Dark Victory

Dark Victory PDF Author: Ed Sikov
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805088632
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
A biography of Bette Davis, focusing on her acting career, drawing from interviews with friends, directors, and admirers, archival research, and a new look at her films to provide insights into her personal and professional life.

Dark Victory

Dark Victory PDF Author: Ed Sikov
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805088632
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
A biography of Bette Davis, focusing on her acting career, drawing from interviews with friends, directors, and admirers, archival research, and a new look at her films to provide insights into her personal and professional life.

Mrs. Leslie Carter

Mrs. Leslie Carter PDF Author: Craig Clinton
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786427477
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Born Caroline Louise Dudley, Mrs. Leslie Carter was destined to become one of America's principal turn-of-the century actresses. In 1889, a high profile divorce case labeled her an adulteress and sent her to the brink of poverty. With characteristic resilience, however, Mrs. Carter used infamy to her advantage. Retaining her married name as an act of revenge against her ex-husband, she approached David Belasco, one of the foremost playwright/directors of the day, and persuaded him to teach her the art of acting. So began one of theatre's most prolific partnerships. Not only did Belasco become Mrs. Carter's acting coach, he composed plays specifically as vehicles to showcase her particular talents. Although their relationship ruptured in 1906, Mrs. Carter continued to enjoy international renown. Weathering the changing times and methods of the early twentieth century, she persevered through stage, silent movies and vaudeville shows. This biography focuses particularly on Mrs. Carter's successful career and on her professional partnership with David Belasco. Spanning a period of radical transformation in American theatre, her career reflected--and endured--the artistic changes which occurred during the decades on either side of the century mark. Period photographs and theatrical art are included.

Mother Goddam

Mother Goddam PDF Author: Whitney Stine
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Motion picture actors and actresses
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
One of Hollywood's famous actresses offers a running commentary of personal sidelights to the movies in which she appeared.

The American Pipe Dream

The American Pipe Dream PDF Author: Max Shulman
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609388453
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
"The American Pipe Dream examines the representational history of addiction on the U.S. stage from 1890 to the start of the nation's involvement in the second World War in 1941. Through intensive archival work, textual and performance analysis, and by considering related literary, legislative, and medical histories, this work argues that performance was essential in the creation of the drug addict in the U.S. cultural imagination. Though little attention has been paid to the figure of the stage-addict, this conventionalized figure was a major presence in U.S. popular entertainment through the Progressive Era into the Roaring Twenties, and through the Great Depression. The aim of this study is to trace this complex history, establish the stage-addict's place in U.S. theatre studies, and, by doing so, provide a new lens for examining the history of drug addiction and drug use in the U.S"--

When Warners Brought Broadway to Hollywood, 1923-1939

When Warners Brought Broadway to Hollywood, 1923-1939 PDF Author: Martin Shingler
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137406585
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
This book offers a different take on the early history of Warner Bros., the studio renowned for introducing talking pictures and developing the gangster film and backstage musical comedy. The focus here is on the studio’s sustained commitment to produce films based on stage plays. This led to the creation of a stock company of talented actors, to the introduction of sound cinema, to the recruitment of leading Broadway stars such as John Barrymore and George Arliss and to films as diverse as The Gold Diggers (1923), The Marriage Circle (1924), Beau Brummel (1924), Disraeli (1929), Lilly Turner (1933), The Petrified Forest (1936) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). Even the most crippling effects of the Depression in 1933 did not prevent Warners’ production of films based on stage plays, many being transformed into star vehicles for the likes of Ruth Chatterton, Leslie Howard and Bette Davis.

A Life of Barbara Stanwyck

A Life of Barbara Stanwyck PDF Author: Victoria Wilson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439194068
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1056

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Book Description
“860 glittering pages” (Janet Maslin, The New York Times): The first volume of the full-scale astonishing life of one of our greatest screen actresses—her work, her world, her Hollywood through an American century. Frank Capra called her, “The greatest emotional actress the screen has yet known.” Now Victoria Wilson gives us the first volume of the rich, complex life of Barbara Stanwyck, an actress whose career in pictures spanned four decades beginning with the coming of sound (eighty-eight motion pictures) and lasted in television from its infancy in the 1950s through the 1980s. Here is Stanwyck, revealed as the quintessential Brooklyn girl whose family was in fact of old New England stock; her years in New York as a dancer and Broadway star; her fraught marriage to Frank Fay, Broadway genius; the adoption of a son, embattled from the outset; her partnership with Zeppo Marx (the “unfunny Marx brother”) who altered the course of Stanwyck’s movie career and with her created one of the finest horse breeding farms in the west; and her fairytale romance and marriage to the younger Robert Taylor, America’s most sought-after male star. Here is the shaping of her career through 1940 with many of Hollywood's most important directors, among them Frank Capra, “Wild Bill” William Wellman, George Stevens, John Ford, King Vidor, Cecil B. Demille, Preston Sturges, set against the times—the Depression, the New Deal, the rise of the unions, the advent of World War II, and a fast-changing, coming-of-age motion picture industry. And at the heart of the book, Stanwyck herself—her strengths, her fears, her frailties, losses, and desires—how she made use of the darkness in her soul, transforming herself from shunned outsider into one of Hollywood’s most revered screen actresses. Fifteen years in the making—and written with full access to Stanwyck’s family, friends, colleagues and never-before-seen letters, journals, and photographs. Wilson’s one-of-a-kind biography—“large, thrilling, and sensitive” (Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Town & Country)—is an “epic Hollywood narrative” (USA TODAY), “so readable, and as direct as its subject” (The New York Times). With 274 photographs, many published for the first time.

George Arliss

George Arliss PDF Author: Robert M. Fells
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810851603
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
By any reasonable expectation, George Arliss should not have succeeded as a star, either on stage or in film. Yet he achieved a career enjoyed by very few in the performing arts. An actor, author, playwright, and filmmaker, George Arliss won acclaim for his work first on the stage and then later, most improbably, as a Hollywood movie star. His films achieved the rare distinction of being both artistic and financial successes. Though he was neither young nor handsome, Arliss found popular acclaim for his many historical characterizations such as Voltaire, Nathan Rothschild, Cardinal Richelieu, and Benjamin Disraeli. Robert Fells traces Arliss's life and times through his film work, providing a thoroughly researched and entertaining view of one of the most important, yet neglected figures in film history. The book also reviews the actor's uneasy relationship with screenwriters, his clashes with British film producer Michael Balcon, his championing of young unknowns such as Bette Davis and James Cagney, and his prosecution by the British Government during World War II. It also includes a complete filmography and a selected stageography of Arliss's work. Includes 20 photos.

Three Plays by Mae West

Three Plays by Mae West PDF Author: Lillian Schlissel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136041982
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Mae West, wise-cracking vaudeville performer, was one of the most controversial figures of her era. Rarely, however, do people think of Mae West as a writer. In Three Plays By Mae West, Lillian Schlissel brings this underexplored part of West's career to the fore by offering for the first time in book form, three of the plays West wrote in the 1920s--Sex (1926), The Drag (1927) and Pleasure Man (1928). With an insightful introduction by Schlissel, this book offers a unique look into to the life and early career of this legendary stage and screen actress.

Hellman in Hollywood

Hellman in Hollywood PDF Author: Bernard F. Dick
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838631409
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Though Hellman is best known for her work in theater and for her memoirs, much of her work has been adapted for movies. She was deeply involved in writing film scripts and adapting the work of others to the screen. Dick tells the history of Hellman's contributions to American film as a playwright, screenwriter and adapter and analyses each play and its corresponding film to determine whether the adaptation achieves as a film what the original achieved as literature. ISBN 0-8386-3140-1.

George Hurrell's Hollywood

George Hurrell's Hollywood PDF Author: Mark A. Vieira
Publisher: Running Press Adult
ISBN: 076245069X
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
George Hurrell (1904 -- 1992) was the creator of the Hollywood glamour portrait, the maverick artist who captured movie stars of the most exalted era in Hollywood history with bold contrast and seductive poses. This lavishly illustrated book spans Hurrell's entire career, from his beginnings as a society photographer to his finale as the celebrity photographer who was himself a celebrity, and a living legend. From 1929 to 1944 Hurrell was the "Rembrandt of Hollywood," creating portraits of Marlene Dietrich, Norma Shearer, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, and Joan Crawford that were a blend of the ethereal and the erotic. His photos of Jane Russell sulking in a haystack made the unknown girl a star -- without a film credit to her name. He immortalized leading males stars of the day from the Barrymores to Clark Gable and Gary Cooper. Latter photo shoots magnified the glamour of the likes of Warren Beatty and Sharon Stone. Through newly acquired photos and in-depth research, photographer and historian Mark A. Vieira, author of Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits, offers not only a wealth of new images but a compelling sequel to the story presented in his earlier book on Hurrell. Hurrell was himself a star -- rich, famous, successful. Then, at the height of his career, he suffered a vertiginous fall from grace. George Hurrell's Hollywood recounts, for the first time anywhere, Hurrell's rise from the ashes -- how movie-still collectors and art dealers pulled the elderly artist into a nefarious world of theft and fraud; how his undiminished powers gave him a second career; and how his mercurial nature nearly destroyed it. The photographs that motivate this tale are luminous, powerful, and timeless. This book showcases more than four hundred, most of which have not been published since they were created. George Hurrell's Hollywood is the ultimate work on this trailblazing artist, a fabulous montage of fact and anecdote, light and shadow.