William Goetz. He would eventually fall out with Edie and divorce his wife, Margaret, ending his life alienated from most of his family. His chief assistant, Irving Thalberg, was his closest business partner, but they quarreled frequently, and Thalberg’s early death left Mayer without his most trusted associate. As Mayer grew older, his politics became increasingly reactionary, and he found himself politically isolated within Hollywood’s small conservative community. Lion of Hollywood is a three-dimensional biography of a figure often caricatured and vilified as the paragon of the studio system. Mayer could be arrogant and tyrannical, but under his leadership MGM made such unforgettable films as The Big Parade, Ninotchka, The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, and An American in Paris. Film historian Scott Eyman interviewed more than 150 people and researched some previously unavailable archives to write this major new biography of a man who defined an industry and an era.
Download or read book Vampyres of Hollywood written by Adrienne Barbeau and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film, television and Broadway star Adrienne Barbeau and New York Times bestselling author Michael Scott have teamed up to deliver this sexy, scary, and deliciously clever novel full of Hollywood glamour, behind-the-scenes secrets, and the truly bloodthirsty reality of Tinseltown. So grab some popcorn and some holy water and lose yourself in the high-stakes, back-stabbing world of the Vampyres of Hollywood. Hollywood, California: Three gruesome deaths within two weeks and every one of them a major star - an Oscar winner, an ingénue, and an action hero. A serial killer is working through the Hollywood A-list and celebrities are running scared. Each crime scene is worthy of a classic horror movie, and all three victims share a connection to the powerful scream queen, Ovsanna Moore. The stunning and formidable Moore is the legendary head of a Hollywood studio, as well as the writer and star of seventeen blockbuster horror films (and a few that went straight to DVD). She's also a 500 year old vampyre... but this is Hollywood after all, and no one ever looks their age. Beverly Hills Police Detective Peter King knows a lot about the City of Angels, but he certainly doesn't know that most of the famous actors in town are actually an established network of vampires. Or that secretive and seductive Ovsanna Moore happens to be their CEO. Moore and King may be from opposite sides of the Hollywood Hills, but both have something to gain by stopping the killer who the tabloids have dubbed the Cinema Slayer. Ovsanna must protect her vampire legacy and her production schedule, while King just wants to keep his Beverly Hills beat as blood-free as possible. But when the horror queen and the cop with the movie star looks form an unholy alliance, sparks fly and so do the creatures of the night.
Download or read book New Hollywood Cinema written by Geoff King and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is "New Hollywood"? The "art" cinema of the Hollywood "Renaissance" or the corporate controlled blockbuster? The introverted world of Travis Bickle or the action heroics of Indiana Jones, Buzz Lightyear, and Maximus the Gladiator? Innovative departures from the "classical" Hollywood style or superficial glitz, special effects, and borrowings from MTV? Wholesale change or important continuities with Hollywood's past? The answer suggested by Geoff King in New Hollywood Cinema is all of these and more. He examines New Hollywood from three main perspectives: film style, industry, and the social-historical context. Each is considered in its own right, sometimes resulting in different ways of defining New Hollywood. But one of the book's central arguments is that a combination of these approaches is needed if we are to understand the latest incarnations of the cinema that continues to dominate the global market. King looks at the Hollywood "Renaissance" from the late 1960s to the late 1970s, industrial factors shaping the construction of the corporate blockbuster, the role of auteur directors, genre and stardom in New Hollywood, narrative and spectacle in the contemporary blockbuster, and the relationship between production for the big and small screens. Case studies considered include Taxi Driver, Godzilla, and Gladiator, tracing the roots of New Hollywood from the 1950s to the start of the twenty-first century.
Download or read book The Black Book of Hollywood Beauty Secrets written by Kym Douglas and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-11-28 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We just asked the movie stars how they did it. What did they use? How often? Where did they get it? How can we do it, too? And they told us. We couldn’t believe it either.” Kym Douglas, host of the Lifetime makeover show Queen and the image consultant on The View, and celebrity journalist Cindy Pearlman had always wanted to know how the A-list stars looked so, well, A-list. It turns out that even the most carefully guarded stars were more than happy to dish. Collected here, in their own words, celebrities and their beauty gurus reveal their tricks of the trade. How do they reduce puffiness, lose five pounds in a week, put shine in their hair, buff their skin, and vacuum their pores without spending a fortune? Find out from Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lindsay Lohan, Beyonce Knowles, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Hurley, Charlize Theron, and many, many more!
Download or read book Irene Dunne written by Wes D. Gehring and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2006-06-15 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first full-length biography of Irene Dunne, one of the most versatile actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age. A recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors award in 1985, Dunne's acting highlights include five Best Actress Oscar nominations, occurring in almost as many different genres: the Western Cimarron (1931), the two screwball comedies Theodora Goes Wild (1936) and The Awful Truth (1937), the romantic comedy Love Affair (1939), and the populist I Remember Mama (1948). Her other memorable films include My Favorite Wife (1940), Penny Serenade (1941), Anna and the King of Siam (1946), and Life with Father (1947). After delving into Dunne's childhood and early acting forays, the book reveals details about key events in her life and career, including a difficult, bi-coastal marriage. The author also examines Dunne's pivotal roles on stage and in film, her movement among the genres of melodrama and screwball comedy, her ties to director Leo McCarey, and her post-war film career. Gehring's research and insightful analysis shed light on what made Irene Dunne so unique and her performances so memorable. Includes 16 pages of photos.
