Download or read book Myrna Loy written by Emily W. Leider and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-10-03 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the beginning, Myrna Loy’s screen image conjured mystery, a sense of something withheld. "Who is she?" was a question posed in the first fan magazine article published about her in 1925. This first ever biography of the wry and sophisticated actress best known for her role as Nora Charles, wife to dapper detective William Powell in The Thin Man, offers an unprecedented picture of her life and an extraordinary movie career that spanned six decades. Opening with Loy’s rough-and-tumble upbringing in Montana, the book takes us to Los Angeles in the 1920s, where Loy’s striking looks caught the eye of Valentino, through the silent and early sound era to her films of the thirties, when Loy became a top box office draw, and to her robust post–World War II career. Throughout, Emily W. Leider illuminates the actress’s friendships with luminaries such as Cary Grant, Clark Gable, and Joan Crawford and her collaborations with the likes of John Barrymore, David O. Selznick, Sam Goldwyn, and William Wyler, among many others. This highly engaging biography offers a fascinating slice of studio era history and gives us the first full picture of a very private woman who has often been overlooked despite her tremendous star power.
Download or read book The Films of Myrna Loy written by Lawrence J. Quirk and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Myrna Loy written by James Kotsilibas-Davis and published by Alfred A. Knopf. This book was released on 1987 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The actress recalls her long, rich, and varied career in Hollywood, on the stage, and as a political activist.
Download or read book Being and Becoming A Memoir written by Myrna Loy and published by Dean Street Press. This book was released on 2021-10-04 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Hollywood memoir, first published in 1987.
Download or read book The Thin Man written by Dashiell Hammett and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 2023-02-21 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Thin Man (1934) is a detective novel by Dashiell Hammett, made famouos by the series of movies based on it starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. The story is set in New York City during the Christmas season of 1932, in the last days of Prohibition in the United States. Nick Charles, a retired private detective, and Nora, his socialite wife, become embroiled in a mystery.
Download or read book The Rains Came written by Louis Bromfield and published by Simon Publications. This book was released on 2001-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the town of Ranchipur, four people find their lives become entwined by unexpected feelings and events they cannot control. Tom Ransome, son of an English earl, is living a painter's life. He is pursued by a flirtatious young English girl who adores him. Lady Esketh is a beautiful bored sophisticate and Tom's former girlfriend. And Major Rama is the dedicated Hindu surgeon who captures her heart. When a catastrophic earthquake and flood bring disaster to India, all their lives are forever transformed by the striking clash between good and evil, duty and forbidden love.
Download or read book A Genius in the Family written by Hilary Du Pré and published by Minerva. This book was released on 1998 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since her death in 1987, Jacqueline du Pre's brother and sister have long felt that her life story has never been properly told. This is an often painful account of what happens when a prodigy is born into a family and how the driving force of the talent controlled not only her life, but theirs.
Download or read book William Powell and Myrna Loy written by Charles River Editors and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-14 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading "My first scene with Bill, a night shot on the back lot, happened before we'd even met. Woody was apparently too busy for introductions. My instructions were to run out of a building, through a crowd, and into a strange car. When Woody called 'Action, ' I opened the car door, jumped in, and landed smack on William Powell's lap. He looked up nonchalantly: 'Miss Loy, I presume?' I said, 'Mr. Powell?' And that's how I met the man who would be my partner in fourteen films." - Myrna Loy It is something of a clich� to say that an actor's life was like a movie he or she might have starred in, but in the case of Myrna Loy, the clich� is true. It is easy to picture her as a little girl, riding the range with her rancher father, sitting around the table and participating charmingly in family discussions of current events. It is not hard to imagine the camera panning to her first and then second visits to Hollywood, her backlot tour, and starry-eyed decision to become an actress. There would have to be some drama, which the story of her father's untimely death would provide, along with some sort of deathbed promise made to him to care for the rest of the family. Her mother would be brave but resolute as she moved her young family to California. The lighting on set would brighten and the tempo of the background would pick up as she walked down the Los Angeles streets. Perhaps the camera would spin to show the passage of time, as the now adult Myrna got a job as a dancer and was then "discovered." There would have to be a scene of her signing her new surname, Loy, to her MGM contract, likely as several cigar smoking men looked on. Later the audience would see her fight off casting couch advances, earning her the reputation as the only good girl in Hollywood even as she was cast again and again in sultry, vampish roles. She would endure these with a positive attitude while always being on the lookout for something better. Then, her big break would come. The camera would show her first comical meeting with William Powell and then a spinning scene of ticket after ticket being sold to their new picture, The Thin Man. Her star obviously on the rise, ominous music would suddenly play, followed by booming cannons and falling bombs. A newspaper would flash on screen, "Pearl Harbor Bombed." Then the audience would see her stride determinedly into the movie studio offices and announce to those above that her love of country superseded her career ambitions and that she would be taking the duration of the war off from making pictures. Patriotic music would play as she was shown gathering clothing and giving speeches until, once more, the boys came marching home. In the 1920s, the burgeoning movie industry was starting to come into its own, and while older silent film stars like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton reached the peak of Hollywood, some actors born near the beginning of the 20th century were ready to capitalize. While actors like Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant remain household names, and actresses like Greta Garbo are still widely remembered, few had careers that enjoyed the success of William Powell. In a career spanning several decades, Powell would receive three Oscar nominations for Best Actor for critically acclaimed movies, so it is somewhat ironic that he is mostly remembered today for his association with the more famous Myrna Loy. Together, they starred in 14 films, including the 1934 box office hit, The Thin Man. One thing that helped Powell's career along in the old days when Hollywood would only cast white actors in major roles, no matter what the nationality of the character was supposed to be, were his dark good looks.
Download or read book The William Powell and Myrna Loy Murder Case written by George Baxt and published by St Martins Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Powell and Myrna Loy bring their film roles as Nick and Nora Charles to life as they investigate a blackmailing Hollywood madam with a customer who will do anything, even murder, to keep his identity a secret. By the author of The Betty Davis Murder Case.
Download or read book Myrna Loy written by Karyn Kay and published by Jove Books. This book was released on 1977-01-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fast Talking Dames written by Maria DiBattista and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There is nothing like a dame", proclaims the song from South Pacific. Certainly there is nothing like the fast-talking dame of screen comedies in the 1930s and '40s. In this engaging book, film scholar and movie buff Maria DiBattista celebrates the fast-talking dame as an American original. Coming of age during the Depression, the dame -- a woman of lively wit and brash speech -- epitomized a new style of self-reliant, articulate womanhood. Dames were quick on the uptake and hardly ever downbeat. They seemed to know what to say and when to say it. In their fast and breezy talk seemed to lie the secret of happiness, but also the key to reality. DiBattista offers vivid portraits of the grandest dames of the era, including Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, Rosalind Russell, Barbara Stanwyck, and others, and discusses the great films that showcased their compelling way with words -- and with men. With their snappy repartee and vivid colloquialisms, these fast-talkers were verbal muses at a time when Americans were reinventing both language and the political institutions of democratic culture. As they taught their laconic male counterparts (most notably those appealing but tongue-tied American icons, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, and James Stewart) the power and pleasures of speech, they also reimagined the relationship between the sexes. In such films as Bringing Up Baby, The Awful Truth, and The Lady Eve, the fast-talking dame captivated moviegoers of her time. For audiences today, DiBattista observes, the sassy heroine still has much to say.
Download or read book Fay Wray and Robert Riskin written by Victoria Riskin and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Biography) A Hollywood love story, a Hollywood memoir, a dual biography of two of Hollywood’s most famous figures, whose golden lives were lived at the center of Hollywood’s golden age, written by their daughter, an acclaimed writer and producer. Fay Wray was most famous as the woman—the blonde in a diaphanous gown—who captured the heart of the mighty King Kong, the twenty-five-foot, sixty-ton gorilla, as he placed her, nestled in his eight-foot hand, on the ledge of the 102-story Empire State Building, putting Wray at the height of New York’s skyline and cinematic immortality. Wray starred in more than 120 pictures opposite Hollywood's biggest stars—Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper (The Legion of the Condemned, The First Kiss, The Texan, One Sunday Afternoon), Clark Gable, William Powell, and Charles Boyer; from cowboy stars Hoot Gibson and Art Accord to Ronald Colman (The Unholy Garden), Claude Rains, Ralph Richardson, and Melvyn Douglas. She was directed by the masters of the age, from Fred Niblo, Erich von Stroheim (The Wedding March), and Mauritz Stiller (The Street of Sin) to Leo McCarey, William Wyler, Gregory La Cava, “Wild Bill” William Wellman, Merian C. Cooper (The Four Feathers, King Kong), Josef von Sternberg (Thunderbolt), Dorothy Arzner (Behind the Make-Up), Frank Capra (Dirigible), Michael Curtiz (Doctor X), Raoul Walsh (The Bowery), and Vincente Minnelli. The book’s—and Wray’s—counterpart: Robert Riskin, considered one of the greatest screenwriters of all time. Academy Award–winning writer (nominated for five), producer, ten-year-long collaborator with Frank Capra on such pictures as American Madness, It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Lost Horizon, and Meet John Doe, hailed by many, among them F. Scott Fitzgerald, as “among the best screenwriters in the business.” Riskin wrote women characters who were smart, ornery, sexy, always resilient, as he perfected what took full shape in It Happened One Night, the Riskin character, male or female—breezy, self-made, streetwise, optimistic, with a sense of humor that is subtle and sure. Fay Wray and Robert Riskin lived large lives, finding each other after establishing their artistic selves and after each had had many romantic attachments—Wray, an eleven-year-long difficult marriage and a fraught affair with Clifford Odets, and Riskin, a series of romances with, among others, Carole Lombard, Glenda Farrell, and Loretta Young. Here are Wray’s and Riskin’s lives, their work, their fairy-tale marriage that ended so tragically. Here are their dual, quintessential American lives, ultimately and blissfully intertwined.
Download or read book The Complete Films of William Powell written by Lawrence J. Quirk and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides plot summaries, cast, credits, and review excerpts for each of Powell's films including the early silent roles, and includes an overview of his career
Download or read book Femme Noir written by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-10-26 with total page 1298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though often thought of as primarily a male vehicle, the film noir offered some of the most complex female roles of any movies of the 1940s and 1950s. Stars such as Barbara Stanwyck, Gene Tierney and Joan Crawford produced some of their finest performances in noir movies, while such lesser known actresses as Peggie Castle, Hope Emerson and Helen Walker made a lasting impression with their roles in the genre. These six women and 43 others who were most frequently featured in films noirs are profiled here, focusing primarily on their work in the genre and its impact on their careers. A filmography of all noir appearances is provided for each actress.
Download or read book The Thin Man Murder Over Cocktails Hardback written by Charles Tranberg and published by BearManor Media. This book was released on 2015-09-21 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the HARDBACK version. The Thin Man films are one of the most highly regarded and successful series of films from Hollywood's classic era. This book looks at the people who populated the films, including full chapter profiles of its stars, William Powell and Myrna Loy, whose chemistry together was a huge reason for the success of the films. As Nick and Nora Charles they knocked the stereotypes of on-screen marriage out of the park and replaced the stiff and formal with fun and sexy. But not to be forgotten are the great character actors who added their own special magic to each and every film. Each chapter includes profiles of these actors as well as the creative teams behind the films. The book offers up detailed synopses of each of the films as well as behind-the-scenes anecdotes and trivia. If you love The Thin Man then this is the book for you! Praise for Charles Tranberg's other books: "By virtue of its amazing output and longevity, Moorehead's career, not to mention life, would be almost impossible to contain in a single volume, but Tranberg is in command of his subject, deftly covering the wide expanse of Agnes Moorehead's world." Laura Wagner, Classic Images, review of I Love the Illusion: The Life and Career of Agnes Moorehead. "This is a fond look at one of the most durable and under-appreciated stars in Hollywood history." Tom Clegett, The Santa Fe New Mexican, review of Fred MacMurray: A Biography.
Download or read book Glamour in a Golden Age written by Adrienne L. McLean and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, William Powell and Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, and Gary Cooper-Glamour in a Golden Age presents original essays from eminent film scholars that analyze movie stars of the 1930s against the background of contemporary American cultural history. Stardom is approached as an effect of, and influence on, the particular historical and industrial contexts that enabled these actors and actresses to be discovered, featured in films, publicized, and to become recognized and admired-sometimes even notorious-parts of the cultural landscape. Using archival and popular material, including fan and mass market magazines, other promotional and publicity material, and of course films themselves, contributors also discuss other artists who were incredibly popular at the time, among them Ann Harding, Ruth Chatterton, Nancy Carroll, Kay Francis, and Constance Bennett.
Download or read book The Cinema of Tsui Hark written by Lisa Morton and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tsui Hark, one of China’s most famous film artists, is little known outside of Asia even though he has directed, produced, written, or acted in dozens of film, some of which are considered to be classics of modern Asian cinema. This work begins with a biography of the man and a look at his place in Hong Kong and world cinema, his influences, and his thematic obsessions. Each major film of his career is then reviewed, production details are provided, and comments from Tsui Hark himself are given.
