Mamoulian

Mamoulian PDF Author: David Luhrssen
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813136865
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
An Armenian national raised in Russia, Rouben Mamoulian (1897--1987) studied in the influential Stanislavski studio, renowned as the source of the "method" acting technique. Shortly after immigrating to New York in 1926, he created a sensation with an all-black production of Porgy (1927). He then went on to direct the debut Broadway productions of three of the most popular shows in the history of American musical theater: Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma! (1943), and Carousel (1945). Mamoulian began working in film just as the sound revolution was dramatically changing the technical capabilities of the medium, and he quickly established himself as an innovator. Not only did many of his unusual camera techniques become standard, but he also invented a device that eliminated the background noises created by cameras and dollies. Seen as a rebel earlier in his career, Mamoulian gradually gained respect in Hollywood, and the Directors Guild of America awarded him the prestigious D. W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1983. In this meticulously researched biography, David Luhrssen paints the influential director as a socially conscious artist who sought to successfully combine art and commercial entertainment. Luhrssen not only reveals the fascinating personal story of an important yet neglected figure, but he also offers a tantalizing glimpse into the extraordinarily vibrant American film and theater industries during the twenties, thirties, and forties.

Mamoulian

Mamoulian PDF Author: David Luhrssen
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813136865
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
An Armenian national raised in Russia, Rouben Mamoulian (1897--1987) studied in the influential Stanislavski studio, renowned as the source of the "method" acting technique. Shortly after immigrating to New York in 1926, he created a sensation with an all-black production of Porgy (1927). He then went on to direct the debut Broadway productions of three of the most popular shows in the history of American musical theater: Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma! (1943), and Carousel (1945). Mamoulian began working in film just as the sound revolution was dramatically changing the technical capabilities of the medium, and he quickly established himself as an innovator. Not only did many of his unusual camera techniques become standard, but he also invented a device that eliminated the background noises created by cameras and dollies. Seen as a rebel earlier in his career, Mamoulian gradually gained respect in Hollywood, and the Directors Guild of America awarded him the prestigious D. W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1983. In this meticulously researched biography, David Luhrssen paints the influential director as a socially conscious artist who sought to successfully combine art and commercial entertainment. Luhrssen not only reveals the fascinating personal story of an important yet neglected figure, but he also offers a tantalizing glimpse into the extraordinarily vibrant American film and theater industries during the twenties, thirties, and forties.

Reinventing Reality

Reinventing Reality PDF Author: Mark Spergel
Publisher: Scarecrow Filmmakers Series
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Theatre and film director Rouben Mamoulian (1897-1987) is known chiefly as a technical innovator and stylist. His stage credits include the original Broadway productions of Porgy and Bess (1935), and Oklahoma (1943); his sixteen completed films include Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Golden Boy (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), and Silk Stockings (1957). In the theatre, Mamoulian integrated the various contributory arts of the American musical, transforming the near variety-show format of musicals into a dramatic unity of plot, character, music, and dance. He thus opened the stage to what would later be termed the "golden age" of the American book musical of the 1950s and 60s. In early sound films, Mamoulian restored mobility to the camera, rediscovered montage, redefined close-ups, split-screen, and dissolves, invented the voice-over, and was first to use multitrack sound recording. He directed the first live-action Technicolor film, Becky Sharp (1935). Spergel introduces previously undisclosed personal documents about the Mamoulian that necessitate a re-examination of Mamoulian's own statements about his life. He shows that the central theme in Mamoulian's art and life, as he describes it--to overcome the world and embrace truth--extended to the telling of his own history. Mamoulian believed he could alter that history through stylized presentation, idealizing the truth, and thereby raising numerous questions about historiography in general.

"On My Way": The Untold Story of Rouben Mamoulian, George Gershwin, and Porgy and Bess

Author: Joseph Horowitz
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393240592
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
A revelatory history of the operatic masterpiece that both made and destroyed Rouben Mamoulian, its director and unsung hero. "Bring my goat!" Porgy exclaims in the final scene of Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess. Bess, whom he loves, has left for New York City, and he’s determined to find her. When his request is met with astonishment—New York is a great distance from South Carolina’s Catfish Row—Porgy remains undaunted. He mounts his goat-cart and leads the community in an ecstatic finale, "Oh Lawd, I’m on my way." Stephen Sondheim has called "Bring my goat!" "one of the most moving moments in musical theater history." For years it was assumed that DuBose Heyward—the author of the seminal novella and subsequent play, Porgy, and later the librettist for the opera Porgy and Bess—penned this historic line. In fact, both it and "Oh Lawd, I'm on my way" were added to the play eight years earlier by that production’s unheralded architect: Rouben Mamoulian. Porgy and Bess as we know it would not exist without the contributions of this master director. Culling new information from the recently opened Mamoulian Archives at the Library of Congress, award-winning author Joseph Horowitz shows that, more than anyone else, Mamoulian took Heyward's vignette of a regional African-American subculture and transformed it into an epic theater work, a universal parable of suffering and redemption. Part biography, part revelatory history, "On My Way" re-creates Mamoulian's visionary style on stage and screen, his collaboration with George Gershwin, and the genesis of the opera that changed the face of American musical life.

Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Starring Fredric March

Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Starring Fredric March PDF Author: Rouben Mamoulian
Publisher: Universe Publishing(NY)
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The film was based on the story of Dr. Jekyll, a famous young doctor, who experiments upon himself and, by drinking a potion, becomes an evil embodiment of himself. After a time, he realizes that his evil self, Mr. Hyde, returns automatically without the aid of the drug. After murdering a man, Dr. Jekyll fights to remain the good doctor, rather than the evil Mr. Hyde, and ends by killing himself with poison.

Porgy

Porgy PDF Author: DuBose Heyward
Publisher: Bibliotech Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Basis for light opera Porgy and Bess. Story of crippled Negro beggar and his friends and enemies in Charleston, S.C.

The Camera Lies

The Camera Lies PDF Author: Dan Callahan
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0197515320
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The first book on Hitchcock that focuses exclusively on his work with actors Alfred Hitchcock is said to have once remarked, "Actors are cattle," a line that has stuck in the public consciousness ever since. For Hitchcock, acting was a matter of contrast and counterpoint, valuing subtlety and understatement over flashiness. He felt that the camera was duplicitous, and directed actors to look and act conversely. In The Camera Lies, author Dan Callahan spotlights the many nuances of Hitchcock's direction throughout his career, from Cary Grant in Notorious (1946) to Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960). Delving further, he examines the ways that sex and sexuality are presented through Hitchcock's characters, reflecting the director's own complex relationship with sexuality. Detailing the fluidity of acting -- both what it means to act on film and how the process varies in each actor's career -- Callahan examines the spectrum of treatment and direction Hitchcock provided well- and lesser-known actors alike, including Ingrid Bergman, Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Robert Walker, Jessica Tandy, Kim Novak, and Tippi Hedren. As Hitchcock believed, the best actor was one who could "do nothing well" - but behind an outward indifference to his players was a sophisticated acting theorist who often drew out great performances. The Camera Lies unpacks Hitchcock's legacy both as a director who continuously taught audiences to distrust appearance, and as a man with an uncanny insight into the human capacity for deceit and misinterpretation.

Porgy

Porgy PDF Author: DuBose Heyward
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description


Washington at the Plow

Washington at the Plow PDF Author: Bruce A. Ragsdale
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674246381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
A fresh, original look at George Washington as an innovative land manager whose singular passion for farming would unexpectedly lead him to reject slavery. George Washington spent more of his working life farming than he did at war or in political office. For over forty years, he devoted himself to the improvement of agriculture, which he saw as the means by which the American people would attain the Òrespectability & importance which we ought to hold in the world.Ó Washington at the Plow depicts the Òfirst farmer of AmericaÓ as a leading practitioner of the New Husbandry, a transatlantic movement that spearheaded advancements in crop rotation. A tireless experimentalist, Washington pulled up his tobacco and switched to wheat production, leading the way for the rest of the country. He filled his library with the latest agricultural treatises and pioneered land-management techniques that he hoped would guide small farmers, strengthen agrarian society, and ensure the prosperity of the nation. Slavery was a key part of WashingtonÕs pursuits. He saw enslaved field workers and artisans as means of agricultural development and tried repeatedly to adapt slave labor to new kinds of farming. To this end, he devised an original and exacting system of slave supervision. But Washington eventually found that forced labor could not achieve the productivity he desired. His inability to reconcile ideals of scientific farming and rural order with race-based slavery led him to reconsider the traditional foundations of the Virginia plantation. As Bruce Ragsdale shows, it was the inefficacy of chattel slavery, as much as moral revulsion at the practice, that informed WashingtonÕs famous decision to free his slaves after his death.

The Films of Woody Allen

The Films of Woody Allen PDF Author: Sam B. Girgus
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521009294
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Publisher Description

Laura

Laura PDF Author: Vera Caspary
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
ISBN: 155861883X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
The greatest noir romance of all time, Laura won lasting renown as an Academy Award-nominated 1944 film: “an intriguing melodrama. . . . A top-drawer mystery.” (The New York Times) A brutal murder. A tough detective. And a woman who kept men spellbound—even after her death. Laura Hunt was the ideal modern woman: beautiful, elegant, highly ambitious, and utterly mysterious. No man could resist her charms—not even the hardboiled NYPD detective sent to investigate her murder. As this cop probes the mystery of Laura’s death, he finds himself drawn to the mere idea of her. As the circumstances surrounding her death become more intriguing, he comes to a startling realization—he’s in love with a dead woman. But is she even dead? Vera Caspary’s equally haunting novel is remarkable for its stylish, hardboiled writing, its electrifying plot twists, and its darkly complex characters—including a woman who stands as the ultimate femme fatale. Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women’s writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-20th century. From mystery to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era.