Playbills to Photoplays

Playbills to Photoplays

Author: New England Vintage Film Society Inc.

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2010-12-01

Total Pages: 569

ISBN-13: 1453587756

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"They were pioneers in the most glamorous business in the world, and you only know half of their story. Playbills To Photoplays reveals colorful episodes in the lives of the stars before they became stars. Everyone saw them, but few knew where they came from. This collection of essays follows some of the most famous names in show business from Vaudeville and Broadway to Hollywood, revealing a part of their lives that movie historians have neglected -- until now. I think this book is terrific. It's a must read for any fan of the silver screen, and the days when movie stars were real stars." - Morgan Loew, great-grandson of Adolph Zukor, founder, Paramount Pictures, and Marcus Loew, founder, Loews Theaters and MGM. "Ms. Loew's choice of performers to write about is amazingly diverse and fascinating, from character actors like Conrad Veidt to major stars like Katharine Hepburn. She has written a most compelling book about their transitions from stage to film... many of the stories new to me. Wonderful!" - Joan Benny, daughter of comedian, Jack Benny, one of America's greatest entertainment icons of the 20th century, whose career included vaudeville, radio, movies and television. "A nice compilation of essays on film stars who made the transition from the stage to early talkies with essays on Al Jolson, Mae West, Eddie Cantor, Harpo Marx, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Charley Grapewin, Ed Wynn, and the Morgans (Frank and Ralph). Some essays were much better than others - I loved the one on the Morgans, Burns and Allen, Harpo Marx, and Katharine Hepburn... I would highly recommend the book as it gives you a good idea what vaudeville and the Broadway stage was like in the early 20's and what it was about these stars that allowed them to make the transition." -Librarything.com "....big stars as well as a raft of character actors, and decorated with dozens of striking photos...perceptive close-ups that make for vibrant film criticism...engaging profiles of Old Hollywood icons..." - Kirkus "Performers attempting to breakthrough will find this book inspirational!" - An Aspiring Actor Motion pictures with recorded sound --known as "talking pictures", or "talkies"--signaled the end of silent films and created some of the greatest entertainment icons of the twentieth century. Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies introduces a new generation to the real life struggles and careers of talented, hard working, early twentieth century vaudeville and stage entertainers who migrated to sound film. Twenty-eight essays and over one hundred photographs examine the actors before, during, and after the revolutionary new sound film technology catapulted many of them to superstardom during Hollywood's Golden Age. Playbills To Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies explains the social, political, economic, historical, and cultural issues that shaped each performer's body of work, acting technique, persona, and public following over time.


Spencer Tracy, a Life in Pictures

Spencer Tracy, a Life in Pictures

Author: New England Vintage Film Inc. Society

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1477144013

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Spencer Tracy simply was every character he played on the silver screen. He was known as the actors-actor, a master of his craft. As members of the Tracy Family, we arte grateful to Brenda Loew for putting together this amazing photo book of Spencer Tracy for all the world to enjoy. His memory and legacy live on in this intimate portrait of a man and a life that was fully lived. - Cyndi Tracy & the Spencer Tracy Family The minute you see Spencer Tracy on the screen you are immediately transfi xed on his humanity. Whether he plays a poor man, a wise-cracking sportswriter, the father of the bride, or the defender of a great cause, in the end, Spencer Tracy truly is the heroic Santiago from Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, courageously battling the sharks that would tear apart his dignity and life's work. No other actor had his gift. - Upton Bell, New England radio and television talk show host whose mother, Broadway actress and comedienne Frances Bell, starred with Eddie Cantor in Whoopee! and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1928, in the early talkie Night Work, and in one of the first experimental television broadcasts in New York City with Gertrude Lawrence and Lionel Atwill. She was a great admirer of Tracy when he was on the New York stage. _______________ Spencer Tracy, A Life in Pictures: Rare, Candid and Original Photos of the Hollywood Legend, His Family, and Career presents a unique and compelling portrait of the man, his career, and family, including rare imagesof his marriage to actress Louise Treadwell and their two children: John, who was born deaf, and Susie. More than 300 rare, candid and original images in this edition illustrate how Spencer Tracy's life, family and career touched people in every corner of the world. Combining a unique mixture of original news service photographs, celebrity stills, and rare, candid, and unique snapshots, this dazzling collection of over three hundred images, Spencer Tracy, A Life in Pictures: Rare, Candid and Original Photos of the Hollywood Legend, His Family and Career captures the life and legacy of a Golden Age Hollywood legend, onscreen and off. One of the most versatile and popular movie stars of the twentieth century, Spencer Tracy's life and career spanned sixty-seven tumultuous years of twentieth-century American history, including two world wars, the Great Depression, technological advances, the emergence of the nuclear age, the cold war, and the rise of the women's and civil rights movements. Behind the scenes, two-time Academy Award-winner Spencer Tracy faced personal and professional challenges without parallel or precedent. Books and articles are still being written today in an attempt to explain the mystique surrounding the Spencer Tracy legend. His story is an inspiring legacy.


From Holmes to Sherlock

From Holmes to Sherlock

Author: Mattias Boström

Publisher: Grove Press

Published: 2017-08-01

Total Pages: 684

ISBN-13: 0802189164

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“If you love Sherlock Holmes, you’ll love this book…the best account of Baker Street mania ever written.”—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Winner of the Agatha Award for best nonfiction work Edgar Award finalist for best critical/biographical work Anthony Award finalist for best critical/nonfiction work Everyone knows Sherlock Holmes. But what made this fictional character, dreamed up by a small-town English doctor in the 1880s, into such a lasting success, despite the author’s own attempt to escape his invention? In From Holmes to Sherlock, Swedish author and Baker Street Irregular Mattias Boström recreates the full story behind the legend for the first time. From a young Arthur Conan Doyle sitting in a Scottish lecture hall taking notes on his medical professor’s powers of observation to the pair of modern-day fans who brainstormed the idea behind the TV sensation Sherlock, from the publishing world’s first literary agent to the Georgian princess who showed up at the Conan Doyle estate and altered a legacy, the narrative follows the men and women who have created and perpetuated the myth. It includes tales of unexpected fortune, accidental romance, and inheritances gone awry, and tells of the actors, writers, readers, and other players who have transformed Sherlock Holmes from the gentleman amateur of the Victorian era to the odd genius of today. From Holmes to Sherlock is a singular celebration of the most famous detective in the world—a must for newcomers and experts alike. “Riveting…[A] wonderfully entertaining history.”?TheWall Street Journal “Celebrates the versatility of one of fiction’s most beloved characters…terrific.”?TheChristian Science Monitor


The Metatheater of Tennessee Williams

The Metatheater of Tennessee Williams

Author: Laura Michiels

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2021-06-30

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1476666466

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Tennessee Williams' characters set the stage for their own dramas. Blanche DuBois (A Streetcar Named Desire), arrived at her sister's apartment with an entire trunk of costumes and props. Amanda Wingfield (The Glass Menagerie) directed her son on how to eat and tries to make her daughter act like a Southern Belle. This book argues for the persistence of one metatheatrical strategy running throughout Williams' entire oeuvre: each play stages the process through which it came into being--and this process consists of a variation on repetition combined with transformation. Each chapter takes a detailed reading of one play and its variation on repetition and transformation. Specific topics include reproduction in Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), mediation in Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981), and how the playwright frequently recycled previous works of art, including his own.


Hollywood Heroines

Hollywood Heroines

Author: Laura L. S. Bauer

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2018-12-07

Total Pages: 574

ISBN-13:

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This is a topical resource that provides a comprehensive look at the most influential women in Hollywood cinema across a wide-range of occupations rarely found together in a single volume. Unlike other anthologies, Hollywood Heroines: The Most Influential Women in Film History is a hybrid of film history and industry information with an exclusive focus on prominent women. This reference work includes more commonly discussed categories of important women in Hollywood film history, such as directors and actresses, and reaches beyond them to encompass women working as cinematographers, casting directors, studio heads, musical composers, and visual and special effects supervisors. The wide range of filmmaking crafts covered in the book provides an acute view of the industry and increases the visibility of and quality of representation for women working in Hollywood. By bringing the experience of these influential women to light, Hollywood Heroines joins a growing movement that endeavors to dismantle harmful, long-standing industry myths that perpetuate the systemic underrepresentation of women and the devaluation of women's stories in the Hollywood film industry.


Screen Acting Skills

Screen Acting Skills

Author: Roger Wooster

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-01-09

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1350093068

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Whether you are a young actor seeking to land your first screen role or a workshop leader looking for relevant exercises that won't involve vast technical support, this book belongs on your shelf. Many screen actors begin their careers lacking the appropriate pre-shoot preparation and knowledge of studio protocols. This book helps actors new to screen performance to be fully prepared artistically - and technically. Screen Acting Skills augments existing theoretical and academic studies by offering practical, focused exercises that can be explored in low-tech workshop situations. Written in an accessible, jargon-free and often humorous style, Screen Acting Skills enables creativity on the workshop floor, allowing young - and older! - actors to access their own talent, and to hone their skills. This book offers students and tutors a straightforward approach to acting for the screen and how to prepare for studio work. The book is published alongside online videos of workshops with screen acting students.


The Routledge Handbook of Translation History

The Routledge Handbook of Translation History

Author: Christopher Rundle

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-09-30

Total Pages: 548

ISBN-13: 1317276078

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The Routledge Handbook of Translation History presents the first comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of this multi-faceted disciplinary area and serves both as an introduction to carrying out research into translation and interpreting history and as a key point of reference for some of its main theoretical and methodological issues, interdisciplinary approaches, and research themes. The Handbook brings together 30 eminent international scholars from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, offering examples of the most innovative research while representing a wide range of approaches, themes, and cultural contexts. The Handbook is divided into four sections: the first looks at some key methodological and theoretical approaches; the second examines some of the key research areas that have developed an interdisciplinary dialogue with translation history; the third looks at translation history from the perspective of specific cultural and religious perspectives; and the fourth offers a selection of case studies on some of the key topics to have emerged in translation and interpreting history over the past 20 years. This Handbook is an indispensable resource for students and researchers of translation and interpreting history, translation theory, and related areas.


Vintage Photography, Advertisements And Playbills Illustrated: Lingerie, Bathing Beauties, Boudoir, Vaudeville, Burlesque And The Pin-Up

Vintage Photography, Advertisements And Playbills Illustrated: Lingerie, Bathing Beauties, Boudoir, Vaudeville, Burlesque And The Pin-Up

Author: Jeffrey Frank Jones

Publisher: Jeffrey Frank Jones

Published: 2015-07-30

Total Pages: 845

ISBN-13:

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Introduction To Vaudeville: The typical vaudeville show line-up By the turn of the century, there was a standardized lineup of acts on the vaudeville stage. The bill was divided into two parts with an intermission in the middle. The show would open with a "dumb act," usually an animal or acrobatic act. "Dumb" did not refer to the quality of the act, but rather to the fact that they did not rely on sound, and thus were appropriate to use as opening and closing acts when patrons were noisily entering and leaving. Dumb acts were rarely given prime positions on the bill. "The second act could be almost anything at all, as long as it provided more entertainment than the first act" (Di- Meglio 1973, 35). The third act "was intended to wake up the house, the number four to deliver the first solid punch, and the last before the interval a knockout that would bring them back wanting more" (Banham 1995, 1161- 1162). This fifth act usually had to feature a big name. After the intermission, the sixth act had to sustain the impact of the previous acts yet not supersede in popularity the ones that would follow. The main attraction or star would appear as the next to closing act. The concluding act was often called a chaser since it was meant to play as people would be exiting the theater early. Often a chaser was a motion picture. Some historians have indicated that the use of the motion picture as a chaser indicated its low position in the vaudeville theater, but it is also possible that it was used for closing merely because it, too, was a "dumb act" that need not rely on sound. The chaser, while allowing theater-goers to exit noisily if necessary, also had to be entertaining enough to keep the remaining audience members happy with the entire bill. The entire bill typically included eight to ten acts with some theaters using more or less. Motion pictures as vaudeville acts The novelty of a moving image being projected on a screen was first viewed by American in 1895. Vaudeville theaters were among the first venues for these early motion Edison/Armat Vitascope, Latham Eidoloscope, Lumiere Cinematographe, and Biograph "were all demonstrated in American vaudeville theatres" (Allen 1980, 4-5). There was a vast network of vaudeville theaters around the country and, therefore, motion pictures were seen by large numbers of people soon after their inception. Vaudeville theaters remained the primary setting for the exhibition of motion pictures for the next ten years. Theater patrons of the late nineteenth century were accustomed to many types of visual novelty acts on the vaudeville stage. These acts included magic lantern presentations, living pictures, pantomime, shadowgraphy, puppetry, and melodrama (Allen 1980, 311); The motion picture was simply the latest visual novelty to be shown on the stage. Possibly the earliest exhibition of a motion picture projector may have been that of the Lumiere Cinematographe in France, March 1895. In the United States, the first exhibition of a motion picture projector in a theater may have been the Latham Eidelscope in 1895. This machine was supposedly featured on Broadway in May 1895, and later moved to Hammerstein's Olympia vaudeville theater. The Latham Eidelscope subsequently appeared at Chicago's Olympia Theatre. The Eidelscope had technical limitations that made the projected image indistinct and therefore did not attract large audiences.