Madeline Kahn

Madeline Kahn PDF Author: William V. Madison
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617037621
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Get Book Here

Book Description
Best known for her Oscar-nominated roles in the smash hits Paper Moon and Blazing Saddles, Madeline Kahn (1942–1999) was one of the most popular comedians of her time—and one of the least understood. In private, she was as reserved and refined as her characters were bold and bawdy. Almost a Method actor in her approach, she took her work seriously. When crew members and audiences laughed, she asked why—as if they were laughing at her—and all her life she remained unsure of her gifts. William V. Madison examines Kahn's film career, including not only her triumphs with Mel Brooks and Peter Bogdanovich, but also her overlooked performances in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother and Judy Berlin, her final film. Her work in television—notably her sitcoms—also comes into focus. New York theater showered her with accolades, but also with remarkably bad luck, culminating in a disastrous outing in On the Twentieth Century that wrecked her reputation on Broadway. Only with her Tony-winning performance in The Sisters Rosensweig, fifteen years later, did Kahn regain her standing. Drawing on new interviews with family, friends, and such colleagues as Lily Tomlin, Carol Burnett, Gene Wilder, Harold Prince, and Eileen Brennan, as well as archival press and private writings, Madison uncovers Kahn's lonely childhood and her struggles as a single woman working to provide for her erratic mother. Above all, Madison reveals the paramount importance of music in Kahn's life. A talented singer, she entertained offers for operatic engagements long after she was an established Hollywood star, and she treated each script as a score. As Kahn told one friend, her ambition was “to be the music.”

Madeline Kahn

Madeline Kahn PDF Author: William V. Madison
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617037621
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Get Book Here

Book Description
Best known for her Oscar-nominated roles in the smash hits Paper Moon and Blazing Saddles, Madeline Kahn (1942–1999) was one of the most popular comedians of her time—and one of the least understood. In private, she was as reserved and refined as her characters were bold and bawdy. Almost a Method actor in her approach, she took her work seriously. When crew members and audiences laughed, she asked why—as if they were laughing at her—and all her life she remained unsure of her gifts. William V. Madison examines Kahn's film career, including not only her triumphs with Mel Brooks and Peter Bogdanovich, but also her overlooked performances in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother and Judy Berlin, her final film. Her work in television—notably her sitcoms—also comes into focus. New York theater showered her with accolades, but also with remarkably bad luck, culminating in a disastrous outing in On the Twentieth Century that wrecked her reputation on Broadway. Only with her Tony-winning performance in The Sisters Rosensweig, fifteen years later, did Kahn regain her standing. Drawing on new interviews with family, friends, and such colleagues as Lily Tomlin, Carol Burnett, Gene Wilder, Harold Prince, and Eileen Brennan, as well as archival press and private writings, Madison uncovers Kahn's lonely childhood and her struggles as a single woman working to provide for her erratic mother. Above all, Madison reveals the paramount importance of music in Kahn's life. A talented singer, she entertained offers for operatic engagements long after she was an established Hollywood star, and she treated each script as a score. As Kahn told one friend, her ambition was “to be the music.”

Why are We Reading Ovid's Handbook on Rape?

Why are We Reading Ovid's Handbook on Rape? PDF Author: Madeleine Kahn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317249003
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why Are We Reading Ovid's Handbook on Rape? raises feminist issues in a way that reminds people why they matter. We eavesdrop on the vivid student characters in their hilarious, frustrating, and thought-provoking efforts to create strong and flexible selves against the background of representations of women in contemporary and classical Western literature. Young women working together in a group make surprising choices about what to learn, and how to go about learning it. Along the way they pose some provocative questions about how well traditional education serves women. Equally engaging is Kahn's own journey as she confronts questions that are fundamental to women, to teachers, to students and to parents: Why do we read? What can we teach? and What does gender have to do with it?

Young Frankenstein: A Mel Brooks Book

Young Frankenstein: A Mel Brooks Book PDF Author: Mel Brooks
Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal
ISBN: 031631546X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mel Brooks' own words telling all about the players, the filming, and studio antics during the production of this great comedy classic. The book is alive and teeming with hundreds of photos, original interviews, and hilarious commentary. Young Frankenstein was made with deep respect for the craft and history of cinema-and for the power of a good schwanzstucker joke. This picture-driven book, written by one of the greatest comedy geniuses of all time, takes readers inside the classic film's marvelous creation story via never-before-seen black and white and color photography from the set and contemporary interviews with the cast and crew, most notably, legendary writer-director Mel Brooks. With access to more than 225 behind-the-scenes photos and production stills, and with captions written by Brooks, this book will also rely on interviews with gifted director of photography Gerald Hirschfeld, Academy Award-winning actress Cloris Leachman and veteran producer Michael Gruskoff. Mel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, comedian, actor, producer, composer and songwriter. Brooks is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies including The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World, Part I, Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. More recently, he had a smash hit on Broadway with the musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers. An EGOT winner, he received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009, the 41st AFI Life Achievement Award in June 2013, and a British Film Institute Fellowship in March 2015. Three of Brooks' classics have appeared on AFI's 100 Years . . . 100 Laughs list. Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13. Judd Apatow is one of the most important comic minds of his generation. He wrote and directed the films The 40-Year-Old Virgin (co-written with Steve Carell), Knocked Up, Funny People, and This Is 40, and his producing credits include Superbad, Bridesmaids, and Anchorman. Apatow is the executive producer of HBO's Girls.

Born Yesterday

Born Yesterday PDF Author: Garson Kanin
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
ISBN: 9780822201366
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 100

Get Book Here

Book Description
THE STORY: The vulgar, egotistic junkman Harry Brock has come to a swanky hotel in Washington to make crooked deals with government big-wigs. He has brought with him the charming but dumb ex-chorus girl Billie, whose lack of social graces embarrass

Narrative Transvestism

Narrative Transvestism PDF Author: Madeleine Kahn
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501721852
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Get Book Here

Book Description
Many of the earliest canonical novels—including Defoe's Moll Flanders and Roxana and Richardson's Pamela and Clarissa—were written by men who assumed the first-person narrative voice of women. What does it mean for a man to write his "autobiography" as if he were a woman? What did early novelists have to gain from it, in a period when woman's realm was devalued and woman's voice rarely heard in public? How does the male author behind the voice reveal himself to readers, and how do our glimpses of him affect our experience of the novel? Does it matter if the woman he has created is believable as a woman? Why does "she" inevitably rail against the perfidy of men? Kahn maintains that the answers to such questions lie in the nature of "narrative transvestism" -her term for the device through which a male author directs the reader's interpretation by temporarily abandoning himself to a culturally defined female voice and sensibility and then reasserting his male voice. In her innovative readings of key eighteenth-century English novels, Kahn draws upon a range of contemporary critical approaches. Lucid and witty, Narrative Transvestism will serve as a model of analysis for readers interested in issues of gender in narrative, including feminist theorists, students and scholars of the eighteenth-century novel, and critics interested in the applications of psychoanalysis to literature.

All About Me!

All About Me! PDF Author: Mel Brooks
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 059315911X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 481

Get Book Here

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • At 95, the legendary Mel Brooks continues to set the standard for comedy across television, film, and the stage. Now he shares his story for the first time in “a wonderful addition to a seminal career” (San Francisco Chronicle), “infused with nostalgia and his signature hilarity” (Parade). ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: New York Post • “Laugh-out-loud hilarious and always fascinating, from the great Mel Brooks. What else do you expect from the man who knew Jesus and dated Joan of Arc?”—Billy Crystal For anyone who loves American comedy, the long wait is over. Here are the never-before-told, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and remembrances from a master storyteller, filmmaker, and creator of all things funny. All About Me! charts Mel Brooks’s meteoric rise from a Depression-era kid in Brooklyn to the recipient of the National Medal of Arts. Whether serving in the United States Army in World War II, or during his burgeoning career as a teenage comedian in the Catskills, Mel was always mining his experiences for material, always looking for the perfect joke. His iconic career began with Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, where he was part of the greatest writers’ room in history, which included Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart. After co-creating both the mega-hit 2000 Year Old Man comedy albums and the classic television series Get Smart, Brooks’s stellar film career took off. He would go on to write, direct, and star in The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, and Spaceballs, as well as produce groundbreaking and eclectic films, including The Elephant Man, The Fly, and My Favorite Year. Brooks then went on to conquer Broadway with his record-breaking, Tony-winning musical, The Producers. All About Me! offers fans insight into the inspiration behind the ideas for his outstanding collection of boundary-breaking work, and offers details about the many close friendships and collaborations Brooks had, including those with Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Gene Wilder, Madeleine Kahn, Alfred Hitchcock, and the great love of his life, Anne Bancroft. Filled with tales of struggle, achievement, and camaraderie (and dozens of photographs), readers will gain a more personal and deeper understanding of the incredible body of work behind one of the most accomplished and beloved entertainers in history.

The Sisters Rosensweig

The Sisters Rosensweig PDF Author: Wendy Wasserstein
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156000130
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Get Book Here

Book Description
Three Jewish middle-aged sisters, originally from Brooklyn, come together in Queen Anne's Gate, London, to celebrate the fifty-fourth birthday of Sara, the eldest, now a brilliant British banker. Divorced, a single mother, Sara no longer sees the necessity for romance. Gorgeous, suburban housewife and mother, is also a talk-show personality. And Pfeni, journalist and travel writer, still hasn't written her serious book on the women of Tajikistan. Pfeni's boyfriend, Geoffrey, director of the hit musical The Scarlet Pimpernel, brings to Sara's house Mervyn, a faux furrier, "the world leader in synthetic animal protective covering". Sara meets Merv and finds that even at fifty-four there are possibilities. An exuberant, heart-warming, contemporary comedy by one of America's best playwrights.

Scrambled Feet

Scrambled Feet PDF Author: John Driver
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573681202
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 82

Get Book Here

Book Description
This intimate musical revue is a zany, hilarious spoof dedicated to satirizing every conceivable aspect of show business. Among the many skits are a pointed parody of theatre party ladies, a wrestling match between the "Elephant Man" and the paraplegic hero of Whose Life Is It Anyway?, the traumas of a suburban couple getting to and going from the theater, a madrigal on the popularity of British plays and performers, and takeoffs on critics and Joseph Papp and his Public Theatre. It's a perfect show for anyone involved with the theatre.

But Darling, I'm Your Auntie Mame!

But Darling, I'm Your Auntie Mame! PDF Author: Richard Tyler Jordan
Publisher: Kensington Books
ISBN: 9780758204820
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
Provides a close-up look at the many stage productions of the musical and its film adaptation of Patrick Dennis's best-selling novel Auntie Mame, looking at the creation of this legendary fictional character and the impact it had on the lives and careers of such celebrities as Rosalind Russell, Angela Lansbury, and Lucille Ball who took on the role of Mame. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

In the Boom Boom Room

In the Boom Boom Room PDF Author: David Rabe
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802196950
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 125

Get Book Here

Book Description
A searing portrait of a young dancer’s descent into hell—extensively revised and returned to the two-act structure originally intended by the author. Chrissy, a bright and not-quite-innocent woman with visions of a career as a dancer, finds herself in the Boom Boom Room, a disco/bar in Philadelphia meant to be her first step on the road to stardom. Instead, she finds herself fighting to keep her dreams intact amid the anesthetic sex and stimulation that surround her, the psychological residue of her parents’ betrayals, and the bizarre pack of suitors who follow her. In a desperate search for love and hope, Chrissy careens from the seductive mistress of ceremonies at the Boom Boom Room to the earnestly friendly gay man next door to a brutally passionate lover. In its compassionate look at Chrissy’s living nightmare, In the Boom Boom Room is a piercing look at a society dangerously close to our own lives, and a drama that captures both our hearts and our heads.