Download or read book Vernon and Irene Castle s Ragtime Revolution written by Eve Golden and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2007-11-30 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vernon and Irene Castle popularized ragtime dancing in the years just before World War I and made dancing a respectable pastime in America. The whisper-thin, elegant Castles were trendsetters in many ways: they traveled with a black orchestra, had an openly lesbian manager, and were animal-rights advocates decades before it became a public issue. Irene was also a fashion innovator, bobbing her hair ten years before the flapper look of the 1920s became popular. From their marriage in 1911 until 1916, the Castles were the most famous and influential dance team in the world. Their dancing schools and nightclubs were packed with society figures and white-collar workers alike. After their peak of white-hot fame, Vernon enlisted in the Royal Canadian Flying Corps, served at the front lines, and was killed in a 1918 airplane crash. Irene became a movie star and appeared in more than a dozen films between 1917 and 1922. The Castles were depicted in the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie Vernon and Irene Castle's Ragtime Revolution (1939), but the film omitted most of the interesting and controversial aspects of their lives. They were more complex than posterity would have it: Vernon was charming but irresponsible, Irene was strong-minded but self-centered, and the couple had filed for divorce before Vernon's death (information that has never before been made public). Vernon and Irene Castle's Ragtime Revolution is the fascinating story of a couple who reinvented dance and its place in twentieth-century culture.

Download or read book Astaire Dancing written by John E. Mueller and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Hollywood Musical Goes to War written by Allen L. Woll and published by Taylor Trade Publications. This book was released on 1983 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

Download or read book Top Hat written by Peter William Evans and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Top Hat is the first volume to spotlight this classic Hollywood film, probing the musical genre, notions of romance and subjectivity, as well as the contested relations between the sexes. Offers a detailed analysis of one of Hollywood's greatest musicals, including a comprehensive survey of the film's production, promotion and reception, all measured against the background of 1930s socio-political contexts in the USA Explores the musical genre and questions of (gendered) national identity, romance, subjectivity and the notion of the couple Written in a clear, accessible style, Top Hat probes text and context carefully to appeal to the student and teacher of the musical and of Hollywood film history, as well as the film-loving general reader

Download or read book The Movie Guide written by James Monaco and published by Perigee Trade. This book was released on 1992 with total page 1200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From The Big Sleep to Babette's Feast, from Lawrence of Arabia to Drugstore Cowboy, The Movie Guide offers the inside word on 3,500 of the best motion pictures ever made. James Monaco is the president and founder of BASELINE, the world's leading supplier of information to the film and television industries. Among his previous books are The Encyclopedia of Film, American Film Now, and How to Read a Film.

Download or read book Fred Astaire written by Larry Billman and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1997-08-26 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most dynamic figures of the entertainment industry, Fred Astaire's career spanned most of the twentieth century. For some, he brings to mind the world of Broadway. For others, he represents the golden age of the movie musical, particularly because of his eleven-film collaboration with Ginger Rogers. Virtually all of his fans will long remember his effortlessly graceful dance routines. International dance giants have credited his work with inspiring their careers and giving them a model of excellence. His innovations as a choreographer, dance director, and creator of musical sequences forever changed the presentation of dance on film. Though he was always in the public spotlight, he treasured his family and cherished his privacy. For a star of such stature, he was remarkably free from scandal. This reference book is a complete guide to his life and career. The volume begins with a biography that traces his life from his birth in Omaha in 1899, to his professional debut in 1905, to his Broadway and Hollywood careers, to his death in 1987. A chronology then highlights the chief events of his life. The chapters that follow provide detailed information for his work on stage, film, radio, and television. Each chapter includes entries for individual performances, with entries providing cast and credit information, plot synopses, critical commentary, and excerpts from reviews. The volume also lists his recordings, unfulfilled projects, and other information. An extensive annotated bibliography concludes the work.

Download or read book Showmen s Motion Picture Trade Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1950 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Dance Me a Song written by Beth Genné and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-30 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dancer-choreographer-directors Fred Astaire, George Balanchine and Gene Kelly and their colleagues helped to develop a distinctively modern American film-dance style and recurring dance genres for the songs and stories of the American musical. Freely crossing stylistic and class boundaries, their dances were rooted in the diverse dance and music cultures of European immigrants and African-American migrants who mingled in jazz age America. The new technology of sound cinema let them choreograph and fuse camera movement, light, and color with dance and music. Preserved intact for the largest audiences in dance history, their works continue to influence dance and film around the world. This book centers them and their colleagues within the history of dance (where their work has been marginalized) as well as film tracing their development from Broadway to Hollywood (1924-58) and contextualizing them within the American history and culture of their era. This modern style, like the nation in which it developed, was pluralist and populist. It drew from aspects of the old world and new, "high" and "low", theatrical and social dance forms, creating new sites for dance from the living room to the street. A definitive ingredient was the freer more informal movement and behavior of their jazz-age generation, which fit with song lyrics that poeticized slangy American English. The Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, and others wrote not only songs but extended dance-driven scores tailored to their choreography, giving a new prominence to the choreographer and dancer-actor. This book discuss how these choreographers collaborated with directors like Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen and cinematographers like Gregg Toland, musicians, dancers, designers and technicians to synergize music and moving image in new ways. Eventually, concepts and visual-musical devices derived from dance-making would give entire films the rhythmic flow and feeling of dance. Dancing Americans came to be seen around the world as archetypal embodiments of the free-spirited optimism and energy of America itself.

Download or read book Screen Couple Chemistry written by Martha P. Nochimson and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-05 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astaire and Rogers, Tracy and Hepburn. Just the mention of their names evokes the powerful chemistry between these screen couples, which utterly transcended the often formulaic films in which they appeared together. Indeed, watching the synergistic flow of energy between charismatic screen partners is one of the great pleasures of cinema and television, as well as an important vehicle for thinking through issues of intimacy and gender relations. In this book, Martha P. Nochimson engages in a groundbreaking study of screen couple chemistry. She begins by classifying various types of couples to define what sets the synergistic couple apart from other onscreen pairings. Then she moves into extended discussions of four enduring screen couples—Maureen O'Sullivan/Johnny Weissmuller, Myrna Loy/William Powell, Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers, and Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy. Using theories of neuroscience, she demonstrates that their onscreen chemistry is a very real phenomenon, powerful enough to subvert conventional formulations of male/female relations. Material she has uncovered in the infamous Production Code Administration files illuminates the historical context of her contentions. Finally, Nochimson traces the screen couple to its present-day incarnation in such pairs as Woody Allen/Diane Keaton, Scully/Mulder of The X-Files, and Cliff/Claire Huxtable of The Cosby Show.

Download or read book Let s Bring Back written by Lesley M. M. Blume and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated A-to-Z tribute to old-fashioned items worth rediscovering: “Wistful . . . charming . . . like a stroll down memory lane.” —Elle Whatever happened to cuckoo clocks? Or bed curtains? Why do we have so many “friends” while doing away with the much more useful word “acquaintance”? All of these things, plus hot toddies, riddles, proverbs, corsets, calling cards, and many more, are due for a revival. Throughout this whimsical, beautifully illustrated encyclopedia of nostalgia, Lesley M.M. Blume breathes new life into the elegant, mysterious, and delightful trappings of bygone eras, honoring the timeless tradition of artful living along the way. Inspired by her much loved Huffington Post column of the same name and featuring entries from famous icons of style and culture, Let’s Bring Back leads readers to rediscover the things that entertained, awed, beautified, satiated, and fascinated in eras past. “Witty . . . recommended reading.” —Country Living “If you’re feeling lousy and you read this book, it awakens you to things that have made you happy in your life. It reminds you of a time when certain things ideas, gestures got you through . . . and revels in an idea of life that’s lived in 3-D, not 2-D.” —Sally Singer, editor, T: The New York Times Magazine

Download or read book Time written by Briton Hadden and published by . This book was released on 1939 with total page 1030 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Fred Astaire written by Stephen Harvey and published by Pyramid Publishing (OH). This book was released on 1975 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Oxford Companion to the American Musical written by Thomas S. Hischak and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 958 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dictionary of short entries on American musicals and their practitioners, including performers, composers, lyricists, producers, and choreographers

Download or read book Leonard Maltin s 2014 Movie Guide written by Leonard Maltin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 2673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summer blockbusters and independent sleepers; masterworks of Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and Martin Scorsese; the timeless comedy of the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton; animated classics from Walt Disney and Pixar; the finest foreign films ever made. This 2014 edition covers the modern era, from 1965 to the present, while including all the great older films you can’t afford to miss—and those you can—from box-office smashes to cult classics to forgotten gems to forgettable bombs, listed alphabetically, and complete with all the essential information you could ask for. NEW Nearly 16,000 capsule movie reviews, with more than 300 new entries NEW More than 25,000 DVD and video listings NEW Up-to-date list of mail-order and online sources for buying and renting DVDs and videos NEW Completely updated index of leading performers MORE Official motion picture code ratings from G to NC-17 MORE Old and new theatrical and video releases rated **** to BOMB MORE Exact running times—an invaluable guide for recording and for discovering which movies have been edited MORE Reviews of little-known sleepers, foreign films, rarities, and classics AND Leonard’s all-new personal recommendations for movie lovers • Date of release, running time, director, stars, MPAA ratings, color or black-and-white • Concise summary, capsule review, and four-star-to-BOMB rating system • Precise information on films shot in widescreen format • Symbols for DVDs, videos, and laserdiscs • Completely updated index of leading actors • Up-to-date list of mail-order and online sources for buying and renting DVDs and videos

Download or read book The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville written by Anthony Slide and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2012-03-12 with total page 649 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville provides a unique record of what was once America's preeminent form of popular entertainment from the late 1800s through the early 1930s. It includes entries not only on the entertainers themselves, but also on those who worked behind the scenes, the theatres, genres, and historical terms. Entries on individual vaudevillians include biographical information, samplings of routines and, often, commentary by the performers. Many former vaudevillians were interviewed for the book, including Milton Berle, Block and Sully, Kitty Doner, Fifi D'Orsay, Nick Lucas, Ken Murray, Fayard Nicholas, Olga Petrova, Rose Marie, Arthur Tracy, and Rudy Vallee. Where appropriate, entries also include bibliographies. The volume concludes with a guide to vaudeville resources and a general bibliography. Aside from its reference value, with its more than five hundred entries, The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville discusses the careers of the famous and the forgotten. Many of the vaudevillians here, including Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jimmy Durante, W. C. Fields, Bert Lahr, and Mae West, are familiar names today, thanks to their continuing careers on screen. At the same time, and given equal coverage, are forgotten acts: legendary female impersonators Bert Savoy and Jay Brennan, the vulgar Eva Tanguay with her billing as “The I Don't Care Girl,” male impersonator Kitty Doner, and a host of “freak” acts.

Download or read book The Great Hollywood Musical Pictures written by James Robert Parish and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 824 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Takes a lively look at some 340 motion pictures from Hollywood's most distinctive genre.

Download or read book Fast Copy written by Dan Jenkins and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2001-04-01 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1935 Betsy Throckmorton’s father lures her from a New York job with Time magazine back to Claybelle, Texas, with the promise that she can be the editor of his Claybelle Standard-Times. Betsy brings along her husband, Ted Winton, an easterner and Yale graduate to whom she is constantly explaining Texas. Ted will run Ben Throckmorton’s radio station, KVAT, where Booty and Them Others sing in rivalry with the better known WBAP Light Crust Doughboys. In Texas, it’s the middle of the Depression and the Drought. And Prohibition is barely over, liquor still a controversy. Every city has its hobo camp, and Claybelle has the Star of Hope Mission. But it is also the time of new oil money, high living, infidelity, and tangled love triangles. Betsy and Ted chain-smoke and drink often and long, they wouldn’t miss a Paschal High School or TCU football game, they party at the Casino on Jacksboro Highway, and dine at Claybelle’s Shadylawn Country Club. Betsy is a serious journalist though, and she sets out to change the paper, clashing with the managing editor when she claims international not state news belongs on page one. She clashes with the columnists when she tries to sharpen their leads. The Texas Murder Machine becomes her big story, when she suspects that Texas Rangers may be killing innocent young men to collect rewards offered by the Texas Bankers Association. Betsy’s journalistic determination leads to a personal tragedy that changes her life forever—and makes her a determined, relentless newswoman. Fast Copy is a page-turner that combines romantic comedy with the best of the thriller genre. But it’s much more. Dan Jenkins captures Texas in the mid-1930s with a clarity that brings it alive, and his affection for Texas, Fort Worth, and TCU are revealed on every page. Only a native like Jenkins would include the minute details of a TCU-SMU game, the new zephyr stainless steel railroad train, the T&P railroad station, the Fort Worth Cats, and LeGrave Field. His portrait of Claybelle and its leading society folks is tongue-in-cheek funny and right on the mark. Texans should treasure this book for years to come.