James Mason
James Mason

Author: Sarah Thomas

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-07-25

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1838716483

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Sarah Thomas's study moves beyond the image of the brooding, destructive man at odds with employers and his own star status to explore the complexity of Mason's career and star persona. Her analysis is structured around three strands central to understanding stardom: the star persona, industry and power, and screen performance. Thomas addresses the incredible range of Mason's star career – 1930s 'quota quickies'; 1940s Gainsborough melodramas; the desperate IRA man in Carol Reed's 'Odd Man Out' (1947); from the 1950s onwards, Hollywood classics including starring in Hitchcock's 'North by Northwest' (1959) and playing Humbert Humbert in Kubrick's 'Lolita' (1962). She also considers in depth his undervalued post-1962 career, off-screen celebrity status, non-film work, comic and vocal performances, and the star's own self-commentary. In doing so, she offers a new perspective on such subjects as power and powerlessness; public image and national identity, contextualizing Mason's career in wider histories of British, American and European transnational filmmaking.

James Mason and the Walk-in Closet
James Mason and the Walk-in Closet

Author: June Akers Seese

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13: 9781564780409

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Her characters in this collection of urban tales include a teacher who sleeps with a rock star on her lunch break, a defrocked priest, a saxophone player who finds a Brillo pad in his scrambled eggs, a psychiatrist whose glasses fall off his nose, and a legal secretary still in love with her estranged homosexual husband.

James Mason in America
James Mason in America

Author: Joost van Winsen

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2020-01-30

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781476679433

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Few men are prominent chess players as well as esteemed chess writers. James Mason, in his lifetime, had the reputation of being both. This book chronicles Mason's early career in the United States, providing many details on his writings and annotations for The Spirit of the Times and The American Chess Journal, his participation in the Cafe Europa and Cafe International tournaments, his win in 1876's Fourth American Chess Congress, and his matches against chess greats like George H. Mackenzie, Eugene Delmar, Dion M. Martinez, Edward Alberoni, and Henry E. Bird. Mason's efforts to establish an American Chess Association and to arrange an international centennial congress in 1876 are also explored. In addition to the general index, the work also includes indexes of games, annotators, and openings.

James Mason
James Mason

Author: Kevin Sweeney

Publisher: Greenwood

Published: 1999-01-30

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13:

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James Mason broke into British films in 1935 after a few years working on the stage. For the rest of the decade, he alternated unsuccessful theatre ventures with increasingly important movies. Though he was a conscientious objector, he became one of the most popular British actors of the World War II era. He moved to Hollywood after the war and made 34 films between 1949 and 1962. Though success initially eluded him, he worked with some of the leading directors of the time and eventually won an Academy Award nomination for A Star is Born (1954). He worked steadily in the years that followed, appearing in nearly 50 feature films from 1963 until his death in 1984. While many of these films were undistinguished, he earned two additional Oscar nominations and was voted Cinema Actor of the Century by a panel of international critics in 1967. This reference book is a comprehensive guide to his life and career. The volume begins with a biography in narrative form that traces Mason's life. The biography is followed by a short chronology, which highlights the principal events of his life and career. An extensive annotated bibliography then reviews works by and about Mason. The sections that follow detail his many performances in film, radio, television, audio recordings, and the stage. Each section includes entries for individual productions, with entries providing extensive cast and credit information, plot summaries, excerpts from reviews, and critical commentary where available. The volume also lists additional information, such as Mason's awards and nominations.

Odd Man Out
Odd Man Out

Author: Sheridan Morley

Publisher:

Published: 2016-09-05

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 9781911413653

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'Incredibly good-looking, in a dark way ... that curious quality of a man with an eternal secret. ... That was what was so arresting. ... That and the voice.' Geraldine Fitzgerald The reason for watching a James Mason film, as the film critic Pauline Kael once noted, was usually only James Mason himself. Mason was actually pointed toward a career in architecture before acting overtook him during his third year at Cambridge. He went on to make an indelible impression playing emotionally haunted characters on stage and screen, such as one early stand-out role, Johnny McQueen in Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947). Mason and his first wife, Pamela, arrived in the United States in the late forties, and the Hollywood phase of his career lasted through the 1950s. It memorably included diverse classics such as The Desert Fox, A Star is Born (for which he was Oscar-nominated) and North by Northwest. After his return to Europe, and remarried to Clarissa Kaye, he continued in landmark movies such as Lolita, Georgy Girl, The Verdict and, his last, The Shooting Party, receiving two more Oscar nominations in the process. But in this revealing book, Mason is shown to be a highly sensitive man uncomfortable with stardom, and often at odds with attempts to mould or typecast him. He remains, in legacy, the most intriguing and unpredictable of the great screen-actors. 'James knew how to steal movies, and give a performance that only really got noticed when the whole film was put together; so he would emerge with immense distinction having apparently been doing very little on the set.' Christopher Plummer