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 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 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 William Powell written by Roger Bryant and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-12-09 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Actor William Powell is perhaps best known for his roles as charming Nick in The Thin Man films and blustery Clarence Day in Life with Father. As diverse as those characters are, they don't begin to reveal the full scope of talent demonstrated by one of Hollywood's most intelligent leading men. Elegant, witty and dignified, Powell created accessible and human characters in a great variety of roles. His talent was such that Powell has a large and growing fan base 50 years after his last film was released, evidenced by the popularity of DVD rereleases and the frequent appearance of his films on cable television. The focus of this book is Powell's work in more than 90 films, from the silent era to the age of CinemaScope, woven into the dramatic and touching story of the actor's life. It begins by leaping into how Powell and actress Myrna Loy were launched to stardom as husband and wife Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man. The next chapter sets the stage for the baby Powell's entry into the world in 1892 and details his childhood and upbringing. Following chapters trace Powell's journey into the film industry, his early career as a popular villain, and his transition to talkies in the late 1920s aided by his stage training. The book details his work at Warner Bros., which turned him into a leading man, and his years of stardom at MGM. The book describes turning points in Powell's life--the death of lover Jean Harlow, a 21-month hiatus from films while the actor battled cancer, and a new leap to the top in Life with Father. Concluding chapters detail another flurry of films and the actor's retirement. A filmography lists Powell's films from 1922 to 1955, including those believed to be lost.
Download or read book William Powell and Myrna Loy in Nuts to Will Hays written by and published by . This book was released on 1934 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Clark Gable and Carole Lombard Murder Case written by George Baxt and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A clever plot, witty innuendo, and plenty of the Hollywood greats for company." - Library Journal As Gone With the Wind approaches release, all the stars but Clark Gable prepare to head for Atlanta for the big premiere. Clark and his wife, Carole Lombard, are too distressed to celebrate the opening of the biggest movie of his career because Lydia Austin, a young actress and a protege of Carole's, is missing. In fact, kidnapping paranoia is sweeping through Hollywood, and even with body-building bodyguards like the two Clark has hired to protect Carole, no one feels safe. But Carole is not a dame to take such threats lying down. Convinced that they can help, she and Clark set themselves up as amateur sleuths. Of course, there are plenty of other celebrities in the mix: W.C. Fields alternates between anxiety over the kidnappings and trying to convince David O. Selznick that he should play Rhett Butler, and Groucho Marx also gets serious (just barely) long enough to worry about the missing girl, who is his current paramour.
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 In Search of The Thin Man written by Philip Zwerling and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-02-14 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The man who created the boldest hard boiled fiction, Dashiell Hammett, wrote The Thin Man in 1933 and launched the fun-loving, booze-swilling, mystery-solving couple Nick and Nora Charles into American culture. MGM sold millions of movie tickets by casting William Powell and Myrna Loy as this classiest of romantic couples. Over 14 years and six films, these stars navigated grave periods of history: the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. The novel and films live on as gems of a unique gritty sophistication. This complete history of The Thin Man series covers the brightest stars, tastiest scandals, headlines and conflicts behind these classic films. With a cast of hundreds, we see Hammett, his lover Lillian Hellman, and their friend Dorothy Parker fight alcoholism, sexual convention and Senator Joe McCarthy in culture wars of eerie contemporaneity.
Download or read book Sequels written by Janet G. Husband and published by American Library Association. This book was released on 2009-07-30 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to series fiction lists popular series, identifies novels by character, and offers guidance on the order in which to read unnumbered series.
Download or read book Hollywood Screwball Comedy 1934 1945 written by Grégoire Halbout and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-01-13 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2022 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Love at first sight, whirlwind marriages, break-ups, divorces, remarriage... What accounts for the enduring success of the Hollywood madcap comedies of the 1930s? Directed by masters of comedy (Hawks, LaCava, Leisen, Ruggles...) and featuring the decade's most iconic stars (Colbert, Dunne, Grant, Hepburn...), these films set romantic comedy standards for decades to come. Screwball comedy embarked on two challenging missions: to poke fun at established social norms and to undermine stereotypical depictions of gender roles, putting forward a discourse that postulated the possibility of equality between men and women. Grégoire Halbout's reexamination of screwball comedy provides a comprehensive overview of this (sub)genre, eschewing the auteurist approach and including “minor” works never before analyzed through the screwball lens. His book explains how these screwball stories met the expectations of a booming American middle class eager for the liberalization of morals, with daring plots, verbal humor and slapstick techniques. Building on the work of Cavell, Altman and Gehring, as well as international and French scholarship, Halbout's investigation unfolds in three parts. He first establishes a definition of Hollywood screwball comedy through a cross-sectional analysis of its socio-historical context and an in-depth examination of the genre. He then situates screwball comedy in relation to its institutional context. An exclusive study of archival material explains the emergence of a screwball aesthetic meant to subvert the prohibitions of the 1934 Hollywood Production Code through a verbal and visual rhetoric of diversion and mitigation. Finally, Halbout explores the social function of the genre's placement of romantic intimacy at the center of the public sphere and the democratic debate, confirming that screwball eccentricity upholds America's founding values: freedom of speech, free consent, and contractual engagement.
Download or read book A Short History of Film written by Wheeler Winston Dixon and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-01 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of international cinema is now available in a concise, conveniently sized, and affordable volume. Succinct yet comprehensive, A Short History of Film provides an accessible overview of the major movements, directors, studios, and genres from the 1880s to the present. More than 250 rare stills and illustrations accompany the text, bringing readers face to face with many of the key players and films that have marked the industry. Beginning with precursors of what we call moving pictures, Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster lead a fast-paced tour through the invention of the kinetoscope, the introduction of sound and color between the two world wars, and ultimately the computer generated imagery of the present day. They detail significant periods in world cinema, including the early major industries in Europe, the dominance of the Hollywood studio system in the 1930s and 1940s, and the French New Wave of the 1960s. Special attention is also given to small independent efforts in developing nations and the corresponding more personal independent film movement that briefly flourished in the United States, the significant filmmakers of all nations, censorship and regulation and how they have affected production everywhere, and a wide range of studios and genres. Along the way, the authors take great care to incorporate the stories of women and other minority filmmakers who have often been overlooked in other texts. Compact and easily readable, this is the best one-stop source for the history of world film available to students, teachers, and general audiences alike.
Download or read book The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery written by B. Murphy and published by Springer. This book was released on 1999-12-09 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bruce Murphy's Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery is a comprehensive guide to the genre of the murder mystery that catalogues thousands of items in a broad range of categories: authors, titles, plots, characters, weapons, methods of killing, movie and theatrical adaptations. What distinguishes this encyclopedia from the others in the field is its critical stance.
Download or read book The Annotated Big Sleep written by Raymond Chandler and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first fully annotated edition of Raymond Chandler’s 1939 classic The Big Sleep features hundreds of illuminating notes and images alongside the full text of the novel and is an essential addition to any crime fiction fan’s library. A masterpiece of noir, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep helped to define a genre. Today it remains one of the most celebrated and stylish novels of the twentieth century. This comprehensive, annotated edition offers a fascinating look behind the scenes of the novel, bringing the gritty and seductive world of Chandler's iconic private eye Philip Marlowe to life. The Annotated Big Sleep solidifies the novel’s position as one of the great works of American fiction and will surprise and enthrall Chandler’s biggest fans. Including: -Personal letters and source texts -The historical context of Chandler’s Los Angeles, including maps and images -Film stills and art from the early pulps -An analysis of class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity in the novel
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 Becoming Nick and Nora written by Rob Kozlowski and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Nick and Nora Charles in the six Thin Man movies from 1934 to 1947, the team of William Powell and Myrna Loy showed that marriage didn’t have to mean the end of the romantic comedy. From the comedic delight that was the initial The Thin Man through its five sequels as well as eight other films (including the Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld and Manhattan Melodrama), Powell and Loy were cemented in the public imagination as Hollywood’s happiest married couple. In Becoming Nick and Nora,comedy writer and Hollywood historian Rob Kozlowski follows the winding path that Powell and Loy’s screen personas took over their careers. Studios originally cultivated the two as villains in the silent era: Powell as a mustachioed, swashbuckling fiend and Loy as an “exotic” adversary. With the rise of talkies, the two managed to broaden their range beyond villainous stereotypes, but it took several false starts before they achieved their lasting legacy as Nick and Nora. Packed with behind-the-scenes details and memorable characters, this is a lively look at two tinseltown icons and a film series that remains beloved nearly a century later.
Download or read book A Short History of Film Third Edition written by Wheeler Winston Dixon and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-30 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With more than 250 images, new information on international cinema—especially Polish, Chinese, Russian, Canadian, and Iranian filmmakers—an expanded section on African-American filmmakers, updated discussions of new works by major American directors, and a new section on the rise of comic book movies and computer generated special effects, this is the most up to date resource for film history courses in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book The ABCs of Classic Hollywood written by Robert B. Ray and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-04-30 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speaking about the kind of filmmaking now known as Classic Hollywood, the most popular and influential cinema ever invented, Vincente Minnelli once gave away its secret: "I feel that a picture that stays with you is made up of a hundred or more hidden things. They're things that the audience is not conscious of, but that accumulate." What are those hidden things? Can we invent a method that will enable us to discover them? Robert Ray attempts to answer those questions by looking closely at four movies from the 1930-1945 period when the American studio system reached the peak of its economic and cultural power: Grand Hotel, The Philadelphia Story, The Maltese Falcon, and Meet Me in St. Louis. To avoid the predictable generalizations that have plagued film studies, Ray works with the movies' details-Grand Hotel's room assignments or Meet Me in St. Louis's ketchup-which are treated as mysterious but promising clues. By producing at least one entry for every letter of the alphabet, Ray demonstrates that a movie's details have much to tell us. The ABCs of Classic Hollywood is a movie primer, a deceptively simple book that spells out a fascinating account of the most powerful storytelling system ever designed.
