Robert Florey, the French Expressionist

Robert Florey, the French Expressionist PDF Author: Brian Taves
Publisher: Metuchen, N.J. : Scarecrow Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Robert Florey, the French Expressionist

Robert Florey, the French Expressionist PDF Author: Brian Taves
Publisher: Metuchen, N.J. : Scarecrow Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description


Robert Florey, the French Expressionist

Robert Florey, the French Expressionist PDF Author: Robert Florey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781593932619
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff

Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff PDF Author: Gregory William Mank
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786454725
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 702

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Book Description
Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster are horror cinema icons, and the actors most deeply associated with the two roles also shared a unique friendship. Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff starred in dozens of black-and-white horror films, and over the years managed to collaborate on and co-star in eight movies. Through dozens of interviews and extensive archival research, this greatly expanded new edition examines the Golden Age of Hollywood, the era in which both stars worked, recreates the shooting of Lugosi and Karloff's mutual films, examines their odd and moving personal relationship and analyzes their ongoing legacies. Features include a fully detailed filmography of the eight Karloff and Lugosi films, full summaries of both men's careers and more than 250 photographs, some in color.

Michael Curtiz

Michael Curtiz PDF Author: Alan K. Rode
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813173965
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 712

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Book Description
Academy Award--winning director Michael Curtiz (1886--1962) -- whose best-known films include Casablanca (1942), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945) and White Christmas (1954) -- was in many ways the anti-auteur. During his unprecedented twenty-seven year tenure at Warner Bros., he directed swashbuckling adventures, westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. The director's staggering output of 180 films surpasses that of the legendary John Ford and exceeds the combined total of films directed by George Cukor, Victor Fleming, and Howard Hawks. In the first biography of this colorful, instinctual artist, Alan K. Rode illuminates the life and work of one of the film industry's most complex figures. He begins by exploring the director's early life and career in his native Hungary, revealing how Curtiz shaped the earliest days of silent cinema in Europe as he acted in, produced, and directed scores of films before immigrating to the United States in 1926. In Hollywood, Curtiz earned a reputation for his explosive tantrums, his difficulty communicating in English, and his disregard for the well-being of others. However, few directors elicited more memorable portrayals from their casts, and ten different actors delivered Oscar-nominated performances under his direction. In addition to his study of the director's remarkable legacy, Rode investigates Curtiz's dramatic personal life, discussing his enduring creative partnership with his wife, screenwriter Bess Meredyth, as well as his numerous affairs and children born of his extramarital relationships. This meticulously researched biography provides a nuanced understanding of one of the most talented filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age.

Unsung Hollywood Musicals of the Golden Era

Unsung Hollywood Musicals of the Golden Era PDF Author: Edwin M. Bradley
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786498331
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
The most memorable Hollywood musicals of 1930s showcased the talents of stars like Fred Astaire, Jeanette MacDonald, Bing Crosby and Alice Faye. The less memorable ones didn't. This book takes a look at the unsung songfests of the '30s--secondary or forgotten features with short-lived or unlikely stars from major studios and Poverty Row. Through analysis of films such as Lord Byron of Broadway (1930), Shoot the Works (1934), Bottoms Up (1934), Moonlight and Pretzels (1933) and The Music Goes 'Round (1936), the author profiles such performers as Dorothy Dell, Lee Dixon, Peggy Fears, Lawrence Gray, Joe Morrison and the mother-daughter team of Myrt and Marge. Behind-the-scenes figures are discussed, like the infamously profligate producer Lou Brock, whose flops Down to Their Last Yacht (1934) and Top of the Town (1937) cost him his career. Filmographies and production information are included, with background on key participants.

The First Hollywood Musicals

The First Hollywood Musicals PDF Author: Edwin M. Bradley
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786420292
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
As Hollywood entered the sound era, it was rightly determined that the same public fascinated by the novelty of the talkie would be dazzled by the spectacle of a song and dance film. In 1929 and 1930, film musicals became the industry's most lucrative genre--until the greedy studios almost killed the genre by glutting the market with too many films that looked and sounded like clones of each other. From the classy movies such as Sunnyside Up and Hallelujah! to failures such as The Lottery Bride and Howdy Broadway, this filmography details 171 early Hollywood musicals. Arranged by subgenre (backstagers, operettas, college films, and stage-derived musical comedies), the entries include studio, release date, cast and credits, running time, a complete song list, any recordings spawned by the film, Academy Award nominations and winners, and availability on video or laserdisc. These data are followed by a plot synopsis, including analysis of the film's place in the genre's history. Includes over 90 photographs.

Helen Morgan

Helen Morgan PDF Author: Christopher S. Connelly
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 1985900610
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
An emotive soprano, heartrending melodies about unrequited love, and a draped-over-the-piano persona made Helen Morgan (1902–1941) the original torch singer, but she was so much more. The versatile actress appeared on Broadway, in film, and on radio. In a number of stage revues, she danced, sang, and excelled in sketch comedy. She played Julie in Kern and Hammerstein's Broadway musical Show Boat (1927) and also starred in the duo's Sweet Adeline in 1929. That same year, Morgan appeared in Rouben Mamoulian's classic film Applause. When the Great Depression made theater roles scarce, she headed the CBS radio program Broadway Melodies and worked in the emerging medium of television. Yet Morgan's life was one of extremes. She earned a million dollars throughout her career but remained in constant debt. She was one of the most universally beloved people in her profession, but a stable romantic relationship eluded her until the very end of her life. She was a protofeminist who aided women facing unplanned pregnancies, yet she also sought respite in a man whose financial support would allow her to retire from the stage. Through it all, she battled alcoholism; brandy would eventually extinguish her flame in 1941. Helen Morgan: The Original Torch Singer and Ziegfeld's Last Star is the first biography of the gifted performer since 1974. Author Christopher Connelly utilizes interviews, newspaper articles, and family scrapbooks to present an honest and unflinching look at Morgan's life. Connelly's meticulous research addresses Morgan's troubled childhood, including her mother's six marriages, and the trauma of her stepfather's arrest and conviction for manslaughter in 1913. Also revealed are details regarding her early career in vaudeville and silent film, insights into the speakeasy and supper-club culture that served as a backdrop to Morgan's career, and accounts of her outstanding accomplishments, philanthropic actions, and enduring popularity. This gripping narrative presents the brief but brilliant life of a complex, talented, and iconic entertainer.

A Century of the Marx Brothers

A Century of the Marx Brothers PDF Author: Joseph Mills
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443808350
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
In 1905 Julius Marx began his vaudeville career with the singing group The Leroy Trio and was abandoned in the middle of the tour. It was an inauspicious start for the person who would become "Groucho." A hundred years later, the Marx Brothers have permeated our culture from the plastic noses and glasses worn at parties to a Smithsonian exhibition which explains DNA recombination using A Night at the Opera. Although they completed relatively few films together, the brothers have become icons, recognizable even to people who have never seen their movies. Most scholarly work on the Marx Brothers has focused on biographical aspects of their careers and lives; A Century of the Marx Brothers suggests a myriad of other useful approaches to their film and stage productions. The collection's eleven essays examine the Marx Brothers' work from a number of critical perspectives ranging from reader-response theory to film semiotics. The contributors include international scholars in a variety of fields, such as literature, cultural studies, performance studies, and film history.

Hollywood Unknowns

Hollywood Unknowns PDF Author: Anthony Slide
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617034754
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Extras, bit players, and stand-ins have been a part of the film industry almost from its conception. On a personal and a professional level, their stories are told in Hollywood Unknowns, the first history devoted to extras from the silent era through the present. Hollywood Unknowns discusses the relationship of the extra to the star, the lowly position in which extras were held, the poor working conditions and wages, and the sexual exploitation of many of the hardworking women striving for a place in Hollywood society. Though mainly anonymous, many are identified by name and, for perhaps the first time, receive equal billing with the stars. And Hollywood Unknowns does not forget the bit players, stand-ins, and doubles, who work alongside the extras facing many of the same privations. Celebrity extras, silent stars who ended their days as extras, or members of various ethnic groups—all gain a deserved luster in acclaimed film writer Anthony Slide's prose. Chapters document the lives and work of extras from the 1890s to the present. Slide also treats such subjects as the Hollywood Studio Club, Central Casting, the extras in popular literature, and the efforts at unionization through the Screen Actors Guild from the 1930s onwards. Slide chronicles events such as John Barrymore's walking off set in the middle of the day so the extras could earn another day's wages, and Cecil B. DeMille's masterful organizing of casts of thousands in films such as Cleopatra. Through personal interviews, oral histories, and the use of newly available archival material, Slide reveals in Hollywood Unknowns the story of the men, women, and even animals that completed the scenes on the silver screen.

Peggy Webling and the Story behind Frankenstein

Peggy Webling and the Story behind Frankenstein PDF Author: Peggy Webling
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135037167X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
The 1931 Universal Pictures film adaptation of Frankenstein directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff as the now iconic Monster claims in its credits to be 'Adapted from the play by Peggy Webling'. Webling's play sought to humanize the creature, was the first stage adaptation to position Frankenstein and his creation as doppelgängers, and offered a feminist perspective on scientific efforts to create life without women, ideas that suffuse today's perceptions of Frankenstein's monster. The original play script exists in several different versions, only two of which have ever been consulted by scholars; no version has ever been published. Nor have scholars had access to Webling's private papers and correspondence, preserved in a family archive, so that the evolution of Frankenstein from book to stage to screen has never been fully charted. In Peggy Webling and the Story behind Frankenstein, Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum (Webling's great grandniece) and Bruce Graver present the full texts of Webling's unpublished play for the first time. A vital critical edition, this book includes: - the 1927 British Library Frankenstein script used for the first production of the play in Preston, Lancashire - the 1928 Frankenstein script in the Library of Congress, used for productions in UK provincial theatres from autumn 1928 till 1930 - the 1930 Frankenstein Prompt Script for the London production and later provincial performances, held by the Westminster Archive, London - Webling's private correspondence including negotiations with theatre managers and Universal Pictures, family letters about the writing and production process, and selected contracts - Text of the chapter 'Frankenstein' from Webling's unpublished literary memoir, The Story of a Pen for additional context - Biography of Webling that bears directly on the sensibilities and skills she brought to the writing of her play - History of how the play came to be written and produced - The relationship of Webling's play to earlier stage and film adaptations - An exploration of playwright and screenwriter John L. Balderston's changes to Webling's play and Whale's borrowings from it in the 1931 film Offering a new perspective on the genesis of the Frankenstein movie, this critical exploration makes available a unique and necessary 'missing link' in the novel's otherwise well-documented transmedia cultural history.