EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book The Callahans and the Murphys

Download or read book The Callahans and the Murphys written by Kathleen Thompson Norris and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Callahans and the Murphys

Download or read book The Callahans and the Murphys written by Kathleen Thompson Norris and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Movie Censorship and American Culture

Download or read book Movie Censorship and American Culture written by Francis G. Couvares and published by Univ of Massachusetts Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the earliest days of public outrage over "indecent" nickelodeon shows, Americans have worried about the power of the movies. The eleven essays in this book examine nearly a century of struggle over cinematic representations of sex, crime, violence, religion, race, and ethnicity, revealing that the effort to regulate the screen has reflected deep social and cultural schisms. In addition to the editor, contributors include Daniel Czitrom, Marybeth Hamilton, Garth Jowett, Charles Lyons, Richard Maltby, Charles Musser, Alison M. Parker, Charlene Regester, Ruth Vasey, and Stephen Vaughn. Together they make it clear that censoring the movies is more than just a reflex against "indecency," however defined. Whether censorship protects the vulnerable or suppresses the creative, it is part of a broader culture war that breaks out recurrently as Americans try to come to terms with the market, the state, and the plural society in which they live.

Book Without Lying Down

    Book Details:
  • Author : Cari Beauchamp
  • Publisher : Univ of California Press
  • Release : 1998-04-23
  • ISBN : 0520921380
  • Pages : 491 pages

Download or read book Without Lying Down written by Cari Beauchamp and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998-04-23 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cari Beauchamp masterfully combines biography with social and cultural history to examine the lives of Frances Marion and her many female colleagues who shaped filmmaking from 1912 through the 1940s. Frances Marion was Hollywood's highest paid screenwriter—male or female—or almost three decades, wrote almost 200 produced films and won Academy Awards for writing "The Big House" and "The Champ."

Book A Great Big Girl Like Me

Download or read book A Great Big Girl Like Me written by Victoria Sturtevant and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study of Marie Dressler, MGM's most profitable movie star in the early 1930s, Victoria Sturtevant analyzes Dressler's use of her body to challenge Hollywood's standards for leading ladies. At five feet seven inches tall and two hundred pounds, Dressler was never considered the popular "delicate beauty," often playing ugly ducklings, old maids, doting mothers, and imperious dowagers. However, Dressler's body, her fearless physicality, and her athletic slapstick routines commanded the screen. Although an unlikely movie star, Dressler represented for Depression-era audiences a sign of abundance and generosity in a time of scarcity. This premier analysis of her body of work explores how Dressler refocused the generic frame of her films beyond the shallow problems of the rich and beautiful, instead dignifying the marginalized, the elderly, women, and the poor. Sturtevant inteprets the meanings of Dressler's body through different genres, venues, and historical periods by looking at her vaudeville career, her transgressive representation of an "unruly" yet sexual body in Emma and Christopher Bean, ideas of the body politic in the films Politics and Prosperity, and Dressler as a mythic body in Min and Bill and Tugboat Annie.

Book Controlling Hollywood

Download or read book Controlling Hollywood written by Matthew Bernstein and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explaining the major forces at play behind the making of Hollywood films, this text assesses how changing values have influenced censorship in Hollywood. The text also analyses the major cultural, social, legal and religious changes and their effect on Hollywood.

Book Marie Dressler

    Book Details:
  • Author : Matthew Kennedy
  • Publisher : McFarland
  • Release : 2006-07-05
  • ISBN : 0786428449
  • Pages : 280 pages

Download or read book Marie Dressler written by Matthew Kennedy and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2006-07-05 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early in the century, Marie Dressler was hailed as one of America's finest comics, with a 20-year string of Broadway and vaudeville successes including The Lady Slavey, Miss Prinnt, Higgledy Piggledy, The Man in the Moon, and Tillie's Nightmare. She starred with Charlie Chaplin in the first ever feature-length comedy Tillie's Punctured Romance and later in Min and Bill for which she won an Academy Award. A brilliant comedienne in body, timing, inflection and reactions, her talents far exceeded the expectations of slapstick, and her movies earned sums far greater than those of Garbo, or Harlow, or even Gable. This work examines Dressler's life from vaudeville to talkies. Based on extensive research and interviews with Dressler's surviving friends, co-stars and colleagues, including Maureen O'Sullivan, Jackie Cooper and Anita Page, it details her public and personal successes and failures. A listing of her stage appearances, vocal recordings and films is included.

Book Vaudeville old   new

    Book Details:
  • Author : Frank Cullen
  • Publisher : Psychology Press
  • Release : 2007
  • ISBN : 0415938538
  • Pages : 1362 pages

Download or read book Vaudeville old new written by Frank Cullen and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 1362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Literary Digest International Book Review

Download or read book The Literary Digest International Book Review written by Clifford Smyth and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 946 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Irving Thalberg

    Book Details:
  • Author : Mark A. Vieira
  • Publisher : Univ of California Press
  • Release : 2009-11-05
  • ISBN : 0520945115
  • Pages : 526 pages

Download or read book Irving Thalberg written by Mark A. Vieira and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009-11-05 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hollywood in the 1920s sparkled with talent, confidence, and opportunity. Enter Irving Thalberg of Brooklyn, who survived childhood illness to run Universal Pictures at twenty; co-found Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at twenty-four; and make stars of Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, and Jean Harlow. Known as Hollywood's "Boy Wonder," Thalberg created classics such as Ben-Hur, Tarzan the Ape Man, Grand Hotel, Freaks, Mutiny on the Bounty, and The Good Earth, but died tragically at thirty-seven. His place in the pantheon should have been assured, yet his films were not reissued for thirty years, spurring critics to question his legend and diminish his achievements. In this definitive biography, illustrated with rare photographs, Mark A. Vieira sets the record straight, using unpublished production files, financial records, and correspondence to confirm the genius of Thalberg's methods. In addition, this is the first Thalberg biography to utilize both his recorded conversations and the unpublished memoirs of his wife, Norma Shearer. Irving Thalberg is a compelling narrative of power and idealism, revealing for the first time the human being behind the legend.

Book An Unlikely Union

    Book Details:
  • Author : Paul Moses
  • Publisher : NYU Press
  • Release : 2017-03
  • ISBN : 1479804150
  • Pages : 396 pages

Download or read book An Unlikely Union written by Paul Moses and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-03 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An Unlikely Union unfolds the dramatic story of how two of America's largest ethnic groups learned to love and laugh with each other in the wake of decades of animosity. The vibrant cast of characters features saints such as Mother Frances X. Cabrini, who stood up to the Irish American archbishop of New York when he tried to send her back to Italy, and sinners like Al Capone, who left his Irish wife home the night he shot it out with Brooklyn's Irish mob. Also highlighted are the love affair between radical labor organizers Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Carlo Tresca; Italian American gangster Paul Kelly's alliance with Tammany's "Big Tim" Sullivan; hero detective Joseph Petrosino's struggle to be accepted in the Irish-run NYPD; and Frank Sinatra's competition with Bing Crosby to be the country's top male vocalist. In this engaging history of the Irish and Italians, veteran New York City journalist and professor Paul Moses offers an archetypal American story. At a time of renewed fear of immigrants, it demonstrates that Americans are able to absorb tremendous social change and conflict--and come out the better for it."--Publisher's description.

Book Outrageous

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kliph Nesteroff
  • Publisher : Abrams
  • Release : 2023-11-28
  • ISBN : 1647006376
  • Pages : 263 pages

Download or read book Outrageous written by Kliph Nesteroff and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2023-11-28 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the preeminent historian of modern comedy comes an expansive history of showbiz and the culture wars There is a common belief that we live in unprecedented times, that people are too sensitive today, that nobody objected to the actions of actors, comedians, and filmmakers in the past. Modern pundits would have us believe that Americans of a previous generation had tougher skin and seldom complained. But does this argument hold up to scrutiny? In Outrageous, celebrated cultural historian Kliph Nesteroff demonstrates that Americans have been objecting to entertainment for nearly two hundred years, sometimes rationally, often irrationally. Likewise, powerful political interests have sought to circumvent the arts using censorship, legal harassment, and outright propaganda. From Mae West through Johnny Carson, Amos ’n’ Andy through Beavis and Butt-Head, Outrageous chronicles the controversies of American show business and the ongoing attempts to change what we watch, read, and hear.

Book Marie Dressler

Download or read book Marie Dressler written by Betty Lee and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " She was homely, overweight, and over the hill, but there was a time when Marie Dressler outdrew such cinema sex symbols as Garbo, Dietrich, and Harlow. To movie audiences suffering the hardships of the Great Depression, she was Everywoman, and in the early 1930s her charming mixture of pathos and comedy packed movie theaters everywhere. In the early days of the century, Dressler was constantly in the headlines. She took up the cause of the "ponies" in the chorus lines, earning them better pay and benefits. She played in productions organized to raise money for the women's suffrage movement. And during World War I she claimed she sold more liberty bonds than any other individual in the United States. Dressler was an astute observer of public mood and taste. When she was lucky enough to find work in the newly minted Hollywood talkies, she grabbed the brass ring with fierce enthusiasm, even making three films in the year before her death, when she was so sick she had to rest between scenes on a sofa just out of camera range. The two-hundred-pound actress's remarkable stage presence captivated audiences even though her roles were not Hollywood beauties. She played tough, practical characters such as the old wharf rat in Anna Christie (1930), the waterfront innkeeper in Min and Bill (1931) -- for which she won the Academy Award for best actress -- the aging housekeeper in Emma (1932), and the title role in Tugboat Annie (1933). She spoke honestly to her audiences, and troubled people in the comforting darkness of the Depression-era movie theaters embraced her as one of themselves.

Book Stardust and Shadows

Download or read book Stardust and Shadows written by Charles Foster and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2000-09-01 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "You'll like Louis Mayer," Mary Pickford told Charles Foster in 1943. "He is from Canada, too." As Foster was soon to discover, Mayer was not alone: a great many of those who helped shape Hollywood into the movie capital of the world were Canadian. Stardust and Shadows brings together the stories of 18 Canadians who were celebrities during Hollywood's formative years. Most of those profiled were known to Foster, and stories they told him about Hollywood's early days, enhanced by many years of research and interviews with other living performers and directors from the silent movie era, reveal a never-before-seen look at what the movie industry was really like in those early days. This is Canadian history that has never been told, and many of the startling stories and secrets of Hollywood's past are revealed here for the first time. Celebrities profiled: May Irwin, Al and Charles Christie, Joe and Sam De Grasse, Marie Dressler, Allan Dwan, Florence La Badie, Florence Lawrence, Del Lord, Louis B. Mayer, Sidney Olcott, Jack Pickford, Mary Pickford, Marie Prevost, Mack Sennett, Douglas Shearer, Norma Shearer.

Book Catholics in the Movies

Download or read book Catholics in the Movies written by Colleen McDannell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The common admission that "everything I know about religion I learned from the movies" is true for believers as much as for unbelievers. And at the movies, Catholicism is the American religion. As an intensely visual faith with a well-defined ritual and authority structure, Catholicism lends itself to the drama and pageantry of film. Beginning with the silent era of film and ending with movies today, eleven prominent scholars explore how Catholic characters, spaces, and rituals are represented in cinema.

Book Censoring Racial Ridicule

    Book Details:
  • Author : M. Alison Kibler
  • Publisher : UNC Press Books
  • Release : 2015-03-05
  • ISBN : 1469618370
  • Pages : 329 pages

Download or read book Censoring Racial Ridicule written by M. Alison Kibler and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-03-05 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A drunken Irish maid slips and falls. A greedy Jewish pawnbroker lures his female employee into prostitution. An African American man leers at a white woman. These and other, similar images appeared widely on stages and screens across America during the early twentieth century. In this provocative study, M. Alison Kibler uncovers, for the first time, powerful and concurrent campaigns by Irish, Jewish and African Americans against racial ridicule in popular culture at the turn of the twentieth century. Censoring Racial Ridicule explores how Irish, Jewish, and African American groups of the era resisted harmful representations in popular culture by lobbying behind the scenes, boycotting particular acts, and staging theater riots. Kibler demonstrates that these groups' tactics evolved and diverged over time, with some continuing to pursue street protest while others sought redress through new censorship laws. Exploring the relationship between free expression, democracy, and equality in America, Kibler shows that the Irish, Jewish, and African American campaigns against racial ridicule are at the roots of contemporary debates over hate speech.

Book Playbills to Photoplays

Download or read book Playbills to Photoplays written by New England Vintage Film Society Inc. and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "They were pioneers in the most glamorous business in the world, and you only know half of their story. Playbills To Photoplays reveals colorful episodes in the lives of the stars before they became stars. Everyone saw them, but few knew where they came from. This collection of essays follows some of the most famous names in show business from Vaudeville and Broadway to Hollywood, revealing a part of their lives that movie historians have neglected -- until now. I think this book is terrific. It's a must read for any fan of the silver screen, and the days when movie stars were real stars." - Morgan Loew, great-grandson of Adolph Zukor, founder, Paramount Pictures, and Marcus Loew, founder, Loews Theaters and MGM. "Ms. Loew's choice of performers to write about is amazingly diverse and fascinating, from character actors like Conrad Veidt to major stars like Katharine Hepburn. She has written a most compelling book about their transitions from stage to film... many of the stories new to me. Wonderful!" - Joan Benny, daughter of comedian, Jack Benny, one of America's greatest entertainment icons of the 20th century, whose career included vaudeville, radio, movies and television. "A nice compilation of essays on film stars who made the transition from the stage to early talkies with essays on Al Jolson, Mae West, Eddie Cantor, Harpo Marx, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Charley Grapewin, Ed Wynn, and the Morgans (Frank and Ralph). Some essays were much better than others - I loved the one on the Morgans, Burns and Allen, Harpo Marx, and Katharine Hepburn... I would highly recommend the book as it gives you a good idea what vaudeville and the Broadway stage was like in the early 20's and what it was about these stars that allowed them to make the transition." -Librarything.com "....big stars as well as a raft of character actors, and decorated with dozens of striking photos...perceptive close-ups that make for vibrant film criticism...engaging profiles of Old Hollywood icons..." - Kirkus "Performers attempting to breakthrough will find this book inspirational!" - An Aspiring Actor Motion pictures with recorded sound --known as "talking pictures", or "talkies"--signaled the end of silent films and created some of the greatest entertainment icons of the twentieth century. Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies introduces a new generation to the real life struggles and careers of talented, hard working, early twentieth century vaudeville and stage entertainers who migrated to sound film. Twenty-eight essays and over one hundred photographs examine the actors before, during, and after the revolutionary new sound film technology catapulted many of them to superstardom during Hollywood's Golden Age. Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies explains the social, political, economic, historical, and cultural issues that shaped each performer's body of work, acting technique, persona, and public following over time.