This title tells the story of one of the most celebrated and forgotten directors of the silent film era. Born in late-Victorian Dublin, Ingram immigrated to America in his teens and studied sculpture at Yale. Lured by the opportunities on offer in the exciting world of New York's moving picture industry, he abandoned his studies for the cinema, becoming a successful director. But for this obstinate perfectionist life in the newly organised Hollywood studio system was anathema, and in the early thirties, Ingram abandoned cinema for a life of travel and writing, an all but forgotten name when he died.
The first Latin American actor to become a superstar, Ramon Novarro was for years one of Hollywood's top actors. Born Ramon Samaniego to a prominent Mexican family, he arrived in America in 1916, a refugee from civil wars. By the mid-1920s, he had become one of MGM's biggest box office attractions, starring in now-classic films, including The Student Prince, Mata Hari, and the original version of Ben-Hur. He shared the screen with the era's top leading ladies, such as Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, Joan Crawford, and Norma Shearer, and he became Rudolph Valentino's main rival in the “Latin Lover” category. Yet, despite his considerable professional accomplishments, Novarro's enduring hold on fame stems from his tragic death—his bloodied corpse was found in his house on Halloween 1968 in what has become one of Hollywood's most infamous scandals. A lifelong bachelor, Novarro carefully cultivated his image as a man deeply devoted to his family and to Catholicism. His murder shattered that persona. News reports revealed that the dashing screen hero had not only been gay, but he was dead at the hands of two young, male hustlers. Since then, details of his murder have achieved near mythic proportions, obscuring Novarro's professional legacy. Beyond Paradise presents a full picture of the man who made motion picture history. Including original interviews with Novarro's surviving friends, family, coworkers, and the two men convicted of his murder, this biography provides unique insights into an early Hollywood star—a man whose heart was forever in conflict with his image and whose myth continues to fascinate today.
Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling are virtually unknown outside of Hollywood and little-remembered even there, but as General Manager and Head of Publicity for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, they lorded over all the stars in Hollywood's golden age from the 1920s through the 1940s--including legends like Garbo, Dietrich, Gable and Garland. When MGM stars found themselves in trouble, it was Eddie and Howard who took care of them--solved their problems, hid their crimes, and kept their secrets. They were "the Fixers." At a time when image meant everything and the stars were worth millions to the studios that owned them, Mannix and Strickling were the most important men at MGM. Through a complex web of contacts in every arena, from reporters and doctors to corrupt police and district attorneys, they covered up some of the most notorious crimes and scandals in Hollywood history, keeping stars out of jail and, more importantly, their names out of the papers. They handled problems as diverse as the murder of Paul Bern (husband of MGM's biggest star, Jean Harlow), the studio-directed drug addictions of Judy Garland, the murder of Ted Healy (creator of The Three Stooges) at the hands of Wallace Beery, and arranging for an unmarried Loretta Young to adopt her own child--a child fathered by a married Clark Gable. Through exhaustive research and interviews with contemporaries, this is the never-before-told story of Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling. The dual biography describes how a mob-related New Jersey laborer and the quiet son of a grocer became the most powerful men at the biggest studio in the world.
Collection of the five hundred films that have been selected, to date, for preservation by the National Film Preservation Board, and are thereby listed in the National Film Registry.
The films of Michael Powell (1905-90) and Emeric Pressburger (1902-88), among them I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), A Matter of Life and Death (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948), are landmarks in British cinema, standing apart from the realist and comic mainstream with their highly stylised aesthetic and their themes of romantic longing and spiritual crisis. Powell and Pressburger are revered by film lovers and film-makers (Martin Scorsese has called them 'the most successful experimental film-makers in the world'). In this first-ever collection of essays on Powell, an international group of critics and scholars map out his film-making skills, providing new readings of individual films, analysing recurrent techniques and themes, and relating them to contemporary debates about gender, sexuality, nationality and cinematic spectacle. Powell, with and without Pressburger, emerges as a film-maker of lasting originality and significance.
This book is the first major study of a French silent cinema star. It focuses on Pierre Batcheff, a prominent popular cinema star in the 1920s, the French Valentino, best-known to modern audiences for his role as the protagonist of the avant-garde film classic Un chien andalou. Unlike other stars, he was linked to intellectual circles, especially the Surrealists. The book places Batcheff in the context of 1920s popular cinema, with specific reference to male stars of the period. It analyses the tensions he exemplifies between the 'popular' and the 'intellectual' during the 1920s, as cinema - the subject of intense intellectual interest across Europe - was racked between commercialism and 'art'. A number of the major films are studied in detail: Le Double amour (Epstein, 1925), Feu Mathias Pascal (L'Herbier, 1925), Education de prince (Diamant-Berger, 1927), Le Joueur d'echecs (Bernard, 1927), La Sirene des tropiques (Etievant and Nalpas, 1927), Les Deux timides (Clair, 1928), Un chien andalou (Bunuel, 1929), Monte-Cristo (Fescourt, 1929), and Baroud (Ingram, 1932).Key features:*The first major study of a French silent cinema star.*Provides an in-depth analysis of star performance.*Includes extensive appendices of documents from popular cinema magazines of the period.
