Download or read book A Biographical Dictionary of Silent Film Western Actors and Actresses written by George A. Katchmer and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-05-20 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before sound became an essential part of motion pictures, Westerns were an established genre. The men and women who brought to life cowboys, cowgirls, villains, sidekicks, distressed damsels and outraged townspeople often continued with their film careers, finding success and fame well into the sound era--always knowing that it was in silent Westerns that their careers began. More than a thousand of these once-silent Western players are featured in this fully indexed encyclopedic work. Each entry includes a detailed biography, covering both personal and professional milestones and a complete Western filmography. A foreword is supplied by Diana Serra Cary (formerly the child star "Baby Peggy"), who performed with many of the actors herein.

Download or read book American Classic Screen Profiles written by John C. Tibbetts and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2010-08-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In American Classic Screen Profiles, editors John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh have assembled some of the most significant and memorable profiles written for the magazine over its ten-year history. This collection contains rare insights into some of the brightest stars of yesteryear, as well as gifted filmmakers, directors and craftsmen alike. This compendium of profiles recaptures the spirit and scholarship of that time and will appeal to both scholars and fans who have an abiding interest in the American motion picture industry.

Download or read book American Book Publishing Record written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 2744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Straight from the Horse s Mouth written by Ronald Neame and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2003-09-27 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in Paperback! Ronald Neame's autobiography takes its title from one of his best-loved films, The Horse's Mouth (1958), starring Alec Guinness. In an informative and entertaining style, Neame discusses the making of that film, along with several others, including In Which We Serve, Blithe Spirit, Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, Tunes of Glory, I Could Go on Singing, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Scrooge, The Poseidon Adventure, and Hopscotch. Straight from the Horse's Mouth provides a fascinating, first-hand account of a unique filmmaker, who began his career as assistant cameraman on Hitchcock's first talkie, Blackmail, and went on to direct Maggie Smith, Judy Garland, Walter Matthau, and many other prominent performers. The book includes tales of the on-and-off-the-set antics of comedian George Formby, and original accounts of his experiences working with Noel Coward and David Lean. This is not simply an autobiography, but rather a history of British cinema from the 1920s through the 1960s, and Hollywood cinema from the 1960s through the present. Aside from Neame's own writing, the book contains original commentary by many of his contemporaries and associates including Alec Guinness, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Shirley MacLaine, Walter Matthau, John Mills and Shelley Winters. Includes more than 40 photos!

Download or read book John Derek written by Michelangelo Capua and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-04-03 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Actor and director John Derek was born in Hollywood, where his striking good looks helped get him a contract with David O' Selznick. Derek's career took off after Humphrey Bogart made him his costar in the cultish noir Knock at Any Doors. Derek appeared in such Academy Award-nominated films as All the King's Men, Run for Cover, The Ten Commandments and Exodus, and worked with directors like Nicholas Ray, Cecil B. DeMille, Otto Preminger and others. He was a competent, dedicated performer even in his last, trivial roles. In the 1960s, his career in decline, he began directing his own films. Although critics panned the string of movies he made starring his three wives--Ursula Andress, Linda Evans and Bo Derek--some were box-office hits, like Tarzan, the Ape Man. This biography covers his extraordinary life and career, with extensive analysis of his films.

Download or read book Strictly Dynamite written by Eve Golden and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before Salma Hayek, Eva Longoria, and Penelope Cruz, there was Lupe Velez—one of the first Latin-American stars to sweep past the xenophobia of old Hollywood and pave the way for future icons from around the world. Her career began in the silent era, when her beauty was enough to make it onto the silver screen, but with the rise of talkies, Velez could no longer hope to hide her Mexican accent. Yet Velez proved to be a talented dramatic and comedic actress (and singer) and was much more versatile than Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Gloria Swanson, and other legends of the time. Velez starred in such films as Hot Pepper (1933), Strictly Dynamite (1934), and Hollywood Party (1934), and her popularity peaked in the 1940s after she appeared as Carmelita Fuentes in eight Mexican Spitfire films, a series created to capitalize on Velez's reputed fiery personality. The media emphasized the "Mexican Spitfire" persona, and by many accounts, Velez's private life was as colorful as the characters she portrayed on-screen. Fan magazines mythologized her mysterious childhood in Mexico, while mainstream publications obsessed over the drama of her romances with Gary Cooper, Erich Maria Remarque, and John Gilbert, along with her stormy marriage to Johnny Weissmuller. In 1944, a pregnant and unmarried Velez died of an intentional drug overdose. Her tumultuous life and the circumstances surrounding her early death have been the subject of speculation and controversy. In Strictly Dynamite: The Sensational Life of Lupe Velez, author Eve Golden uses extensive research to separate fact from fiction and offer a thorough and riveting examination of the real woman beneath the gossip columns' caricature. Through astute analysis of the actress's filmography and interviews, Golden illuminates the path Velez blazed through Hollywood. Her success was unexpected and extraordinary at a time when a distinctive accent was an obstacle, and yet very few books have focused entirely on Velez's life and career. Written with evenhandedness, humor, and empathy, this biography finally gives the remarkable Mexican actress the unique and nuanced portrait she deserves.

Download or read book It s Good to Be the King written by James Robert Parish and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-02-26 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the personal life and professional career of comedy writer/actor/filmmaker Mel Brooks.

Download or read book Queen Latifah written by Amy Ruth Allen and published by Twenty-First Century Books. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through USA Today newspaper articles, chronicles the life of the multitalented woman who was one of the first females to come to prominence in the rap music scene.

Download or read book Mean Baby written by Selma Blair and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selma Blair has played many roles: Ingenue in Cruel Intentions. Preppy ice queen in Legally Blonde. Muse to Karl Lagerfeld. Advocate for the multiple sclerosis community. But before all of that, Selma was known best as … a mean baby. In a memoir that is as wildly funny as it is emotionally shattering, Blair tells the captivating story of growing up and finding her truth. "Blair is a rebel, an artist, and it turns out: a writer."—Glennon Doyle, Author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller Untamed and Founder of Together Rising The first story Selma Blair Beitner ever heard about herself is that she was a mean, mean baby. With her mouth pulled in a perpetual snarl and a head so furry it had to be rubbed to make way for her forehead, Selma spent years living up to her terrible reputation: biting her sisters, lying spontaneously, getting drunk from Passover wine at the age of seven, and behaving dramatically so that she would be the center of attention. Although Selma went on to become a celebrated Hollywood actress and model, she could never quite shake the periods of darkness that overtook her, the certainty that there was a great mystery at the heart of her life. She often felt like her arms might be on fire, a sensation not unlike electric shocks, and she secretly drank to escape. Over the course of this beautiful and, at times, devasting memoir, Selma lays bare her addiction to alcohol, her devotion to her brilliant and complicated mother, and the moments she flirted with death. There is brutal violence, passionate love, true friendship, the gift of motherhood, and, finally, the surprising salvation of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. In a voice that is powerfully original, fiercely intelligent, and full of hard-won wisdom, Selma Blair’s Mean Baby is a deeply human memoir and a true literary achievement.

Download or read book Stepin Fetchit written by Mel Watkins and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-07-14 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1920s and '30s Lincoln Perry, aka Stepin Fetchit, was both renowned and reviled for his surrealistic portrayals of the era’s most popular comic stereotype–the lazy, shiftless Negro. Perry was hailed by critic Robert Benchley as “the best actor that the talking movies have produced,” and Mel Watkins’s meticulously researched and sensitive biography reveals the paradoxes of this pioneering actor’s life, from Perry’s tremendous popularity to his money troubles and rowdy offscreen antics. As later generations come to recognize Perry’s prodigious talent and achievements, in Stepin Fetchit, Mel Watkins brilliantly and definitively illuminates the life and times of a legendary figure in American entertainment.

Download or read book Halle Berry written by Melissa Ewey Johnson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-11-12 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The biographies in this series for high school students are both factual and fun to read; length and format are designed to meet educators' requirements and students' interests. This book in the series details the life of actress Halle Berry from childhood through adulthood, shedding light on her family background, her personal and professional influences, and her accomplishments and struggles in an industry where many of the parts she played were written with a white actress in mind. The book includes B&W photos of Berry throughout her career, a timeline, a filmography of film and TV appearances, and a list of major awards and nominations.

Download or read book Three Bad Men written by Scott Allen Nollen and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-03-29 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These were unique, complex, personal and professional relationships between master director John Ford and his two favorite actors, John Wayne and Ward Bond. The book provides a biography of each and a detailed exploration of Ford's work as it was intertwined with the lives and work of both Wayne and Bond (whose biography here is the first ever published). The book reveals fascinating accounts of ingenuity, creativity, toil, perseverance, bravery, debauchery, futility, abuse, masochism, mayhem, violence, warfare, open- and closed-mindedness, control and chaos, brilliance and stupidity, rationality and insanity, friendship and a testing of its limits, love and hate--all committed by a "half-genius, half-Irish" cinematic visionary and his two surrogate sons: Three Bad Men.

Download or read book Mary Pickford written by Kathleen A. Feeley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On screen and off, movie star Mary Pickford personified the 'New Woman' of the early 1900s, a moniker given to women who began to demand more autonomy inside and outside the home. Well educated and career-minded, these women also embraced the new mass culture in which consumption and leisure were seen to play a pivotal role in securing happiness. Mary Pickford: Hollywood and the New Woman examines Pickford's role in the rise of industrial capitalism and consumer culture, and uses her life and unprecedented career as a wildly popular actress and savvy film mogul to illustrate the opportunities and obstacles faced by American women during this time. Following Pickford's life from her childhood on stage to her rise as a powerful studio executive, this book gives an overview of her enduring contribution to American film and mass culture. It also explores her struggles to surpass her confining public film persona as 'America's Sweetheart' with her creative and business achievements, mirroring how women, both then and today, must reconcile domestic life with professional aspirations and work. About the Lives of American Women series: Selected and edited by renowned women's historian Carol Berkin, these brief biographies are designed for use in undergraduate courses. Rather than a comprehensive approach, each biography focuses instead on a particular aspect of a woman's life that is emblematic of her time, or which made her a pivotal figure in the era. The emphasis is on a 'good read' featuring accessible writing and compelling narratives, without sacrificing sound scholarship and academic integrity. Primary sources at the end of each biography reveal the subject's perspective in her own words. Study questions and an annotated bibliography support the student reader.

Download or read book 100 Great Film Performances You Should Remember But Probably Don t written by John DiLeo and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2002 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DiLeo ventures beyond the obvious, paying tribute to a collection of acting feats that made priceless but often unappreciated contributions to the art of screen acting. So, no Scarlett O'Hara, Michael Corleone or Margo Channing here. But you will find Vivien Leigh, Al Pacino, and Bette Davis in outstanding performances that have been overshadowed by their signature roles.

Download or read book Ida Lupino Forgotten Auteur written by Alexandra Seros and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The acting career of legendary star Ida Lupino is well known, but there has been little analysis of her directorial career. She was one of the few female directors in Classical Hollywood and the only one with membership in the Directors Guild of America between 1948 and 1971. Like Orson Welles, her career was notable in transitioning from acting to directing first in film and then in television, in addition to helping to create and run the production company The Filmakers [sic]. Her films were notably about women navigating difficult positions in society, dealing with controversial issues such as rape and bigamy. Nevertheless, she was the first female director of a noir film, The Hitch-Hiker, which is a suspenseful tale of two motorists taken hostage by a serial killer in the Southwest. Alexandra Seros, a filmmaker herself, examines Lupino's career with a focus on her directorial roles and how she navigated this as a woman, as well as a wife and mother, in male-dominated Hollywood. She explains how Lupino began directing and formed The Filmakers before providing a close analysis of three of her films (Not Wanted, Never Fear, and the aforementioned The Hitch-Hiker) and examining how she navigated the shooting and negotiated with the censors to be able to tell the stories she wanted to tell. Seros then details Lupino's transition to television and her taking the director's reins in that medium as well. Lupino directed episodes in a wide variety of genres, but specialized in Westerns and thrillers. Even as the press and the studios tried to focus on her femininity as a dutiful wife and loving mother, she often refused to play along and be coded as feminine in this way. Seros analyzes three of Lupino's directed episodes, comparing them with similar work done by noted male directors Nicholas Ray, Robert Aldrich, and Alfred Hitchcock, stressing Lupino's efficient, effective work in finishing the shows on time and within budget. She finishes by arguing that Lupino was a new kind or auteur, whose collaborative "family" approach to filmmaking was far ahead of its time"--

Download or read book Miley Cyrus written by Maggie Murphy and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2010-08-15 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brief biography of the life and career of Miley Cyrus.

Download or read book I Love Miley Cyrus written by Kat Miller and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlights the life and accomplishments of the singer and actress Miley Cyrus, known for her role in the Disney Channel series "Hannah Montana."