In this first translation in book form of his work, Latin American social commentator Carlos Monsivais presents an extraordinary chronicle of contemporary life south of the Rio Grande, ranging over subjects as various as Latino hip hop, Dolores del Rio, boleros, and melodrama. Monsivais's chronicles are laconic and satirical, taking as a constant theme the conflicts between Mexican and North American culture and between modern and traditional ways of life.
Dance and the Hollywood Latina asks why every Latina star in Hollywood history began as a dancer or danced onscreen. Introducing the concepts of ""inbetween-ness"" and ""racial mobility"" to further illuminate how racialized sexuality and the dancing female body operate in film, this book focuses on the careers of Dolores Del Rio, Rita Hayworth, Carmen Miranda, Rita Moreno, and Jennifer Lopez and helps readers better understand how the United States grapples with race, gender, and sexuality through dancing bodies on screen
Here is the first extensive, full-length biography and career record on the life and work of Mexican whirlwind Lupe Velez (1908-1944). Over the years many crude myths have surfaced about Velez, the most notorious that she "died with her head in the toilet." This biography not only studies Lupe's personal life and career--including her tempestuous marriage to Johnny Weissmuller--but also examines her death in detail. It has been almost seven decades since her untimely end; at long last, the ugly rumors and myths are debunked--for good. Included are never-before-told family stories and photographs from Lupe's second cousin, and an analysis of the actress's lasting influence on popular culture. The foreword by Oscar-winning film historian Kevin Brownlow focuses on the fact and fancy behind Lupe Velez's colorful public image.
In Looking for Mexico, a leading historian of visual culture, John Mraz, provides a panoramic view of Mexico’s modern visual culture from the U.S. invasion of 1847 to the present. Along the way, he illuminates the powerful role of photographs, films, illustrated magazines, and image-filled history books in the construction of national identity, showing how Mexicans have both made themselves and been made with the webs of significance spun by modern media. Central to Mraz’s book is photography, which was distributed widely throughout Mexico in the form of cartes-de-visite, postcards, and illustrated magazines. Mraz analyzes the work of a broad range of photographers, including Guillermo Kahlo, Winfield Scott, Hugo Brehme, Agustín Víctor Casasola, Tina Modotti, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Héctor García, Pedro Meyer, and the New Photojournalists. He also examines representations of Mexico’s past in the country’s influential picture histories: popular, large-format, multivolume series replete with thousands of photographs and an assortment of texts. Turning to film, Mraz compares portrayals of the Mexican Revolution by Fernando de Fuentes to the later movies of Emilio Fernández and Gabriel Figueroa. He considers major stars of Golden Age cinema as gender archetypes for mexicanidad, juxtaposing the charros (hacienda cowboys) embodied by Pedro Infante, Pedro Armendáriz, and Jorge Negrete with the effacing women: the mother, Indian, and shrew as played by Sara García, Dolores del Río, and María Félix. Mraz also analyzes the leading comedians of the Mexican screen, representations of the 1968 student revolt, and depictions of Frida Kahlo in films made by Paul Leduc and Julie Taymor. Filled with more than fifty illustrations, Looking for Mexico is an exuberant plunge into Mexico’s national identity, its visual culture, and the connections between the two.
Diana McLellan reveals the complex and intimate connections that roiled behind the public personae of Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Tallulah Bankhead, and the women who loved them. Private correspondence, long-secret FBI files, and troves of unpublished documents reveal a chain of lesbian affairs that moved from the theater world of New York, through the heights of chic society, to embed itself in the power structure of the movie business. The Girls serves up a rich stew of film, politics, sexuality, psychology, and stardom.
A pioneering work from a visionary anthropologist, The Children of Sanchez is hailed around the world as a watershed achievement in the study of poverty—a uniquely intimate investigation, as poignant today as when it was first published. It is the epic story of the Sánchez family, told entirely by its members—Jesus, the 50-year-old patriarch, and his four adult children—as their lives unfold in the Mexico City slum they call home. Weaving together their extraordinary personal narratives, Oscar Lewis creates a sympathetic but ultimately tragic portrait that is at once harrowing and humane, mystifying and moving. An invaluable document, full of verve and pathos, The Children of Sanchez reads like the best of fiction, with the added impact that it is all, undeniably, true.
MGM Style is an overview of the career and achievements of Hollywood’s most famous art director. Cedric Gibbons was the supervisor in charge of the art department at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studios from its inception in 1924 until Gibbons chose to retire in 1956. Lavishly illustrated with over 175 pristine duotone photographs, the vast majority of which have never before been published, this is the first volume to trace Gibbons’ trendsetting career. At its height in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Gibbons was regularly acknowledged by his peers as having shaped the craft of art direction in American film; his work was recognized as representing the finest in motion picture sets and settings. Gibbons and his associates constructed the villages, towns, streets, squares and edifices that later appeared in hundreds of films, and whose mixed architecture stood in for army camps and the wild west, Dutch New York and Dickensian London, ancient China and modern Japan. Inspired by the work of Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus masters, as well as the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris and Frank Lloyd Wright’s experiments with open planning, Gibbons championed the notion that movie decor should move beyond the commercial framework of the popular cinema
Heroes, Lovers, and Others tells the fascinating history of Latino actors in American film from the silent era to today. Rodriguez examines such Latino legends as Desi Arnaz, Dolores del Rio, Rita Hayworth, Raquel Welch, Anthony Quinn, Selma Hayek, and Antonio Banderas. More than just a collection of celebrity stories, the book explores the attitudes, cultural conditions, and assumptions that influenced the portrayal of Latinos in film as well as their reception by the public. Heroes, Lovers, and Others is a comprehensive volume packed with carefully researched information and analysis for both students and cinema enthusiasts alike.
