Download or read book Words into Images Screenwriters on the Studio System written by Ronald L. Davis and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2007 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pine Thomas Productions written by David C. Tucker and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-08-15 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dubbed "The Dollar Bills," William H. Pine and William C. Thomas made 1940s Hollywood take notice with their B movies for Paramount that gave solid entertainment while cutting costs to the bone. In the 1950s, with television looming, Pine-Thomas Productions began making bigger-budget films with stars including James Cagney and Jane Wyman, and incorporating trends like 3-D. "The public is Hollywood's boss," Pine said, and the company gave moviegoers what they wanted. Written with the assistance of the Pine and Thomas families, this book draws on Thomas' never-published memoir, interviews with colleagues and relatives, and rarely seen photographs to document the story of Pine-Thomas and its founders. An annotated filmography covers their 76 feature films and five shorts. Appendices give biographical sketches of such actors as Robert Lowery, Jean Parker and John Payne, as well as the directors, cinematographers and other crew members who made movies at top speed with more ingenuity than money.
Download or read book Body Double written by Lucy Fischer and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Body Double explores the myriad ways that film artists have represented the creative process. In this highly innovative work, Lucy Fischer draws on a neglected element of auteur studies to show that filmmakers frequently raise questions about the paradoxes of authorship by portraying the onscreen writer. Dealing with such varied topics as the icon of the typewriter, the case of the writer/director, the authoress, and the omnipresent infirm author, she probes the ways in which films can tell a plausible story while contemplating the conditions and theories of their making. By examining many forms of cinema, from Hollywood and the international art cinema to the avant-garde, Fischer considers the gender, age, and mental or physical health of fictionalized writers; the dramatized interaction between artists and their audiences and critics; and the formal play of written words and nonverbal images. By analyzing such movies as Adaptation, Diary of a Country Priest, Naked Lunch, American Splendor, and Irezumi, Fischer tracks the parallels between film author and character, looking not for the creative figure who stands outside the text, but for the one who stands within it as corporeal presence and alter-ego.
Download or read book Michael Curtiz written by Alan K. Rode and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2017-11-17 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academy Award–winning director Michael Curtiz (1886–1962)—whose best-known films include Casablanca (1942), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945) and White Christmas (1954)—was in many ways the anti-auteur. During his unprecedented twenty-seven year tenure at Warner Bros., he directed swashbuckling adventures, westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. The director's staggering output of 180 films surpasses that of the legendary John Ford and exceeds the combined total of films directed by George Cukor, Victor Fleming, and Howard Hawks. In the first biography of this colorful, instinctual artist, Alan K. Rode illuminates the life and work of one of the film industry's most complex figures. He explores the director's little-known early life and career in his native Hungary, revealing how Curtiz shaped the earliest days of silent cinema in Europe before immigrating to the United States in 1926. In Hollywood, Curtiz earned a reputation for explosive tantrums, his difficulty with English, and disregard for the well-being of others. However, few directors elicited more memorable portrayals from their casts, and ten different actors delivered Oscar-nominated performances under his direction. In addition to his study of the director's remarkable legacy, Rode investigates Curtiz's dramatic personal life, discussing his enduring creative partnership with his wife, screenwriter Bess Meredyth, as well as his numerous affairs and children born of his extramarital relationships. This meticulously researched biography provides a nuanced understanding of one of the most talented filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age.
Download or read book Acting for the Silent Screen written by Chris O'Rourke and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A shop girl wins a newspaper competition and is transformed overnight into a transatlantic celebrity. An aristocrat swaps high society for the film studio when she 'consents' to perform in a series of films, thus legitimising acting for what some might have considered a 'low' art. Stories like these were the stuff of newspaper headlines in 1920s and reflected a 'craze' for the cinema. They also demonstrated radical changes in attitudes and values within society in the wake of World War I. Chris O'Rourke investigates the myths and material practices that grew up around film actors during the silent era. The book sheds light on issues such as the social and cultural reception of cinema, the participatory film culture expressed through fan magazines, instructional booklets and movie star competitions, and the working conditions encountered by actors behind-the-scenes of silent films. Drawing on extensive research and a wealth of archival materials, O'Rourke examines how dreams of stardom were fuelled and exploited in the interwar period, and reconstructs the personal narratives and experiences of the first generation to imagine making a living on screen.In doing so, he reveals a missing - and much sought after - piece of cinematic history to bring to life the developing industries, social attitudes and norms of a period of enormous change.
Download or read book Hitchcock s Partner in Suspense written by Charles Bennett and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a career that spanned from the silent era to the 1990s, British screenwriter Charles Bennett (1899--1995) lived an extraordinary life. His experiences as an actor, director, playwright, film and television writer, and novelist in both England and Hollywood left him with many amusing anecdotes, opinions about his craft, and impressions of the many famous people he knew. Among other things, Bennett was a decorated WWI hero, an eminent Shakespearean actor, and an Allied spy and propagandist during WWII, but he is best remembered for his commercially and critically acclaimed collaborations with directors Sir Alfred Hitchcock and Cecil B. DeMille. The fruitful partnership began after Hitchcock adapted Bennett's play Blackmail (1929) as the first British sound film. Their partnership produced six thrillers: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), Sabotage (1936), Secret Agent (1936), Young and Innocent (1937), and Foreign Correspondent (1940). In this witty and intriguing book, Bennett discusses how their collaboration created such famous motifs as the "wrong man accused" device and the MacGuffin. He also takes readers behind the scenes with the Master of Suspense, offering his thoughts on the director's work, sense of humor, and personal life. Featuring an introduction and additional biographical material from Bennett's son, editor John Charles Bennett, Hitchcock's Partner in Suspense is a richly detailed narrative of a remarkable yet often-overlooked figure in film history.
Download or read book Clarence Brown written by Gwenda Young and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2018-11-23 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greta Garbo proclaimed him as her favorite director. Actors, actresses, and even child stars were so at ease under his direction that they were able to deliver inspired and powerful performances. Academy–Award–nominated director Clarence Brown (1890–1987) worked with some of Hollywood's greatest stars, such as Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Mickey Rooney, Katharine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy. Known as the "star maker," he helped guide the acting career of child sensation Elizabeth Taylor (of whom he once said, "she has a face that is an act of God") and discovered Academy–Award–winning child star Claude Jarman Jr. for The Yearling (1946). He directed more than fifty films, including Possessed (1931), Anna Karenina (1935), National Velvet (1944), and Intruder in the Dust (1949), winning his audiences over with glamorous star vehicles, tales of families, communities, and slices of Americana, as well as hard-hitting dramas. Although Brown was admired by peers like Jean Renoir, Frank Capra, and John Ford, his illuminating work and contributions to classic cinema are rarely mentioned in the same breath as those of Hollywood's great directors. In this first full-length account of the life and career of the pioneering filmmaker, Gwenda Young discusses Brown's background to show how his hardworking parents and resilient grandparents inspired his entrepreneurial spirit. She reveals how the one–time engineer and World War I aviator established a thriving car dealership, the Brown Motor Car Company, in Alabama—only to give it all up to follow his dream of making movies. He would not only become a brilliant director but also a craftsman who was known for his innovative use of lighting and composition. In a career spanning five decades, Brown was nominated for five Academy Awards and directed ten different actors in Oscar-nominated performances. Despite his achievements and influence, however, Brown has been largely overlooked by film scholars. Clarence Brown: Hollywood's Forgotten Master explores the forces that shaped a complex man—part–dreamer, part–pragmatist—who left an indelible mark on cinema.
Download or read book Miriam Hopkins written by Allan R. Ellenberger and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2018-01-12 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Miriam Hopkins (1902--1972) first captured moviegoers' attention in daring precode films such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), The Story of Temple Drake (1933), and Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise (1932). Though she enjoyed popular and critical acclaim in her long career -- receiving an Academy Award nomination for Becky Sharp (1935) and a Golden Globe nomination for The Heiress (1949) -- she is most often remembered for being one of the most difficult actresses of Hollywood's golden age. Whether she was fighting with studio moguls over her roles or feuding with her avowed archrival, Bette Davis, her reputation for temperamental behavior is legendary. In the first comprehensive biography of this colorful performer, Allan R. Ellenberger illuminates Hopkins's fascinating life and legacy. Her freewheeling film career was exceptional in studio-era Hollywood, and she managed to establish herself as a top star at Paramount, RKO, Goldwyn, and Warner Bros. Over the course of five decades, Hopkins appeared in thirty-six films, forty stage plays, and countless radio programs. Later, she emerged as a pioneer of TV drama. Ellenberger also explores Hopkins's private life, including her relationships with such intellectuals as Theodore Dreiser, Dorothy Parker, Gertrude Stein, and Tennessee Williams. Although she was never blacklisted for her suspected Communist leanings, her association with these freethinkers and her involvement with certain political organizations led the FBI to keep a file on her for nearly forty years. This skillful biography treats readers to the intriguing stories and controversies surrounding Hopkins and her career, but also looks beyond her Hollywood persona to explore the star as an uncompromising artist. The result is an entertaining portrait of a brilliant yet underappreciated performer.
Download or read book The Quick the Dead and the Revived written by Joseph Maddrey and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-06-20 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For well more than a century, Western films have embodied the United States' most fundamental doctrine--expansionism--and depicted, in a uniquely American way, the archetypal battle between good and evil. Westerns also depict a country defined and re-defined by complex crises. World War II transformed the genre as well as the nation's identity. Since then, Hollywood filmmakers have been fighting America's ideological wars onscreen by translating modern-day politics into the timeless mythology of the Old West. This book surveys the most iconic and influential Westerns, examines Hollywood stars and their political stripes and reveals the familiar Western tropes--which became elements in popular action, science fiction and horror films. This then sets the stage for the Western revival of the 1990s and a period of reinvention in the 21st century. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
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 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 William Faulkner in Hollywood written by Stefan Solomon and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scholarly examination of the scripts and fiction Faulkner created during his foray as a Hollywood screenwriter. During more than two decades (1932-1954), William Faulkner worked on approximately fifty screenplays for major Hollywood studios and was credited on such classics as The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not. Faulkner’s film scripts—and later television scripts—constitute an extensive and, until now, thoroughly underexplored archival source. Stefan Solomon analyzes the majority of these scripts and also compares them to the fiction Faulkner was writing concurrently. His aim: to reconcile two aspects of a career that were not as distinct as they first might seem: Faulkner the screenwriter and Faulkner the modernist, Nobel Prize–winning author. As Solomon shows Faulkner adjusting to the idiosyncrasies of the screenwriting process (a craft he never favored or admired), he offers insights into Faulkner’s compositional practice, thematic preoccupations, and understanding of both cinema and television. In the midst of this complex exchange of media and genres, much of Faulkner’s fiction of the 1930s and 1940s was directly influenced by his protracted engagement with the film industry. Solomon helps us to see a corpus integrating two vastly different modes of writing and a restless author. Faulkner was never only the southern novelist or the West Coast “hack writer” but always both at once. Solomon’s study shows that Faulkner’s screenplays are crucial in any consideration of his far more esteemed fiction—and that the two forms of writing are more porous and intertwined than the author himself would have us believe. Here is a major American writer seen in a remarkably new way.
Download or read book MLA International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 2426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Choice written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Extraordinary Image written by Robert P. Kolker and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welles. Hitchcock. Kubrick. These names appear on nearly every list of the all-time greatest filmmakers. But what makes these directors so great? Despite their very different themes and sensibilities, is there a common genius that unites them and elevates their work into the realm of the sublime? The Extraordinary Image takes readers on a fascinating journey through the lives and films of these three directors, identifying the qualities that made them cinematic visionaries. Reflecting on a lifetime of teaching and writing on these filmmakers, acclaimed film scholar Robert P. Kolker offers a deeply personal set of insights on three artists who have changed the way he understands movies. Spotlighting the many astonishing images and stories in films by Welles, Hitchcock, Kubrick, he also considers how they induce a state of amazement that transports and transforms the viewer. Kolker’s accessible prose invites readers to share in his own continued fascination and delight at these directors’ visual inventiveness, even as he lends his expertise to help us appreciate the key distinctions between the unique cinematic universes they each created. More than just a celebration of three cinematic geniuses, The Extraordinary Image is an exploration of how movies work, what they mean, and why they bring us so much pleasure.
Download or read book A Day in the Life of an American Worker 2 volumes written by Nancy Quam-Wickham and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introduction to the history of work in America illuminates the many important roles that men and women of all backgrounds have played in the formation of the United States. A Day in the Life of an American Worker: 200 Trades and Professions through History allows readers to imagine the daily lives of ordinary workers, from the beginnings of colonial America to the present. It presents the stories of millions of Americans—from the enslaved field hands in antebellum America to the astronauts of the modern "space age"—as they contributed to the formation of the modern and culturally diverse United States. Readers will learn about individual occupations and discover the untold histories of those women and men who too often have remained anonymous to historians but whose stories are just as important as those of leaders whose lives we study in our classrooms. This book provides specific details to enable comprehensive understanding of the benefits and downsides of each trade and profession discussed. Selected accompanying documents further bring history to life by offering vivid testimonies from people who actually worked in these occupations or interacted with those in that field.
Download or read book Screenwriting written by Andrew Horton and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-23 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Screenwriters often joke that “no one ever paid a dollar at a movie theater to watch a screenplay.” Yet the screenplay is where a movie begins, determining whether a production gets the “green light” from its financial backers and wins approval from its audience. This innovative volume gives readers a comprehensive portrait of the art and business of screenwriting, while showing how the role of the screenwriter has evolved over the years. Reaching back to the early days of Hollywood, when moonlighting novelists, playwrights, and journalists were first hired to write scenarios and photoplays, Screenwriting illuminates the profound ways that screenwriters have contributed to the films we love. This book explores the social, political, and economic implications of the changing craft of American screenwriting from the silent screen through the classical Hollywood years, the rise of independent cinema, and on to the contemporary global multi-media marketplace. From The Birth of a Nation (1915), Gone With the Wind (1939), and Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) to Chinatown (1974), American Beauty (1999), and Lost in Translation (2003), each project began as writers with pen and ink, typewriters, or computers captured the hopes and dreams, the nightmares and concerns of the periods in which they were writing. As the contributors take us behind the silver screen to chronicle the history of screenwriting, they spotlight a range of key screenplays that changed the game in Hollywood and beyond. With original essays from both distinguished film scholars and accomplished screenwriters, Screenwriting is sure to fascinate anyone with an interest in Hollywood, from movie buffs to industry professionals.
