"What audacity!" exclaimed actor Robert Wagner when he heard about the authors' adolescent exploits in nabbing interviews with Hollywood celebrities. In 1978, Fantle and Johnson, St. Paul teenagers, boarded a plane to meet with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. They had written the stars requesting interviews--and to their amazement, both agreed. Over the years, more than 250 other stars also agreed--Lucille Ball, Bob Hope, James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Debbie Reynolds, George Burns, Rod Steiger, Milton Berle, Frank Capra and Hoagy Carmichael, to name a few. Published for the first time and with exclusive photos, this selection of 75 interviews chronicles the authors' 40-year quest for insights and anecdotes from iconic 20th century artists.
Christina, Grant, Mimi and Papa fly The Mystery Girl into Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, CA and travel to glamorous Hollywood, only to find themselves involved in a mystery searching for a glittery rhinestone. The mystery is action packed as they tour all of Hollywood's famous tourist attractions, experience California cuisine, and an earthquake. Along the way, they meet a few strange characters including an obnoxious Lucy impersonator, a menacing Spiderman, and a mysterious guide at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. LOOK what's inside this mystery - people, places, history and more! Places in California: La Brea Tar Pits Š Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel Š Hollywood Boulevard Š Grauman's Chinese Theatre Š Paramount Studios Š The Griffith Observatory Š Hollywood Forever Cemetery Š Madame Tussauds Wax Museum Š The Disney Soda Fountain Š Hollywood and Highlands Center Š El Capitan Theater Š Kodak Theater Š Lucy Park Š Hollywood Bowl Š Fly Hollywood Š Mount Hollywood Science Facts: Smog Š Earthquakes and tremors Š Fossils Š Prehistoric animals including mastodons, giant sloths and saber-toothed cats Š Santa Ana Winds and Fires Famous People: Charlie Chaplin Š Shirley Temple Š Greta Garbo Š Marilyn Monroe Š Montgomery Clift Š John Wayne Š the Beatles History: The Hollywood sign Š The Academy Awards Š Classic Movie Stars Š Movie Production Š Silent films Š Stars on Hollywood Boulevard Š Golden Age of Hollywood Š the Writer's Guild Š Mausoleum Š Max Factor Š The Civil War Like all of Carole Marsh Mysteries, this mystery incorporates history, geography, culture and cliffhanger chapters that will keep kids begging for more! This mystery includes SAT words, educational facts, fun and humor, built-in book club and activities. Below is the Reading Levels Guide for this book: Grade Levels: 3-6 Accelerated Reader Reading Level: 4.2 Accelerated Reader Points: 2 Accelerated Reader Quiz Number: 143636 Lexile Measure: 590 Fountas & Pinnell Guided Reading Level: Q Developmental Assessment Level: 40
This authoritative collection of introductory and specialized readings explores the rich and innovative history of this period in American cinema. Spanning an essential range of subjects from the early 1900s Nickelodeon to the decline of the studio system in the 1960s, it combines a broad historical context with careful readings of individual films. Charts the rise of film in early twentieth-century America from its origins to 1960, exploring mainstream trends and developments, along with topics often relegated to the margins of standard film histories Covers diverse issues ranging from silent film and its iconic figures such as Charlie Chaplin, to the coming of sound and the rise of film genres, studio moguls, and, later, the Production Code and Cold War Blacklist Designed with both students and scholars in mind: each section opens with an historical overview and includes chapters that provide close, careful readings of individual films clustered around specific topics Accessibly structured by historical period, offering valuable cultural, social, and political contexts Contains careful, close analysis of key filmmakers and films from the era including D.W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Erich von Stroheim, Cecil B. DeMille, Don Juan, The Jazz Singer, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Scarface, Red Dust, Glorifying the American Girl, Meet Me in St. Louis, Citizen Kane, Bambi, Frank Capra's Why We Fightseries, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Rebel Without a Cause, Force of Evil, and selected American avant-garde and underground films, among many others. Additional online resources such as sample syllabi, which include suggested readings and filmographies for both general specialized courses, will be available online. May be used alongside American Film History: Selected Readings, 1960 to the Present, to provide an authoritative study of American cinema through the new millennium
Hollywood in the years between 1929 and 1948 was a town of moviemaking empires. The great studios were estates of talent: sprawling, dense, diverse. It was the Golden Age of the Movies, and each studio made its distinctive contribution. But how did the studios, "growing up" in the same time and place, develop so differently? What combinations of talents and temperaments gave them their signature styles? These are the questions Ethan Mordden answers, with breezy erudition and irrepressible enthusiasm, in this fascinating and wonderfully readable book. Mordden illuminates how the style of each studio was primarily dictated by the personality, philosophy, and attitudes of its presiding mogul—and how all these factors affected the work and careers of individual actors, directors, writers, and technicians, and the success of the studio in general.
"What audacity!" exclaimed actor Robert Wagner when he heard about the authors' adolescent exploits in nabbing interviews with Hollywood celebrities. In 1978, Fantle and Johnson, St. Paul teenagers, boarded a plane to meet with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. They had written the stars requesting interviews--and to their amazement, both agreed. Over the years, more than 250 other stars also agreed--Lucille Ball, Bob Hope, James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Debbie Reynolds, George Burns, Rod Steiger, Milton Berle, Frank Capra and Hoagy Carmichael, to name a few. Published for the first time and with exclusive photos, this selection of 75 interviews chronicles the authors' 40-year quest for insights and anecdotes from iconic 20th century artists.
Here is a century’s worth of stars and moguls, parties and scandals, power and glamour, captured through the unrivaled lens and the inimitable prose of Vanity Fair. The definitive book of its kind, ''Vanity Fair’s Hollywood'' is a collection of classic photographs, essays, and caricatures. This national best-seller depicts a century of Hollywood power, glamour, myth, and mystery-directly from the pages of Vanity Fair, from 1914 to today. On the motion-picture front, no other publication of our age has achieved the stature of Vanity Fair. The magazine prides itself on assigning the world’s top photographers, writers, and illustrators to explore the brightest stars in the Hollywood firmament.
“Brackett’s diaries read like a funnier, better-paced version of Barton Fink.” —Newsweek Screenwriter Charles Brackett is best remembered as the writing partner of director Billy Wilder, who once referred to the pair as “the happiest couple in Hollywood,” collaborating on such classics as The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard. He was also a perceptive chronicler of the entertainment industry, and in this annotated collection of writings from dozens of Brackett’s unpublished diaries, film historian Anthony Slide clarifies Brackett's critical contribution to Wilder’s films and enriches our knowledge of Wilder’s achievements in writing, direction, and style. Brackett’s diaries re-create the initial meetings of the talent responsible for Ninotchka, Hold Back the Dawn, Ball of Fire, The Major and the Minor, Five Graves to Cairo, The Lost Weekend, and Sunset Boulevard, recounting the breakthroughs and the breakdowns that ultimately forced these collaborators to part ways. In addition to a portrait of Wilder, this is rare view of a producer who was a president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Screen Writers Guild, a New Yorker drama critic, and a member of the Algonquin Round Table. With insight into the dealings of Paramount, Universal, MGM, and RKO, and legendary figures such as Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Edna Ferber, and Dorothy Parker, this book reveals the political and creative intrigue at the heart of Hollywood’s most significant films. “A fascinating look at Hollywood in its classic period, and a unique and indispensable must-have for any movie buff.” —Chicago Tribune “This feels as close as we can get to being in the presence of Wilder’s genius, and he emerges as the cruelest as well as the wittiest of men.” —The Guardian “Not only rare insight into their often-stormy partnership but also an insider’s view of Hollywood during that era.” —Los Angeles Times “Very entertaining.” —Library Journal
A fascinating look at Hollywood’s most turbulent decade and the demise of the studio system—set against the boom of the post–World War II years, the Cold War, and the atomic age—and the movies that reflected the seismic shifts Hollywood in the 1950s was a period when the film industry both set conventions and broke norms and traditions—from Cinerama, CinemaScope, and VistaVision to the epic film and lavish musical. It was a decade that saw the rise of the anti-hero; the smoldering, the hidden, and the unspoken; teenagers gone wild in the streets; the sacred and the profane; the revolution of the Method; the socially conscious; the implosion of the studios; the end of the production code; and the invasion of the ultimate body snatcher: the “small screen” television. Here is Eisenhower’s America—seemingly complacent, conformity-ridden revealed in Vincente Minnelli’s Father of the Bride, Walt Disney’s Cinderella, and Brigadoon, among others. And here is its darkening, resonant landscape, beset by conflict, discontent, and anxiety (The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Asphalt Jungle, A Place in the Sun, Touch of Evil, It Came From Outer Space) . . . an America on the verge of cultural, political and sexual revolt, busting up and breaking out (East of Eden, From Here to Eternity, On the Waterfront, Sweet Smell of Success, The Wild One, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Jailhouse Rock). An important, riveting look at our nation at its peak as a world power and at the political, cultural, sexual upheavals it endured, reflected and explored in the quintessential American art form.
In the 1940s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was at the epicenter of the film world. Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, and Elizabeth Taylor were only a few of the many stars under contract at the studio. The author, Claude Jarman Jr., takes us from his discovery in a small school in Nashville, Tennessee, through his life among the movie elite. After receiving a special Academy Award for his performance in The Yearling in 1946, he remained at MGM until 1950 when the arrival of television savaged the studio and the star system. He appeared in ten additional films, including playing the son of John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in John Ford's epic western Rio Grande and Intruder in the Dust, a story of racial strife in Mississippi based on a novel by William Faulkner. After retiring from films in 1956 at the age of twenty-one, he returned to the movie world in 1965 as the director of the San Francisco International Film Festival which reunited him with famous legends in the film industry.
