Download or read book Hollywood s Master Showman written by Charles Beardsley and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sidney Patrick Grauman (1879-1950) was the dominant movie palace impresario west of Chicago in the 1920s and one of the most flamboyantly successful theatrical talents ever associated with films. His story is the story of early motion pictures in Hollywood, a colorful and fascinating tale that needed to be told. Charles Beardsley has captured the narrative of Grauman's life using the words of the press, the accounts of friends, and analysis of his works. It is indeed a comprehensive and enlightening effort. Gentle and generous, soft-spoken and mild-mannered, possessing a wicked sense of humor and a brilliant imagination, Grauman had a genius for translating his personal visions into stage spectacles of awesome proportions. He was responsible for the design and construction of several famous and highly sophisticated Los Angeles theaters that bore his name over their marquees: Grauman's Million Dollar, Grauman's Egyptian, Grauman's Metropolitan, and Grauman's Chinese. He is credited with creation of the movie prologue, a type of stage show that he developed to precede the first-run silent films he exhibited. Many of the stage features that Grauman introduced have since become standard technical theater procedure and as such are in wide use today. In addition to being an industry giant, Sid Grauman was a friendly, generous, much-loved individual who adored practical jokes and enjoyed playing them upon such people as Charlie Chaplin. An affable man, Grauman was a gregarious personality who numbered among his associates the Hollywood greats: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Dorothy and Lillian Gish, William S. Hart, Mabel Normand, Marion Davies, Cecil B. DeMille, D.W. Griffith, and Fred Niblo. Within these pages are a wealth of anecdotes about these people and many others who were prominent in developing silent films into the most popular universal entertainment medium of its time. Grauman's sumptuous movie palaces, elaborate and innovative staging, and keen eye for talent and publicity made him a legend in his lifetime, a man who is still remembered with awe and respect by all who saw his work in its prime. While this book deals extensively with the details of Grauman's management of his various houses, it is no mere documentary. Nor is it a chronological biography, since it explains Grauman's career and major professional achievements. Instead, it is a collection of narrative flashes, accurately reproducing the spirit of Grauman's life and times, that pick out an event in one decade to describe and illuminate an event in another. Grauman obtained his first taste of show business working with his father at Dawson, Alaska, during the 1898 Yukon Gold Rush and went on to become "Mr. Show Business" of Hollywood. This affectionate memoir covers Grauman's early years, his San Francisco theaters and his many discoveries, including Fatty Arbuckle, Al Jolson, Jackie Coogan, and Myrna Loy. The brilliant parade of prologues presented in the five Los Angeles Grauman houses and the premieres that drew crowds of over one hundred thousand screaming fans are described in vivid detail. Anecdotal and descriptive, this book goes behind the scenes to explain how Grauman designed and built his unique theaters, how he worked, and how he blended his prologues with live actors and symphony orchestras to enhance every film that he presented. Often called the Barnum of Hollywood, Sid Grauman was a great deal more. Not only did he glorify the movie prologue, he invented the red-carpet premiere. A colorful blend of Max Reinhardt, Sergei Diaghilev, David Belasco, Flo Ziegfeld, and Buffalo Bill Cody, he was still very much an original who left his singular mark on the silent film era. Until this lively, detailed portrait of the maestro, Grauman has never been fully documented. But that gap, a major one in the history of American films, has now been filled by this entertaining volume. Illustrated with period photographs, in black and white and color, a vivid portrait of this master showman has been achieved."--Dust jacket.
Download or read book American Showman written by Ross Melnick and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samuel ÒRoxyÓ Rothafel (1882Ð1936) built an influential and prolific career as film exhibitor, stage producer, radio broadcaster, musical arranger, theater manager, war propagandist, and international celebrity. He helped engineer the integration of film, music, and live performance in silent film exhibition; scored early Fox Movietone films such as Sunrise (1927); pioneered the convergence of film, broadcasting, and music publishing and recording in the 1920s; and helped movies and moviegoing become the dominant form of mass entertainment between the world wars. The first book devoted to RothafelÕs multifaceted career, American Showman examines his role as the key purveyor of a new film exhibition aesthetic that appropriated legitimate theater, opera, ballet, and classical music to attract multi-class audiences. Roxy scored motion pictures, produced enormous stage shows, managed many of New YorkÕs most important movie houses, directed and/or edited propaganda films for the American war effort, produced short and feature-length films, exhibited foreign, documentary, independent, and avant-garde motion pictures, and expanded the conception of mainstream, commercial cinema. He was also one of the chief creators of the radio variety program, pioneering radio broadcasting, promotions, and tours. The producers and promoters of distinct themes and styles, showmen like Roxy profoundly remade the moviegoing experience, turning the deluxe motion picture theater into a venue for exhibiting and producing live and recorded entertainment. RoxyÕs interest in media convergence also reflects a larger moment in which the entertainment industry began to create brands and franchises, exploit them through content release Òevents,Ó and give rise to feature films, soundtracks, broadcasts, live performances, and related consumer products. Regularly cited as one of the twelve most important figures in the film and radio industries, Roxy was instrumental to the development of film exhibition and commercial broadcasting, musical accompaniment, and a new, convergent entertainment industry.
Download or read book Hollywood Movie Novels written by and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 1174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pioneers of Promotion written by Joe Dobrow and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The average American today is bombarded with as many as 5,000 advertisements a day. The sophisticated and persuasive marketing tactics that companies use may seem a recent phenomenon, but Pioneers of Promotion tells a different story. In this lively narrative, business history writer Joe Dobrow traces the origins of modern American marketing to the late nineteenth century when three charismatic individuals launched an industry that defines our national culture. Transporting readers back to a dramatic time in the late 1800s, Dobrow spotlights a trio of men who reshaped our image of the West and earned national fame: John M. Burke of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, Tody Hamilton of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, and Moses P. Handy of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Drawing on scores of original source materials, Dobrow brings to light the surprisingly sophisticated techniques of these Gilded Age press agents. Using mostly newspapers—plus a good deal of moxie, emotional suasion, iconic imagery, and to be sure, alcohol—Burke, Hamilton, and Handy each devised ways to promote celebrities, attract huge crowds, and generate massive news coverage. As a result, a plainsman named William F. Cody became more famous than the president of the United States, a traveling circus turned into the Greatest Show on Earth, and a world’s fair attracted more than 27 million visitors. Tapping his practitioner’s knowledge of marketing and promotion, Dobrow reintroduces readers to Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show, P. T. Barnum and his circus, and the greatest of all world’s fairs. Surprisingly, the promotional geniuses who engineered these enterprises do not appear in history books alongside other marketing and advertising legends such as Ivy Lee, Edward Bernays, or David Ogilvy. Pioneers of Promotion at long last gives these founders of American marketing their due.
Download or read book Showmen Sell It Hot written by John McElwee and published by Paladin Communications. This book was released on 2015-07-20 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A noted Hollywood historian takes a first-ever marketing look at the selling of classic motion pictures generated by Hollywood's fabled movie factories in this lush coffee-table retrospective. Movie buffs will enjoy seeing the effects of the Depression, censorship, world war, the Cold War, television, and the counter-culture movement on the changing tastes of moviegoers, and the way showmen responded with creative and sometimes zany ad campaigns. Chapters include the sexy and salacious pre-Code pictures; the launch of the new dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Flying Down to Rio; MGM’s gamble on the Marx Brothers with A Night at the Opera; lavish campaigns for The Wizard of Oz in original release and reissue; creation of a new star, John Wayne, in John Ford’s Stagecoach; Orson Welles’ failed Citizen Kane campaign; Billy Wilder’s unusual and dark Hollywood statement picture, Sunset Boulevard; the selling of Rebel Without a Cause, Giant, and East of Eden following the death of James Dean; Alfred Hitchcock’s personal gamble with Psycho; and much more!
Download or read book LIFE written by and published by . This book was released on 1956-11-12 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.
Download or read book The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry written by Anthony Slide and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry is a completely revised and updated edition of Anthony Slide's The American Film Industry, originally published in 1986 and recipient of the American Library Association's Outstanding Reference Book award for that year. More than 200 new entries have been added, and all original entries have been updated; each entry is followed by a short bibliography. As its predecessor, the new dictionary is unique in that it is not a who's who of the industry, but rather a what's what: a dictionary of producing and releasing companies, technical innovations, industry terms, studios, genres, color systems, institutions and organizations, etc. More than 800 entries include everything from Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to Zoom Lens, from Astoria Studios to Zoetrope. Outstanding Reference Source - American Library Association
Download or read book California written by John Gottberg and published by Hunter Publishing, Inc. This book was released on 1999 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These great-value guides cover destinations far and wide around the globe. Established in 1990, Nelles Guides sought to provide travelers with comprehensive destination coverage in a handy, take-along format. Today, the tradition continues. Nelles Guides are researched and written by local correspondents and are updated regularly. Each book has a well-rounded introduction that delves into the country's history and culture, tempting the reader to explore. The "What to See & Do" section for each area can cover anything from sightseeing and driving tours to jungle treks and visits to the local museums. You'll find detailed entries for restaurants, shopping, entertainment, festivals and more. All accommodations are categorized by price level, making it easy for the reader to select a place to suit his/her budget. Practical travel issues -- health concerns, climate & clothing, visa requirements, currency, transportation, etc. -- are also addressed.
Download or read book Hollywood s Embassies written by Ross Melnick and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner - 2022 Richard Wall Memorial Award, Theatre Library Association Beginning in the 1920s, audiences around the globe were seduced not only by Hollywood films but also by lavish movie theaters that were owned and operated by the major American film companies. These theaters aimed to provide a quintessentially “American” experience. Outfitted with American technology and accoutrements, they allowed local audiences to watch American films in an American-owned cinema in a distinctly American way. In a history that stretches from Buenos Aires and Tokyo to Johannesburg and Cairo, Ross Melnick considers these movie houses as cultural embassies. He examines how the exhibition of Hollywood films became a constant flow of political and consumerist messaging, selling American ideas, products, and power, especially during fractious eras. Melnick demonstrates that while Hollywood’s marketing of luxury and consumption often struck a chord with local audiences, it was also frequently tone-deaf to new social, cultural, racial, and political movements. He argues that the story of Hollywood’s global cinemas is not a simple narrative of cultural and industrial indoctrination and colonization. Instead, it is one of negotiation, booms and busts, successes and failures, adoptions and rejections, and a precursor to later conflicts over the spread of American consumer culture. A truly global account, Hollywood’s Embassies shows how the entanglement of worldwide movie theaters with American empire offers a new way of understanding film history and the history of U.S. soft power.
Download or read book The Show Starts on the Sidewalk written by Maggie Valentine and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documenting the evolution of the American movie theatre and exploring its role in American culture and architecture, this work focuses on the career of S. Charles Lee, who designed more than 300 theatres between 1920 and 1950, buildings that became prototypes for the whole country.
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 Gloria Swanson written by Stephen Michael Shearer and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gloria Swanson defined what it meant to be a movie star, but her unforgettable role in Sunset Boulevard overshadowed the true story of her life. Now Stephen Michael Shearer sets the record straight in the first in-depth biography of the film legend. Swanson was Hollywood's first successful glamour queen. Her stardom as an actress in the mid-1920s earned her millions of fans and millions of dollars. Realizing her box office value early in her career, she took control of her life. Soon she was not only producing her own films, she was choosing her scripts, selecting her leading men, casting her projects, creating her own fashions, guiding her publicity, and living an extravagant and sometimes extraordinary celebrity lifestyle. She also collected a long line of lovers (including Joseph P. Kennedy) and married men of her choosing (including a French marquis, thus becoming America's first member of "nobility"). As a devoted and loving mother, she managed a quiet success of raising three children. Perhaps most important, as a keen businesswoman she also was able to extend her career more than sixty years. Her astounding comeback as Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard catapulted her back into the limelight. But it also created her long-misunderstood persona, one that this meticulous biography shows was only part of this independent and unparalleled woman.
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 An Evening s Entertainment written by Richard Koszarski and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1994-05-04 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the age of silent movies
Download or read book ROSCOE TURNER written by GLINES CARROL V and published by Smithsonian Books (DC). This book was released on 1995-03-17 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Exhibitors Daily Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Showman and the Slave written by Benjamin Reiss and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this compelling story about one of the nineteenth century's most famous Americans, Benjamin Reiss uses P. T. Barnum's Joice Heth hoax to examine the contours of race relations in the antebellum North. Barnum's first exhibit as a showman, Heth was an elderly enslaved woman who was said to be the 161-year-old former nurse of the infant George Washington. Seizing upon the novelty, the newly emerging commercial press turned her act--and especially her death--into one of the first media spectacles in American history. In piecing together the fragmentary and conflicting evidence of the event, Reiss paints a picture of people looking at history, at the human body, at social class, at slavery, at performance, at death, and always--if obliquely--at themselves. At the same time, he reveals how deeply an obsession with race penetrated different facets of American life, from public memory to private fantasy. Concluding the book is a piece of historical detective work in which Reiss attempts to solve the puzzle of Heth's real identity before she met Barnum. His search yields a tantalizing connection between early mass culture and a slave's subtle mockery of her master.
