This book takes as its focus film stars from the past and present, from Hollywood, its margins and beyond and analyzes them through a close consideration of their films and the variety of contexts in which they worked. Essays spread the net wide, looking at past stars from Rosalind Russell and Charlton Heston to present-day stars including Sandra Bullock, Jackie Chan and Jim Carrey, as well as those figures who have earned a certain film star cachet such as Prince, and the martial artist Cynthia Rothrock.
Bawden and Miller present an astonishing collection of rare interviews with the greatest celebrities of Hollywood's golden age. Conducted over the course of more than fifty years, they recount intimate conversations with some of the most famous leading men and women of the era. Each interview takes readers behind the scenes with some of cinema's most iconic stars, as the actors convey unforgettable stories.
Indian Film Stars offers original insights and important reappraisals of film stardom in India from the early talkie era of the 1930s to the contemporary period of global blockbusters. The collection represents a substantial intervention to our understanding of the development of film star cultures in India during the 20th and 21st centuries. The contributors seek to inspire and inform further inquiries into the histories of film stardom-the industrial construction and promotion of star personalities, the actual labouring and imagined lifestyles of professional stars, the stars' relationship to specific aesthetic cinematic conventions (such as frontality and song-dance) and production technologies (such as the play-back system and post-synchronization), and audiences' investment in and devotion to specific star bodies-across the country's multiple centres of film production and across the overlapping (and increasingly international) zones of the films' distribution and reception. The star images, star bodies and star careers discussed are examined in relation to a wide range of issues, including the negotiation and contestation of tradition and modernity, the embodiment and articulation of both Indian and non-Indian values and vogues; the representation of gender and sexuality, of race and ethnicity, and of cosmopolitan mobility and transnational migration; innovations and conventions in performance style; the construction and transformation of public persona; the star's association with film studios and the mainstream media; the star's relationship with historical, political and cultural change and memory; and the star's meaning and value for specific (including marginalised) sectors of the audience.
This volume of original essays fills a significant research gap in Chinese film studies by offering an interdisciplinary, comparative examination of ethnic Chinese film stars from the silent period to the era of globalization. Whereas studies of stars and stardom have developed considerably in the West over the past two decades, there is no single book in English that critically addresses issues related to stars and stardom in Chinese culture. Chinese Film Stars offers exemplary readings of historically, geographically and aesthetically multifaceted star phenomena. An international line up of contributors test a variety of approaches in making sense of discourses of stars and stardom in China and the US, explore historical contexts in which Chinese film stars are constructed and transformed in relation to changing sociopolitical conditions, and consider issues of performance and identity specific to individual stars through chapter-by-chapter case studies. The essays explore a wide range of topics such as star performance, character type, media construction, political propaganda, online discourses, autobiographic narration, as well as issues of gender, genre, memory and identity. Including fifteen case studies of individual Chinese stars and illustrated with film stills throughout, this book is an essential read for students of Chinese film, media and cultural studies.
Many stars from China, Japan and Korea are the most popular and instantly recognizable in the world. East Asian Film Stars brings together some of the world's leading cinema scholars to offer their insights into the work of regional and transnational screen legends, contemporary superstars and mysterious cult personas.
Bette Davis as a madam. Orson Welles hosting The Twilight Zone. Mae West voicing a cartoon character. Shirley Temple playing a social worker. While Hollywood stars like Lucille Ball, Loretta Young and Donna Reed successfully transitioned to television in its early days, many others tried and failed to become TV regulars. Drawing on contemporary interviews and other sources, this book profiles more than 50 actors--including Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Alan Ladd and Buster Keaton--and their unsuccessful pilots and short-lived series roles.
From Agnes Morehead to the Zucker Brothers, Wisconsin has produced a large cast of film stars. They include serious actors like Spencer Tracy and Gena Rowlands; comics like Chris Farley and Gene Wilder; and directors like Orson Wells and Nicholas Ray.
Movie star favorites with Hispanic roots! Each of the 16 glamorous ladies is wearing an outfit from one of her motion pictures and is accompanied by a second costume. Among the Latin lovelies are Rita Hayworth, Raquel Welch, Penelope Cruz, Jennifer Lopez, Carmen Miranda, Rita Moreno, Cameron Diaz, Rosie Perez, and Salma Hayek.
James Bawden: Seeing the way people behave when they're around you, is it still fun being Cary Grant? Cary Grant: I don't like to disappoint people. Because he's a completely made-up character and I'm playing a part. It's a part I've been playing a long time, but no way am I really Cary Grant. A friend told me once, "I always wanted to be Cary Grant." And I said, "So did I."—from the book In Conversations with Classic Film Stars, retired journalists James Bawden and Ron Miller present an astonishing collection of rare interviews with the greatest celebrities of Hollywood's golden age. Conducted over the course of more than fifty years, they recount intimate conversations with some of the most famous leading men and women of the era, including Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joseph Cotten, Cary Grant, Gloria Swanson, Joan Fontaine, Loretta Young, Kirk Douglas, and many more. Each interview takes readers behind the scenes with some of cinema's most iconic stars. The actors convey unforgettable stories, from Maureen O'Hara discussing Charles Laughton's request that she change her last name, to Bob Hope candidly commenting on the presidential honors bestowed upon him. Humorous, enlightening, and poignant, Conversations with Classic Film Stars is essential reading for anyone who loves classic movies.
