Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era (1930-1934)
Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era (1930-1934)

Author: Mark A. Vieira

Publisher: Running Press Adult

Published: 2019-04-02

Total Pages: 660

ISBN-13: 0762466758

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Filled with rare images and untold stories from filmmakers, exhibitors, and moviegoers, Forbidden Hollywood is the ultimate guide to a gloriously entertaining era when a lax code of censorship let sin rule the movies. Forbidden Hollywood is a history of "pre-Code" like none otherA name=_Hlk518256457: you will eavesdrop on production conferences, read nervous telegrams from executives to censors, and hear Americans argue about "immoral" movies. /aYou will see decisions artfully wrought, so as to fool some of the people long enough to get films into theaters. You will read what theater managers thought of such craftiness, and hear from fans as they applauded creativity or condemned crassness. You will see how these films caused a grass-roots movement to gain control of Hollywood-and why they were "forbidden" for fifty years. The book spotlights the twenty-two films that led to the strict new Code of 1934, including Red-Headed Woman, Call Her Savage, and She Done Him Wrong. You'll see Paul Muni shoot a path to power in the original Scarface; Barbara Stanwyck climb the corporate ladder on her own terms in Baby Face; and misfits seek revenge in Freaks. More than 200 newly restored (and some never-before-published) photographs illustrate pivotal moments in the careers of Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, and Greta Garbo; and the pre-Code stardom of Claudette Colbert, Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich, James Cagney, and Mae West. This is the definitive portrait of an unforgettable era in filmmaking.

Pre-Code Hollywood
Pre-Code Hollywood

Author: Thomas Doherty

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 1999-08-27

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 9780231500128

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Pre-Code Hollywood explores the fascinating period in American motion picture history from 1930 to 1934 when the commandments of the Production Code Administration were violated with impunity in a series of wildly unconventional films—a time when censorship was lax and Hollywood made the most of it. Though more unbridled, salacious, subversive, and just plain bizarre than what came afterwards, the films of the period do indeed have the look of Hollywood cinema—but the moral terrain is so off-kilter that they seem imported from a parallel universe. In a sense, Doherty avers, the films of pre-Code Hollywood are from another universe. They lay bare what Hollywood under the Production Code attempted to cover up and push offscreen: sexual liaisons unsanctified by the laws of God or man, marriage ridiculed and redefined, ethnic lines crossed and racial barriers ignored, economic injustice exposed and political corruption assumed, vice unpunished and virtue unrewarded—in sum, pretty much the raw stuff of American culture, unvarnished and unveiled. No other book has yet sought to interpret the films and film-related meanings of the pre-Code era—what defined the period, why it ended, and what its relationship was to the country as a whole during the darkest years of the Great Depression... and afterward.

Sin in Soft Focus
Sin in Soft Focus

Author: Mark A. Vieira

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams

Published: 2003-03-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9780810982284

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In the spring of 1934, Hollywood faced what the Los Angeles Times called "the most serious crisis of its history." The film capital was under siege by censorship advocates who launched a boycott, demanding that the film industry enforce the Production Code it had adopted in 1930. For nearly five years, defiant producers had cited artistic freedom and flouted the Code, which forbade vulgarity, profanity, nudity, excessive violence, illegal drugs, adultery, "sex perversion," "white slavery," racial mingling, "lustful kissing," and suggestive dancing. In July 1934, the controversial films were outlawed. Today they are called "pre-Code." Sin in Soft Focus showcases a scintillating era in film history and tells how filmmakers sidestepped the Code. Mark A. Vieira draws on extensive research, interviews, and correspondence in the Production Code Administration files to tell the engaging, suspenseful, and often humorous story of the struggle between Hollywood and its reformers, weaving history, politics, and film into a full-blooded narrative. Illustrated with 275 film stills, many of them rare, the book captures the stunning visual artistry of the era.

Dangerous Men
Dangerous Men

Author: Mick LaSalle

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2014-07-15

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1466876042

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Using the same mix of accessibility and insider knowledge he used so successfully in Complicated Women, author and film critic Mick LaSalle now turns his attention to the men of the pre-Code Hollywood era. The five years between 1929 and mid-1934 was a period of loosened censorship that finally ended with the imposition of a harsh Production Code that would, for the next thirty-four years, censor much of the life and honesty out of American movies. Dangerous Men takes a close look at the images of manhood during this pre-Code era, which coincided with an interesting time for men--the culmination of a generation-long transformation in the masculine ideal. By the late twenties, the tumult of a new century had made the nineteenth century's notion of the ideal man seem like a repressed stuffed shirt, a deluded optimist. The smiling, confident hero of just a few years before fell out of favor, and the new heroes who emerged were gangsters, opportunists, sleazy businessmen, shifty lawyers, shell-shocked soldiers--men whose existence threatened the status quo. In this book, LaSalle highlights such household names as James Cagney, Clark Gable, Edward G. Robinson, Maurice Chevalier, Spencer Tracy, and Gary Cooper, along with lesser-known ones such as Richard Barthelmess, Lee Tracy, Robert Montgomery, and the magnificent Warren William. Together they represent a vision of manhood more exuberant and contentious--and more humane--than anything that has followed on the American screen.

This Was Hollywood
This Was Hollywood

Author: Carla Valderrama

Publisher: Running Press Adult

Published: 2020-11-17

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0762495855

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In this one-of-a-kind Hollywood history, the creator of Instagram's celebrated @ThisWasHollywood reveals the forgotten past of the film world in a dazzling visual package modeled on the classic fan magazines of yesteryear. From former screen legends who have faded into obscurity to new revelations about the biggest movie stars, Valderrama unearths the most fascinating little-known tales from the birth of Hollywood through its Golden Age. The shocking fate of the world's first movie star. Clark Gable's secret love child. The film that nearly ended Paul Newman's career. A former child star who, at ninety-three, reveals her #metoo story for the first time. Valderrama unfolds these stories, and many more, in a volume that is by turns riveting, maddening, hilarious, and shocking. Drawing on new interviews, archival research, and an exhaustive library of photographs, This Was Hollywood is a compelling and visually stunning catalogue of the lost history of the movies.

Complicated Women
Complicated Women

Author: Mick LaSalle

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2014-08-05

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 1466876972

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Between 1929 and 1934, women in American cinema were modern! For five short years women in American cinema were modern! They took lovers, had babies out of wedlock, got rid of cheating husbands, enjoyed their sexuality, led unapologetic careers and, in general, acted the way many think women only acted after 1968. Before then, women on screen had come in two varieties - good or bad - sweet ingenue or vamp. Then two stars came along to blast away these common stereotypes. Garbo turned the femme fatale into a woman whose capacity for love and sacrifice made all other human emotions seem pale. Meanwhile, Norma Shearer succeeded in taking the ingenue to a place she'd never been: the bedroom. Garbo and Shearer took the stereotypes and made them complicated. In the wake of these complicated women came others, a deluge of indelible stars - Constance Bennett, Ruth Chatterton, Mae Clarke, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Kay Francis, Ann Harding, Jean Harlow, Miriam Hopkins, Dorothy Mackaill, Barbara Stanywyck, Mae West and Loretta Young all came into their own during the pre-Code era. These women pushed the limits and shaped their images along modern lines. Then, in July 1934, the draconian Production Code became the law in Hollywood and these modern women of the screen were banished, not to be seen again until the code was repealed three decades later. Mick LaSalle, film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, takes readers on a tour of pre-Code films and reveals how this was the true golden age of women's films and how the movies of the pre-Code are still worth watching. The bold, pioneering and complicated women of the pre-Code era are about to take their place in the pantheon of film history, and America is about to reclaim a rich legacy.

Into the Dark
Into the Dark

Author: Mark A. Vieira

Publisher: Running Press Adult

Published: 2016-05-24

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0762458062

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You know film noir when you see it: the shadowed setting; the cynical detective; the femme fatale; and the twist of fate. Into the Dark captures this alluring genre with a cavalcade of compelling photographs and a guide to 82 of its best films. Into the Dark is the first book to tell the story of film noir in its own voice. Author Mark A. Vieira quotes the artists who made these movies and the journalists and critics who wrote about them, taking readers on a year-by-year tour of the exciting nights when movies like Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and Sunset Boulevard were sprung on an unsuspecting public. For the first time, we hear the voices of film noir artists speak from the sets and offices of the studios, explaining the dark genre, even before it had a name. Those voices tell how the genre was born and how it thrived in an industry devoted to sweetness and light. Into the Dark is a ticket to a smoky, glamorous world. You enter a story conference with Raymond Chandler, visit the set of Laura, and watch Detour with a Midwest audience. This volume recreates the environment that spawned film noir. It also displays the wit and warmth of the genre's artists. Hedda Hopper reports on Citizen Kane, calling Orson Welles "Little Orson Annie." Lauren Bacall says she enjoys playing a bad girl in To Have and Have Not. Bosley Crowther calls Joan Crawford in Possessed a "ghost wailing for a demon lover beneath a waning moon." An Indiana exhibitor rates the classic Murder, My Sweet a "passable program picture." Illustrated by hundreds of rare still photographs, Into the Dark conveys the mystery, glamour, and irony that make film noir surpassingly popular. About TCM: Turner Classic Movies is the definitive resource for the greatest movies of all time. It engages, entertains, and enlightens to show how the entire spectrum of classic movies, movie history, and movie-making touches us all and influences how we think and live today.

Rock on Film
Rock on Film

Author: Fred Goodman

Publisher: Running Press Adult

Published: 2022-07-26

Total Pages: 539

ISBN-13: 076247842X

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For rock music and film buffs alike, this is the ultimate guide exploring the electrifying, entertaining, and often daring marriage of rock & roll and cinema. When the use of Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” turned 1955’s Blackboard Jungle into a teen sensation and a box-office smash, it proved the opening shot in a cinematic and cultural revolution. Starting with Elvis Presley and the teensploitation films of the ’50s and ’60s, in Rock on Film award-winning author and former Rolling Stone editor Fred Goodman takes readers on a wide-ranging journey through film and pop history. Along the way, he measures the transformative impact of the mid-’60s landmarks A Hard Day’s Night and Dont Look Back and how they seeded an almost unbelievably broad genre of films made by increasingly ambitious musicians and filmmakers across the past seven decades. From the carefree to the complex, the mindless to the mind-bending, rock films have staked out their own turf by simultaneously celebrating innocence and challenging artistic and social conventions. With an insightful round-up of fifty must-see rock films spanning crowd-pleasers, art-house favorites, underground gems, and undisputed classics, Rock on Film surveys the nearly seventy-year canon of a genre like no other. A series of original interviews with Cameron Crowe, Jim Jarmusch, Penelope Spheeris, Taylor Hackford, and John Waters illuminates how rock has influenced the work of some of the most divergent and thoughtful directors in movie history. Illustrated throughout by more than 150 full-color and black-and-white images, Rock on Film brings the history of music in the movies to vivid life.

Viva Hollywood
Viva Hollywood

Author: Luis I. Reyes

Publisher: Running Press Adult

Published: 2022-09-13

Total Pages: 633

ISBN-13: 0762478497

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Through an authoritative narrative and lavish photography, this is an in-depth history of the stars, films, achievements, and influence of the Hispanic and Latino community in Hollywood history from the silent era to the present day. Overcoming obstacles of prejudice, ignorance, and stereotyping, this group has given the world some of its most beloved stars and told some of its most indelible stories. Viva Hollywood examines the stars in front of the screen as well as the people behind-the-scenes who have created a rich legacy across more than 100 years. The role of Latin women on screen is explored through the professional lives of Dolores Del Rio, Rita Hayworth, Raquel Welch, Salma Hayek, Penélope Cruz, and many more. The book covers the films and careers of actors ranging from silent screen idol Antonio Moreno, to international Oscar-winning star Anthony Quinn, to Andy Garcia and Antonio Banderas. A spotlight is also given to craftspeople who elevated the medium with their artistry—visionaries like cinematographer John Alonzo, Citizen Kane scenic artist Mario Larrinaga, and Oscar-winning makeup artist Beatrice de Alba. The stories of these and many others begins through a lens of stereotyped on-screen personas of Latin Lovers, sexy spitfires, banditos, and gangsters. World War II saw an embrace of Latin culture as the “Good Neighbor Policy” made it both fashionable and patriotic to feature stories set south of the border. Social problem films of the 1950s and '60s brought fresh looks at the community, with performances like Katy Jurado in High Noon, the cast of West Side Story, and racial inequality depicted in George Stevens's Giant. Civil Rights, the Chicano Movement, and the work of activist actors such as Ricardo Montalban and Edward James Olmos influenced further change in Hollywood in subsequent decades and paved the way for modern times and stars the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Illustrated by more than 200 full-color and black-and-white images, Viva Hollywood is both a sweeping history and a celebration of the legacy of some of the greatest art and artists ever captured on screen.

TCM Underground
TCM Underground

Author: Millie De Chirico

Publisher: Running Press Adult

Published: 2022-10-25

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 0762480017

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Based on the Turner Classic Movies series, TCM Underground is the movie-lover's guide to 50 of the most campy, kitschy, shocking, and weirdly wonderful cult films you need to see. In the pages of this book, you'll explore this unique order of films—primarily from the 1960s, '70s, and '80s—with insightful reviews, behind-the-scenes stories, subgenre sidebars, and full-color and black-and-white photography throughout. Go along for the ride with new takes on crime films, including The Honeymoon Killers and The Harder They Come. Witness one-of-a-kind horror in Bill Gunn's landmark vampire film Ganja and Hess and Nobuhiko Obayashi’s infamous and indescribable Hausu. Absorb the boundary-pushing documentary-style trilogy The Decline of Western Civilization, which throws you into indelible moments in the punk and metal music scenes. And marvel at pure '80s oddities like Mac and Me and The Garbage Pail Kids. From Possession to Polyester and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to Xanadu, no two films are alike in this compendium. Just sit back and prepare to be surprised, amused, and entertained by this celebration of the stars, filmmakers, and stories behind fifty of the most beguiling and unforgettable movies ever to hit the screen.