Download or read book Helen Twelvetrees Perfect Ingenue written by Cliff Aliperti and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-12-13 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helen Twelvetrees, Perfect Ingenue Rediscovering a 1930s Movie Star and Her 32 Films At her peak, Helen Twelvetrees was leading lady to legends like John Barrymore and Spencer Tracy. Other early co-stars who were billed below her included Joan Blondell, John Wayne, and Clark Gable. Twelvetrees broke out in Her Man (1930) and affirmed her stardom in Millie (1931). Her ten-year Hollywood career is highlighted by a run of starring roles in pre-Code era melodramas, but Helen Twelvetrees kept working long after movie audiences had forgotten her. She lost momentum for a variety of reasons. External factors such as typecasting, studio anarchy, and Production Code enforcement, combined with an independent attitude that spurred inconvenient headlines and whispers of temperament are among those that kept her career from progressing. At her peak she chose to follow natural impulses and start a family, but in terms of her career, her pregnancy couldn't have come at a worse time. When she returned to the screen it was with a new studio, and the types of films she was known for were not as popular as they had been before her maternity leave. Afterward, time itself may have been Helen Twelvetrees' greatest enemy: one can only remain an ingenue for so long. Helen Twelvetrees, Perfect Ingenue is one-half biography, one-half film retrospective. Presented here are the life, loves, and career of an unexpectedly modern woman. An extensive collection of notes supports corrections and new findings about Twelvetrees, including her accurate birth-date and a previously unreported marriage, while also supplying additional background about each of her thirty-two movies: the good, the bad, and the lost. Foreword by Dan Van Neste, author of The Whistler: Stepping Into the Shadows. Illustrated with still photographs from the author's personal collection.
Download or read book The Wampas Baby Stars written by Roy Liebman and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1922, an early association of film publicists known as the Western Associated Motion Picture Advertisers (Wampas) hit upon a strategy to call attention to their organization and their industry. The group selected 13 young actresses with potential star power and promoted them heavily as Baby (meaning junior) Stars. To be selected a Wampas Baby Star soon became a much-sought honor--a ticket to recognition and publicity in those days before the Academy Awards. While a few Baby Stars (Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford) went on to superstardom and others enjoyed modest success, some failed to shine. Many of the nearly 150 actresses chosen during the program's existence, 1922-1934, are forgotten names today. This book offers full biographical details on every actress selected as a Wampas Baby Star. Each actress's entry traces her career and lists films in which she appeared. A year-by-year section lists each year's stars and alternates. Appendices include lists of rivals and successors to the Wampas Baby program (such as the Paramount Protegees), Wampas Drop-Outs, presidents of Wampas, and miscellaneous facts about the Wampas Babies (which actress was tallest? Shortest? Oldest at time of selection?). Photographs, a bibliography and an index are included.
Download or read book Myrna Loy written by James Kotsilibas-Davis and published by Alfred A. Knopf. This book was released on 1987 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The actress recalls her long, rich, and varied career in Hollywood, on the stage, and as a political activist.
Download or read book Three Bad Men written by Scott Allen Nollen and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-04-05 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These were unique, complex, personal and professional relationships between master director John Ford and his two favorite actors, John Wayne and Ward Bond. The book provides a biography of each and a detailed exploration of Ford's work as it was intertwined with the lives and work of both Wayne and Bond (whose biography here is the first ever published). The book reveals fascinating accounts of ingenuity, creativity, toil, perseverance, bravery, debauchery, futility, abuse, masochism, mayhem, violence, warfare, open- and closed-mindedness, control and chaos, brilliance and stupidity, rationality and insanity, friendship and a testing of its limits, love and hate--all committed by a "half-genius, half-Irish" cinematic visionary and his two surrogate sons: Three Bad Men.
Download or read book License to Pawn written by Rick Harrison and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Las Vegas, there's a family-owned business called the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, run by three generations of the Harrison family: Rick; his son, Big Hoss; and Rick's dad, the Old Man. Now License to Pawn takes readers behind the scenes of the hit History show Pawn Stars and shares the fascinating life story of its star, Rick Harrison, and the equally intriguing story behind the shop, the customers, and the items for sale. Rick hasn't had it easy. He was a math whiz at an early age, but developed a similarly uncanny ability to find ever-deepening trouble that nearly ruined his life. With the birth of his son, he sobered up, reconnected with his dad, and they started their booming business together. License to Pawn also offers an entertaining walk through the pawn shop's history. It's a captivating look into how the Gold & Silver works, with incredible stories about the crazy customers and the one-of-a-kind items that the shop sells. Rick isn't only a businessman; he's also a historian and keen observer of human nature. For instance, did you know that pimps wear lots of jewelry for a reason? It's because if they're arrested, jewelry doesn't get confiscated like cash does, and ready money will be available for bail. Or that WWII bomber jackets and Zippo lighters can sell for a freakishly high price in Japan? Have you ever heard that the makers of Ormolu clocks, which Rick sells for as much as $15,000 apiece, frequently died before forty thanks to the mercury in the paint? Rick also reveals the items he loves so much he'll never sell. The shop has three Olympic bronze medals, a Patriots Super Bowl ring, a Samurai sword from 1490, and an original Iwo Jima battle plan. Each object has an incredible story behind it, of course. Rick shares them all, and so much more -- there's an irresistible treasure trove of history behind both the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop and the life of Rick Harrison.
Download or read book Ann Blyth written by Jacqueline T. Lynch and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-06-11 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of 12 in Lillian Hellman's WATCH ON THE RHINE, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in MILDRED PIERCE (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy, and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Still a popular guest at film festivals, lovely Ms. Blyth remains a treasure of the Hollywood's golden age.
Download or read book The Sun and Her Stars written by Donna Rifkind and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Jewish Book Award Finalist The little-known story of screenwriter Salka Viertel, whose salons in 1930s and 40s Hollywood created a refuge for a multitude of famous figures who had escaped the horrors of World War ll. Hollywood was created by its “others”; that is, by women, Jews, and immigrants. Salka Viertel was all three and so much more. She was the screenwriter for five of Greta Garbo's movies and also her most intimate friend. At one point during the Irving Thalberg years, Viertel was the highest-paid writer on the MGM lot. Meanwhile, at her house in Santa Monica she opened her door on Sunday afternoons to scores of European émigrés who had fled from Hitler—such as Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, and Arnold Schoenberg—along with every kind of Hollywood star, from Charlie Chaplin to Shelley Winters. In Viertel's living room (the only one in town with comfortable armchairs, said one Hollywood insider), countless cinematic, theatrical, and musical partnerships were born. Viertel combined a modern-before-her-time sensibility with the Old-World advantages of a classical European education and fluency in eight languages. She combined great worldliness with great warmth. She was a true bohemian with a complicated erotic life, and at the same time a universal mother figure. A vital presence in the golden age of Hollywood, Salka Viertel is long overdue for her own moment in the spotlight.
Download or read book The Gracie Allen Murder Case written by S.S. Van Dine and published by FelonyandMayhem+ORM. This book was released on 2021-07-18 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved 1930s comedienne becomes the famed detective’s sidekick in the series that “transport[s] the reader back to a long-gone era of society” (Mystery Scene). During a glamorous night on the town, Gracie Allen finds a dead body—and a cigarette case nearby that belongs to her date for the evening. Detective Philo Vance is on the scene, but questioning Gracie is causing more confusion than enlightenment. To prevent her from creating more chaos, Vance decides to keep her close by as his unofficial sleuthing partner. Now, with the help of the zany star—or in spite of it—he intends to find the real killer . . . “Mr. Van Dine’s amateur detective is the most gentlemanly, and probably the most scholarly snooper in literature.” —Chicago Daily Tribune “The best of the American mystery men.” —The Globe
Download or read book Warren William written by John Stangeland and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the motion picture screen, Hollywood star Warren William (1894-1948) was a magnificent rogue, often deliciously immoral and utterly callous, yet remarkably likable in his wickedness. Off-screen, the actor was as humble and retiring as his film characters were mean and heartless. This biography examines William's life and career in detail, from his rural Minnesota roots through his service in World War I, his Broadway stage success, and his meteoric rise and gradual fall from Hollywood fame in the 1930s and 1940s. Also analyzed are his film persona and the curious mechanisms by which our culture "selects" certain film personalities to remember and others to forget. Featured is a wealth of biographical material never before available, including rare candid photos of William's early years. Interviews with his surviving nieces provide intimate family details and personal remembrances.
Download or read book Women in the Films of John Ford written by David Meuel and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-02-28 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While John Ford (1894-1973) remains one of the most influential and revered directors in film history, he is also one of the most frequently misunderstood. One widespread assumption is that he was almost exclusively a man's director, dismissive of, or at best not well attuned to, the stories, perspectives and concerns of women. This book forthrightly challenges such an assumption, giving readers a richer understanding of the director's view of the world and of the women as well as the men who inhabit it. Taking a fresh look at dozens of Ford films, both familiar favorites and under-appreciated gems, it focuses on the complex and diverse female characters in them as well as the actresses who so ably portrayed them.
Download or read book The Dragon Murder Case a Philo Vance Detective Story written by S. S. Van Dine and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2016-01-18 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This early work by S. S. Van Dine was originally published in 1933 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'The Dragon Murder Case' is one of Van Dine's novels of crime and mystery. S. S. Van Dine was born Willard Huntington Wright in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1888. He attended St. Vincent College, Pomona College and Harvard University, but failed to graduate, leaving to cultivate contacts he had made in the literary world. At the age of twenty-one, Wright began his professional writing career as literary editor of the Los Angeles Times. In 1926, Wright published his first S. S. Van Dine novel, The Benson Murder Case. Wright went on to write eleven more mysteries. The first few books about his upper-class amateur sleuth, Philo Vance, were so popular that Wright became wealthy for the first time in his life. His later books declined in popularity as the reading public's tastes in mystery fiction changed, but during the late twenties and early thirties his work was very successful.
Download or read book Reluctant Witness Robert Taylor Hollywood Communism written by Linda Alexander and published by BearManor Media. This book was released on 2016-07-25 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Taylor was a reluctant, yet active, witness to history-Hollywood's, the country's, his own. He was dubbed "The Man With the Perfect Profile." Reluctant Witness: Robert Taylor, Hollywood & Communism goes inside the personality to find the flesh-and-blood man underneath. The actor's meteoric rise was credited to his "pretty boy" looks, an image encouraged by MGM when studios owned their actors and created public personas. This, coupled with the sheltered, almost emasculating childhood he had endured, created in him a survivor who rose above family, the studio system, Barbara Stanwyck, and, as what he considered to be a curse, one of the most beautiful male faces in Hollywood history. The book delves into his marriage to Barbara Stanwyck, as well as usually discreet, but intense, love affairs. Beauties such as Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, and Yvonne DeCarlo fell under his spell. Attention is paid to his second marriage to Ursula Thiess, which brought about his roles as father and husband. Robert Taylor finally found happiness. A reluctant witness to the Second World War and what led up to it, Robert Taylor was a staunch Conservative, subpoenaed before the 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee hearings on Communism in American Films. He enlisted in the Navy. Afterward, he returned to civilian life, Hollywood, and Barbara. He and his wife had changed. He became a reluctant witness to their relationship's deterioration. He watched Hollywood evolve, ultimately becoming the longest-running contract actor in film history. He was a reluctant witness to the dawn of television; initially he wanted none of it. When he realized he had to go along or by the wayside, he gave in. In later years, he was a reluctant witness again to ever-changing winds of politics. Friends and compatriots who shared his ultra-Conservative views wanted him to stand publicly for shared values. They saw him as the right leader to move their state forward. Yet he was reluctant. Robert Taylor's career spanned nearly the entire history of Hollywood, from early days to beyond the fall of the strict studio system. His life was the American dream, from naive, small-town Nebraska boy to a celluloid heartthrob known around the world. Reluctant Witness: Robert Taylor, Hollywood, & Communism tells it all."
Download or read book The Women of Warner Brothers written by Daniel Bubbeo and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-06-21 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lives and careers of Warner Brothers' screen legends Joan Blondell, Nancy Coleman, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Glenda Farrell, Kay Francis, Ruby Keeler, Andrea King, Priscilla Lane, Joan Leslie, Ida Lupino, Eleanor Parker, Ann Sheridan, Alexis Smith, and Jane Wyman are the topic of this book. Some achieved great success in film and other areas of show business, but others failed to get the breaks or became victims of the studio system's sometimes unpleasant brand of politics. The personal and professional obstacles that each actress encountered are here set out in detail, often with comments from the actresses who granted interviews with the author and from those people who knew them best on and off the movie set. A filmography is included for each of the fifteen.
Download or read book Trilby written by George Du Maurier and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 1895 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Little Billee is a young English painter with great talent. He and his friends Taffy and the Laird share a studio in a Quartier Latin neighborhood full of artists and musicians, including a German-Polish music teacher named Svengali. The group become acquainted with an artists' model named Trilby, who was orphaned as a child and who works to support her little brother and herself. Trilby is lively, charming, unpretentious, and beautiful, and soon Little Billee is madly in love. When his mother learns that Little Billee intends to marry an artists' model (nude models were almost as socially unacceptable as protitutes) she travels to Paris and tells Trilby that such a marriage would mean ruin for Billee and his family. Trilby promises that she will never see Little Billee again. Soon afterward, Trilby vanishes, leaving Billee sick and distraught. Many years later, Billee and his friends hear of a singer called "La Svengali" who has astonished all of Europe. By attending one of her performances, they learn that "La Svengali" is the wife of the music teacher they knew in the Quartier Latin, trained by him to sing with more technical mastery than anyone has ever heard. When "La Svengali" appears on stage, they see that she is none other than Trilby. Her singing moves the audience to tears, though everyone notices that she moves stiffly and strangely and that her face is as blank as an automaton's. Not until Svengali dies suddenly during a concert is Trilby set free from the hypnotic spell that has controlled her for years.""--Allreaders.com.
Download or read book Dwight Frye s Last Laugh written by Gregory W. Mank and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Making and Influence of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang written by Scott Allen Nollen and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert E. Burns, a World War I veteran coerced into taking part in a petty crime in Atlanta, Georgia, was sentenced to hard labor on a chain gang in 1922. Twice escaping and on the lam for decades, he was aided only by his minister-poet brother, Vincent G. Burns. Their collaborative work, I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! was the basis for Darryl F. Zanuck's and Mervyn Leroy's hard-hitting 1932 film adaptation from Warner Bros. This book traces the making and influence of the film--which launched a string of imitators--and the Burns brothers' efforts to obtain a pardon for Robert, which never came.
Download or read book Ann Dvorak written by Christina Rice and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2013-11-14 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The forgotten screen legend who made Hollywood history by challenging the all-powerful studio system is revealed in this first full-length biography. Seemingly destined for A-list fame, Ann Dvorak was touted as “Hollywood’s New Cinderella” after film mogul Howard Hughes cast her in the 1932 gangster film Scarface. But Dvorak’s journey to superstardom was derailed when she walked out on her contractual obligations to Warner Bros. for an extended honeymoon. Ann Dvorak: Hollywood’s Forgotten Rebel explores the life and career of one of the first individuals who dared to challenge the studio system. Dvorak reached her pinnacle during the early 1930s, when the film industry was relatively uncensored and free to produce movies with more daring storylines. She played several female leads in films including The Strange Love of Molly Louvain, Three on a Match, and Heat Lightning, but after her walk-out, Warner Bros retaliated by casting her in less significant roles. Following the casting conflicts and illness, Dvorak filed a lawsuit against the Warner Bros. studio, setting a precedent for other stars who eventually followed suit. In this insightful memoir, Christina Rice explores the spirited rebellion of a talented actress whose promising career fell victim to the studio empire.
