Download or read book Lina DeMille s Godless Girl written by Lina Basquette and published by Denlingers Pub Limited. This book was released on 1990 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ziegfeld Girl written by Linda Mizejewski and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the iconographic significance of the Ziegfeld girl in twentieth-century American conceptions of sexuality, race, class, and consumerism.
Download or read book Silent Players written by Anthony Slide and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2010-09-12 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " From his unique perspective of friendship with many of the actors and actresses about whom he writes, silent film historian Anthony Slide creates vivid portraits of the careers and often eccentric lives of 100 players from the American silent film industry. He profiles the era’s shining stars such as Lillian Gish and Blanche Sweet; leading men including William Bakewell and Robert Harron; gifted leading ladies such as Laura La Plante and Alice Terry; ingénues like Mary Astor and Mary Brian; and even Hollywood’s most famous extra, Bess Flowers. Although each original essay is accompanied by significant documentation and an extensive bibliography, Silent Players is not simply a reference book or encyclopedic recitation of facts culled from the pages of fan magazines and trade periodicals. It contains a series of insightful portraits of the characters who symbolize an original and pioneering era in motion history and explores their unique talents and extraordinary private lives. Slide offers a potentially revisionist view of many of the stars he profiles, repudiating the status of some and restoring to fame others who have slipped from view. He personally interviewed many of his subjects and knew several of them intimately, putting him in a distinctive position to tell their true stories.
Download or read book Cecil B DeMille s Hollywood written by Robert S. Birchard and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2004-06-29 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, Robert S. Birchard offers a detailed and definitive chronicle of the most successful filmmaker in early Hollywood history, going behind studio gates and beyond DeMille's legendary persona. In his forty-five-year career, DeMille's box-office record was unsurpassed, and his swaggering style established the public image for movie directors. DeMille had a profound impact on the way movies tell stories and brought greater attention to the elements of decor, lighting, and cinematography. Best remembered today for screen spectacles such as The Ten Commandments and Samson and Delilah, DeMille also created Westerns, realistic "chamber dramas," and a series of daring and highly influential social comedies. He set the standard for Hollywood filmmakers and demanded absolute devotion to his creative vision from his writers, artists, actors, and technicians. Drawing extensively on DeMille's personal archives and other primary sources, this biography provides a comprehensive and compelling portrait of how Cecil B. DeMille's work changed the course of film history, and a fascinating look at how movies were actually made in Hollywood's Golden Age.
Download or read book The Bible in Motion written by Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 956 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two-part volume contains a comprehensive collection of original studies by well-known scholars focusing on the Bible’s wide-ranging reception in world cinema. It is organized into sections examining the rich cinematic afterlives of selected characters from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament; considering issues of biblical reception across a wide array of film genres, ranging from noir to anime; featuring directors, from Lee Chang-dong to the Coen brothers, whose body of work reveals an enduring fascination with biblical texts and motifs; and offering topical essays on cinema’s treatment of selected biblical themes (e.g., lament, apocalyptic), particular interpretive lenses (e.g., feminist interpretation, queer theory), and windows into biblical reception in a variety of world cinemas (e.g., Indian, Israeli, and Third Cinema). This handbook is intended for scholars of the Bible, religion, and film as well as for a wider general audience.
Download or read book Ramon Novarro written by Allan R. Ellenberger and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-07-11 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ramon Novarro was Ben-Hur to moviegoers long before Charlton Heston. The 1926 film made Novarro--known as "Ravishing Ramon"--one of Hollywood's most beloved silent film idols. His bright and varied career, spanning silents, talkies, the concert stage, theater, and television, came to a dark conclusion with his murder in 1968. This comprehensive work details both the private and public aspects of Novarro's life to return him to his rightful place in film history. Includes a complete filmography and numerous photos.
Download or read book The Lost World of DeMille written by John Kobal and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2019-10-25 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the 2020 Moving Image Book Award by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation As only an accomplished author, consummate collector, and savvy insider can, John Kobal tells the story of the man who invented Hollywood, Cecil Blount DeMille (1881–1959). Kobal narrates the story of DeMille’s life and follows the director’s career from his first film, The Squaw Man, in 1914, through the seventy films he directed culminating with The Ten Commandments in 1956 before his death in 1959. Even that first film received an enthusiastic response from the public, and that popular enthusiasm would follow DeMille throughout his career. DeMille got his start by observing a film being shot—once standing for hours on a box looking through a window, watching every move made by the director, players, and cameraman. From that humble beginning, he soon mastered the craft of directing and created one of show business’s greatest careers. Autocrat and artist, DeMille immersed himself totally in each picture he directed and demanded complete fealty from his casts and crews. DeMille was said to know more about what the American public wanted than anyone else in Hollywood. He pushed the boundaries of censorship, and audiences responded by forming long lines at the box office. From the American West to ancient Egypt, he created such magical films as The Crusades and The Greatest Show on Earth that brought vividly to life fantasies perfectly suited to post–World War I and mid-century America. Kobal describes DeMille’s impact on Hollywood as a director and showman. He argues that this master filmmaker stands for something largely lost in American filmmaking, a sort of naïve, generous, big-thinking self-confidence—a belief that all things are possible. John Kobal wrote over thirty books on film and photography. His final manuscript, The Lost World of DeMille, was completed shortly before his death in 1991. It is published at last by University Press of Mississippi.
Download or read book Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World written by and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 1158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Empire of Dreams written by Scott Eyman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BEST KNOWN AS THE DIRECTOR of such spectacular films as The Ten Commandments and King of Kings, Cecil B. DeMille lived a life as epic as any of his cinematic masterpieces. As a child DeMille learned the Bible from his father, a theology student and playwright who introduced Cecil and his older brother, William, to the theater. Tutored by impresario David Belasco, DeMille discovered how audiences responded to showmanship: sets, lights, costumes, etc. He took this knowledge with him to Los Angeles in 1913, where he became one of the movie pioneers, in partnership with Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s brother-in-law Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn). Working out of a barn on streets fragrant with orange blossom and pepper trees, the Lasky company turned out a string of successful silents, most of them directed by DeMille, who became one of the biggest names of the silent era. With films such as The Squaw Man, Brewster’s Millions, Joan the Woman, and Don’t Change Your Husband, he was the creative backbone of what would become Paramount Studios. In 1923 he filmed his first version of The Ten Commandments and later a second biblical epic, King of Kings, both enormous box-office successes. Although his reputation rests largely on the biblical epics he made, DeMille’s personal life was no morality tale. He remained married to his wife, Constance, for more than fifty years, but for most of the marriage he had three mistresses simultaneously, all of whom worked for him. He showed great loyalty to a small group of actors who knew his style, but he also discovered some major stars, among them Gloria Swanson, Claudette Colbert, and later, Charlton Heston. DeMille was one of the few silent-era directors who made a completely successful transition to sound. In 1952 he won the Academy Award for Best Picture with The Greatest Show on Earth. When he remade The Ten Commandments in 1956, it was an even bigger hit than the silent version. He could act, too: in Billy Wilder’s classic film Sunset Boulevard, DeMille memorably played himself. In the 1930s and 1940s DeMille became a household name thanks to the Lux Radio Theater, which he hosted. But after falling out with a union, he gave up the program, and his politics shifted to the right as he championed loyalty oaths and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist witch hunts. As Scott Eyman brilliantly demonstrates in this superbly researched biography, which draws on a massive cache of DeMille family papers not available to previous biographers, DeMille was much more than his clichéd image. A gifted director who worked in many genres; a devoted family man and loyal friend with a highly unconventional personal life; a pioneering filmmaker: DeMille comes alive in these pages, a legend whose spectacular career defined an era.
Download or read book The Warner Brothers written by Chris Yogerst and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2023-09-05 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the oldest and most recognizable studios in Hollywood, Warner Bros. is considered a juggernaut of the entertainment industry. Since its formation in the early twentieth century, the studio has been a constant presence in cinema history, responsible for the creation of acclaimed films, blockbuster brands, and iconic superstars. These days, the studio is best known as a media conglomerate with a broad range of intellectual property, spanning movies, TV shows, and streaming content. Despite popular interest in the origins of this empire, the core of the Warner Bros. saga cannot be found in its commercial successes. It is the story of four brothers—Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack—whose vision for Hollywood helped shape the world of entertainment as we know it. In The Warner Brothers, Chris Yogerst follows the siblings from their family's humble origins in Poland, through their young adulthood in the American Midwest, to the height of fame and fortune in Hollywood. With unwavering resolve, the brothers soldiered on against the backdrop of an America reeling from the aftereffects of domestic and global conflict. The Great Depression would not sink the brothers, who churned out competitive films that engaged audiences and kept their operations afloat—and even expanding. During World War II, they used their platform to push beyond the limits of the Production Code and create important films about real-world issues, openly criticizing radicalism and the evils of the Nazi regime. At every major cultural turning point in their lifetime, the Warners held a front-row seat. Paying close attention to the brothers' identities as cultural and economic outsiders, Yogerst chronicles how the Warners built a global filmmaking powerhouse. Equal parts family history and cinematic journey, The Warner Brothers is an empowering story of the American dream and the legacy four brothers left behind for generations of filmmakers and film lovers to come.
Download or read book Queen Silver written by Wendy Mcelroy and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2011-04-06 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When she was just eight-years-old, a little girl with the odd name of Queen Silver stunned citizens and scholars alike in pre-1920s Los Angeles by hosting six remarkable public lectures on Darwin and Einstein, sponsored by the London Society of Science. A child prodigy and the daughter of famed socialist activist Grace Vern Silver, founder of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Queen Silver was the subject of Cecil B. De Mille's film The Godless Girl. She matured to become an international feminist, atheist, and socialist, living a remarkable and inspiring life, of which few feminists today are aware. Queen Silver: The Godless Girl is a fiery and profound biography of one of America's most amazing feminist thinkers, a woman who remained an active advocate of intellectual independence to the moment of her death in 1998 at the age of 86. Prolific feminist writer Wendy McElroy sympathetically chronicles the life of Queen Silver from personal interviews with her friends, published reports, letters, and a vast library of the family's personal papers. What emerges is a life like none other. A well-known thinker by the time she was 11-years-old, giving speeches titled "Pioneers of Freethought," "The Rights of Children," and "Science and the Workers," Queen challenged three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan to a debate on evolution (he declined); organized an atheist group at her high school; and left home at 15 to marry a doctor three-times her age, which later became the source of a highly publicized divorce. As a teenager, Queen once served as a defense lawyer for her mother and won. She founded the scholarly and well-reviewed Queen Silver Magazine, and overcame personal tragedy and political persecution during World War I's red scare. Queen worked as an extra in movies directed by D.W. Griffith, attended violent and controversial meetings of the IWW, and went into hiding at the advent of McCarthyism. In her later years, Queen received many freethought awards, remained active in the American Civil Liberties Union, and campaigned hard for public libraries. McElroy tells a complete story by profiling Queen's mother, lecturer and feminist writer Grace Vern Silver, whose struggles for justice in the IWW found her running for Congress, and whose personal education motivated her to inspire the genius in her daughter.
Download or read book The Film Mercury written by and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Slide Area written by Anthony Slide and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Slide Area is a monthly book review column by film historian Anthony Slide which has appeared in Classic Images since January 1989. This anthology collects over 300 reviews published in the column through December 1991. For each book, the reviewer provides bibliographic data, information as to content, and his own inimitable commentary, which combines both a thorough knowledge of the subject to hand and an understanding of each title's relative merit. Lillian Gish has called Slide "Our preeminent historian of the silent film era," and the Los Angeles Times has described him as a "one-man publishing phenomenon." This anthology will be useful both to librarians and to researchers in tracking down film and television books of the past three years, many of which have not been reviewed in library-oriented publications. Indexes.
Download or read book Beyond Paradise written by André Soares and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2010-04-19 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first Latin American actor to become a superstar, Ramon Novarro was for years one of Hollywood's top actors. Born Ramon Samaniego to a prominent Mexican family, he arrived in America in 1916, a refugee from civil wars. By the mid-1920s, he had become one of MGM's biggest box office attractions, starring in now-classic films, including The Student Prince, Mata Hari, and the original version of Ben-Hur. He shared the screen with the era's top leading ladies, such as Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, Joan Crawford, and Norma Shearer, and he became Rudolph Valentino's main rival in the “Latin Lover” category. Yet, despite his considerable professional accomplishments, Novarro's enduring hold on fame stems from his tragic death—his bloodied corpse was found in his house on Halloween 1968 in what has become one of Hollywood's most infamous scandals. A lifelong bachelor, Novarro carefully cultivated his image as a man deeply devoted to his family and to Catholicism. His murder shattered that persona. News reports revealed that the dashing screen hero had not only been gay, but he was dead at the hands of two young, male hustlers. Since then, details of his murder have achieved near mythic proportions, obscuring Novarro's professional legacy. Beyond Paradise presents a full picture of the man who made motion picture history. Including original interviews with Novarro's surviving friends, family, coworkers, and the two men convicted of his murder, this biography provides unique insights into an early Hollywood star—a man whose heart was forever in conflict with his image and whose myth continues to fascinate today.
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 Cecil B DeMille written by Cecilia de Mille Presley and published by Running Press Adult. This book was released on 2014-12-16 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colossal. Stupendous. Epic. These adjectives, used by movie companies to hawk their wares, became clichélong ago. When used to describe the films of one director, they are accurate. More than any filmmaker in the history of the medium, Cecil B. DeMille mastered the art of the spectacle. In the process, he became a filmland founder. One hundred years ago, he made the first feature film ever shot in Hollywood and went on to become the most commercially successful producer-director in history. DeMille told his cinematic tales with painterly, extravagant images. The parting of the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments was only one of these. There were train wrecks (The Greatest Show on Earth); orgies (Manslaughter); battles (The Buccaneer); Ancient Rome (The Sign of the Cross); Ancient Egypt (Cleopatra); and the Holy Land (The Crusades). The best of these images are showcased here, in Cecil B. DeMille: The Art of the Hollywood Epic. This lavish volume opens the King Tut's tomb of cinematic treasures that is the Cecil B. DeMille Archives, presenting storyboard art, concept paintings, and an array of photographic imagery. Historian Mark A. Vieira writes an illuminating text to accompany these scenes. Cecilia de Mille Presley relates her grandfather's thoughts on his various films, and recalls her visits to his sets, including the Egyptian expedition to film The Ten Commandments. Like the director's works, Cecil B. DeMille: The Art of the Hollywood Epic is a panorama of magnificence-celebrating a legendary filmmaker and the remarkable history of Hollywood.
Download or read book Warner Bros written by David Thomson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, behind the scenes at the legendary Warner Brothers film studio, where four immigrant brothers transformed themselves into the moguls and masters of American fantasy Warner Bros charts the rise of an unpromising film studio from its shaky beginnings in the early twentieth century through its ascent to the pinnacle of Hollywood influence and popularity. The Warner Brothers--Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack--arrived in America as unschooled Jewish immigrants, yet they founded a studio that became the smartest, toughest, and most radical in all of Hollywood. David Thomson provides fascinating and original interpretations of Warner Brothers pictures from the pioneering talkie The Jazz Singer through black-and-white musicals, gangster movies, and such dramatic romances as Casablanca, East of Eden, and Bonnie and Clyde. He recounts the storied exploits of the studio's larger-than-life stars, among them Al Jolson, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, Doris Day, and Bugs Bunny. The Warner brothers' cultural impact was so profound, Thomson writes, that their studio became "one of the enterprises that helped us see there might be an American dream out there." About Jewish Lives: Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present. In 2014, the Jewish Book Council named Jewish Lives the winner of its Jewish Book of the Year Award, the first series ever to receive this award. More praise for Jewish Lives: "Excellent." -New York Times "Exemplary." -Wall Street Journal "Distinguished." -New Yorker "Superb." -The Guardian
