RKO Radio Pictures existed in an atmosphere of almost chaos, from its optimistic beginnings in 1928 until it collapsed into ruins at the hands of Howard Hughes nearly 30 years later. Yet in that show history RKO made some of the greatest films and featured some of the finest talents ever to emerge from Hollywood.
One of the "Big Five" studios of Hollywood’s golden age, RKO is remembered today primarily for the famous films it produced, from King Kong and Citizen Kane to the Astaire-Rogers musicals. But its own story also provides a fascinating case study of film industry management during one of the most vexing periods in American social history. RKO Radio Pictures: A Titan is Born offers a vivid history of a thirty-year roller coaster of unstable finances, management battles, and artistic gambles. Richard Jewell has used unparalleled access to studio documents generally unavailable to scholars to produce the first business history of RKO, exploring its decision-making processes and illuminating the complex interplay between art and commerce during the heyday of the studio system. Behind the blockbuster films and the glamorous stars, the story of RKO often contained more drama than any of the movies it ever produced.
The story of RKO--the small studio that produced such film giants as King Kong, Citizen Kane, and the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals--is revealed by a woman who grew up among the great stars of Hollywood's "Golden Years": journalist Betty Lasky, the daughter of Jesse L. Lasky, one of the founders of the movie industry. Here you'll find an intriguing tale of executive greed and politics through changing hands, the stock market crash, and the demands of the superstars. This wheeling and dealing produced big money for its financiers, yet, ironically, it seldom tainted the high artistic quality of RKO's films. Immerse yourself in the highly controversial saga of the founders, financial manipulators, creative geniuses, and Hollywood users: Joseph P. Kennedy, Howard Hughes, Louis B. Mayer, David O. Selznick, Cecil B. DeMille, Pandro S. Berman, Floyd B. Odlum, David Sarnoff , Gloria Swanson , Orson Welles, Edward F. Albee, Merian C. Cooper, Dore Schary, and, of course, film pioneer Jesse L. Lasky. Illustrated with nearly 100 behind-the-scenes photos, including some depicting the making of such films as Cimarron, Top Hat, The Magnificent Ambersons, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.--Adapted from dust jacket.
Slow Fade to Black completes Richard B. Jewell’s richly detailed two-part history of the RKO film studio, which began with RKO Radio Pictures: A Titan Is Born, published in 2012. This second volume charts the studio’s fortunes, which peaked during World War II, declined in the postwar period, and finally collapsed in the 1950s. Drawing on hard-to-access archival materials, Jewell chronicles the period from 1942 to the company’s demise in 1957. Towering figures associated with the studio included Howard Hughes, Orson Welles, Charles Koerner, Val Lewton, Jane Russell, and Robert Mitchum. In addition to featuring an extraordinary cast of characters, the RKO story describes key aspects of entertainment history: Hollywood’s collaboration with Washington, film noir, censorship, HUAC, the rise of independent film production, and the impact of television on film. Taken as a whole, Jewell’s two-volume study represents the most substantial and insightful exploration of the Hollywood studio system to date.
She was born Virginia Katherine McMath, but the world would come to know her—and love her—as Ginger Rogers: Broadway star, Academy Award-winning actress, and the ultimate on-screen dancing partner of the inimitable Fred Astaire. In Ginger: My Story, the legendary entertainer shares the triumphs of a remarkable career that began when she won a Texas dancing contest at age fourteen; the joys and heartbreaks of her five marriages; her relationships with some of Hollywood's major leading men, including Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, and damaged daredevil billionaire Howard Hughes; and the strength of her religious convictions that got her through thick and thin. Lavishly illustrated with rare photographs from the author's personal collection, Ginger is an enthralling, behind-the-scenes tour of Hollywood life during the Golden Age of movies by one of its most enduring stars.
"Enjoying exclusive access to RKO archives before they were dispersed to the winds, Rick Jewell has crafted a powerful and unprecedented company history that is rich in detail and sharp in insight. Pinpointing both industry ambitions and corporate shenanigans, Jewell offers a tale both gripping and instructive. A major contribution to Hollywood studio history in the classic era." —Dana Polan, author of Scenes of Instruction: The Beginnings of the U.S. Study of Film “Richard Jewell has written a definitive portrait of a major Hollywood studio during the heyday of the movies. Enriched by a lode of archival material, Jewell’s RKO story reconstructs the dynamics of the studio system; its stresses and strains; its logistical challenges; and its in-house rivalries. Some big names are vividly brought to life: David Sarnoff, Pandro Berman, Fred Astaire, Katharine Hepburn, Orson Welles, to name a few. Jewell interweaves RKO’s corporate maneuverings and production agenda with great skill. A more compelling history of a Hollywood major is hard to imagine.” —Tino Balio, author of The Foreign Film Renaissance on American Screens, 1946–1973 “A painstakingly researched and lucidly written business history of RKO Studios from its founding through 1942, Richard Jewell’s RKO Studios: A Titan is Born not only traces the shifting economic fortunes of the studio that gave us King Kong, the Astaire-Rogers musicals, and Citizen Kane but also fills an important gap in our understanding of how the studio system survived and at times even thrived during the Golden Age of Hollywood.” —Charles Maland, author of Chaplin and American Culture
This fully revised and updated edition of an award-winning classic traces the history of Hollywood from the silent era to the present day. The Hollywood Storycomprehensively covers every aspect of movie-making in America, taking in nickelodeans, drive-ins and multiplexes; the transition from silent to sound, black and white to color; the relationships of producers, directors, stars and technicians; and the function and output of the studios - their major hits and most expensive flops.
The recent 100 year anniversary of the first publication of L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables has inspired renewed interest in one of Canada's most beloved fictional icons. The international appeal of the red-haired orphan has not diminished over the past century, and the cultural meanings of her story continue to grow and change. The original essays in Anne's World offer fresh and timely approaches to issues of culture, identity, health, and globalization as they apply to Montgomery's famous character and to today's readers. In conversation with each other and with the work of previous experts, the contributors to Anne's World discuss topics as diverse as Anne in fashion, the global industry surrounding Anne, how the novel can be used as a tool to counteract depression, and the possibility that Anne suffers from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Anne in translation and its adaptation for film and television are also considered. By establishing new ways to examine one of popular culture's most beloved characters, the essays of Anne's World demonstrate the timeless and ongoing appeal of L.M. Montgomery's writing.
"This is an extremely rigorous, thorough piece of superior scholarship on one of the most important figures in the history of cinema. Benamou introduces a wealth of material on the production process and the repercussions of this project in Latin America, which have been entirely missing from earlier, auteur-centered accounts; this alone makes it a book of great importance. We can't ask for a more definitive, groundbreaking study than the one Benamou has given us."—Bill Nichols, author of Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde