Showman of the Screen

Showman of the Screen PDF Author: A. T. McKenna
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813168732
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Short, immaculately dressed, and shockingly foul-mouthed, Joseph E. Levine (1905–1987) was larger than life. He rose from poverty in Boston's West End to become one of postwar Hollywood's most prolific independent promoters, distributors, and producers. Alternately respected and reviled, this master of movie promotion was responsible for bringing films as varied as Godzilla: King of the Monsters! (1956), Hercules (1958), The Graduate (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and A Bridge Too Far (1977) to American audiences. In the first biography of this controversial pioneer, A. T. McKenna traces Levine's rise as an influential packager of popular culture. He explores the mogul's pivotal role in many significant industry innovations from the 1950s to the 1970s, examining his use of saturation release tactics and bombastic advertising campaigns. Levine was also a trailblazer in promoting European art house cinema in the 1960s. He made Federico Fellini's 8 (1963) a hit in America, feuded with Jean-Luc Godard over their production of Contempt (1963), and campaigned aggressively for Sophia Loren to become the first actress to win an Oscar for a foreign language performance for her role in Two Women (1960). Despite his significant accomplishments and prominent role in shaping film distribution and promotion in the post-studio era, Levine is largely overlooked today. McKenna's in-depth biography corrects misunderstandings and misinformation about this colorful figure, and offers a sober assessment of his contributions to world cinema. It also illuminates Levine's peculiar talent for movie- and self-promotion, as well as his extraordinary career in the motion picture business.

Showman of the Screen

Showman of the Screen PDF Author: A. T. McKenna
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813168732
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
Short, immaculately dressed, and shockingly foul-mouthed, Joseph E. Levine (1905–1987) was larger than life. He rose from poverty in Boston's West End to become one of postwar Hollywood's most prolific independent promoters, distributors, and producers. Alternately respected and reviled, this master of movie promotion was responsible for bringing films as varied as Godzilla: King of the Monsters! (1956), Hercules (1958), The Graduate (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and A Bridge Too Far (1977) to American audiences. In the first biography of this controversial pioneer, A. T. McKenna traces Levine's rise as an influential packager of popular culture. He explores the mogul's pivotal role in many significant industry innovations from the 1950s to the 1970s, examining his use of saturation release tactics and bombastic advertising campaigns. Levine was also a trailblazer in promoting European art house cinema in the 1960s. He made Federico Fellini's 8 (1963) a hit in America, feuded with Jean-Luc Godard over their production of Contempt (1963), and campaigned aggressively for Sophia Loren to become the first actress to win an Oscar for a foreign language performance for her role in Two Women (1960). Despite his significant accomplishments and prominent role in shaping film distribution and promotion in the post-studio era, Levine is largely overlooked today. McKenna's in-depth biography corrects misunderstandings and misinformation about this colorful figure, and offers a sober assessment of his contributions to world cinema. It also illuminates Levine's peculiar talent for movie- and self-promotion, as well as his extraordinary career in the motion picture business.

Showman of the Screen

Showman of the Screen PDF Author: Anthony T. McKenna
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813168814
Category : Motion picture producers and directors
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Short, immaculately dressed, and shockingly foul-mouthed, Joseph E. Levine (1905-1987) was larger than life. He rose from poverty in Boston's West End to become one of postwar Hollywood's most prolific independent promoters, distributors, and producers. In the first biography of this controversial pioneer, A.T. McKenna traces Levine's rise as an influential packager of popular culture.

Buffalo Bill on the Silver Screen

Buffalo Bill on the Silver Screen PDF Author: Sandra K. Sagala
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806151404
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
For more than thirty years, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody entertained audiences across the United States and Europe with his Wild West show. Scores of books have been written about Cody’s fabled career as a showman, but his involvement in the film industry—following the dissolution of his traveling show—is less well known. In Buffalo Bill on the Silver Screen, Sandra K. Sagala chronicles the fascinating story of Cody’s venture into filmmaking during the early cinema period. In 1894 Thomas Edison invited Cody to bring some of the Wild West performers to the inventor’s kinetoscope studio. From then on, as Sagala reveals, Cody was frequently in the camera’s eye, eager to participate in the newest and most popular phenomenon of the era: the motion picture. In 1910, promoter Pliny Craft produced The Life of Buffalo Bill, a film in which Cody played his own persona. After his Wild West show disbanded, Cody fully embraced the film business, seeing the technology as a way to recoup his financial losses and as a new vehicle for preserving America’s history and his own legacy for future generations. Because he had participated as a scout in some of the battles and skirmishes between the U.S. Army and Plains Indians, Cody wanted to make a film that captured these historical events. Unfortunately for Cody, The Indian Wars (1913) was not a financial success, and only three minutes of footage have survived. Long after his death, Cody’s legacy lives on through the many movies that have featured his character. Sagala provides a useful appendix listing all of these films, as well as those for which Cody himself took an active role as director, producer, or actor. Published on the eve of the centennial anniversary of The Indian Wars, this engaging book offers readers new insights into the legendary figure’s life and career and explores his lasting image in film.

Showman of the Screen

Showman of the Screen PDF Author: A. T. McKenna
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813168724
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
Short, immaculately dressed, and shockingly foul-mouthed, Joseph E. Levine (1905–1987) was larger than life. He rose from poverty in Boston's West End to become one of postwar Hollywood's most prolific independent promoters, distributors, and producers. Alternately respected and reviled, this master of movie promotion was responsible for bringing films as varied as Godzilla: King of the Monsters! (1956), Hercules (1958), The Graduate (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and A Bridge Too Far (1977) to American audiences. In the first biography of this controversial pioneer, A. T. McKenna traces Levine's rise as an influential packager of popular culture. He explores the mogul's pivotal role in many significant industry innovations from the 1950s to the 1970s, examining his use of saturation release tactics and bombastic advertising campaigns. Levine was also a trailblazer in promoting European art house cinema in the 1960s. He made Federico Fellini's 8 (1963) a hit in America, feuded with Jean-Luc Godard over their production of Contempt (1963), and campaigned aggressively for Sophia Loren to become the first actress to win an Oscar for a foreign language performance for her role in Two Women (1960). Despite his significant accomplishments and prominent role in shaping film distribution and promotion in the post-studio era, Levine is largely overlooked today. McKenna's in-depth biography corrects misunderstandings and misinformation about this colorful figure, and offers a sober assessment of his contributions to world cinema. It also illuminates Levine's peculiar talent for movie- and self-promotion, as well as his extraordinary career in the motion picture business.

On the Screen

On the Screen PDF Author: Ariel Rogers
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231548036
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Today, in a world of smartphones, tablets, and computers, screens are a pervasive part of daily life. Yet a multiplicity of screens has been integral to the media landscape since cinema’s golden age. In On the Screen, Ariel Rogers rethinks the history of moving images by exploring how experiments with screen technologies in and around the 1930s changed the way films were produced, exhibited, and experienced. Marshalling extensive archival research, Rogers reveals the role screens played at the height of the era of “classical” Hollywood cinema. She shows how filmmakers, technicians, architects, and exhibitors employed a variety of screens within diverse spaces, including studio soundstages, theaters, homes, stores, and train stations. Far from inert, screens served as means of structuring mediated space and time, contributing to the transformations of modern culture. On the Screen demonstrates how particular approaches to the use of screens traversed production and exhibition, theatrical and extratheatrical practice, mainstream and avant-garde modes, and even cinema and television. Rogers’s history challenges conventional narratives about the novelty of the twenty-first-century multiscreen environment, showing how attention to the variety of historical screen practices opens up new ways to understand contemporary media.

Edward Dmytryk

Edward Dmytryk PDF Author: Fintan McDonagh
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476643148
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Edward Dmytryk was one of the so-called "Hollywood Ten" jailed for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. Finding himself blacklisted after his prison sentence and unable to operate under a pseudonym, he took the step of testifying and naming names to the Committee. His career resumed to considerable commercial success, but also to prolonged and bitter criticism from the left and persistent mistrust from the right. Acknowledged as one of the key figures in the development of the film noir genre, having directed one of its first films, Murder, My Sweet, Dmytryk has otherwise frequently been sidelined in critical studies because of the controversy. This book is the first to critically evaluate each of the dozens of films he made between the 1930s and the 1970s including The Young Lions, Crossfire and The Caine Mutiny, among many others.

The Epic Films of Samuel Bronston

The Epic Films of Samuel Bronston PDF Author: Mel Martin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781593931292
Category : Epic films
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Samuel Bronston produced some of the greatest and most remembered epic films of the sixties. El Cid, King of Kings, Fall of the Roman Empire, John Paul Jones, and Circus World. With a literal 'cast of thousands', and the biggest and most historically accurate sets ever built, the films have become legendary. The Magnificent Showman tells the stories behind the making of these memorable films, and explores the ambitious and quixotic man who brought them into being. This is the story of the film making empire Bronston created in Spain, hiring reknowned Directors like Nicholas Ray and Anthony Mann, and attracting first rate talent like Charlton Heston, Christopher Plummer, Stephen Boyd, Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren, James Mason, Alec Guinness, Rita Hayworth, David Niven, John Wayne and others. In many way, the drama off screen was as exciting as the action in front of the cameras. This book highlights the behind the scenes drama and conflict as Bronston struggled to bring these great stories to the big screen, and documents the extravagance that led to tremendous success, and then colossal failure as the Bronston empire collapsed in a series of legal battles and bankruptcies. Creating an amazing 6 major films in 6 years, Samuel Bronston left a legacy of artistic quality and innovation that are fondly remembered to this day. Films will never again be made in the way Bronston made them. Then, and now, Samuel Bronston remains The Magnificent Showman.

The Magic Screen

The Magic Screen PDF Author: Joost Hunningher
Publisher: University of Westminster Press
ISBN: 1911534238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
The story of the (now restored) Regent Street Cinema is the fourth volume exploring the University of Westminster's long and diverse history. This multi-authored volume tells its history from architectural, educational, legal and cinematic perspectives and is richly illustrated throughout with images from the University of Westminster archive.

Screen Adaptations: Shakespeare's King Lear

Screen Adaptations: Shakespeare's King Lear PDF Author: Yvonne Griggs
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 140814400X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This close study of film adaptations of King Lear looks at several different versions (mainstream, art-house and cinematic `offshoots') and discusses: the literary text in its historical context, key themes and dominant readings of the text, how the text is adapted for screen and how adaptations have changed our reading of the original text. There are many references to the literary text and screenplays and the book also features quotations from directors and critics. There is plenty of discursive material here to support student work on both film and literature courses.

Showman

Showman PDF Author: David Thomson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780233987910
Category : Motion picture producers and directors
Languages : en
Pages : 792

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Book Description
The authorized biography of this Hollywood producer, who made REBECCA and GONE WITH THE WIND, looking at his career from his swift rise to prominence to the collapse of his empire.