Bernard F. Dick's Books

The Golden Age Musicals of Darryl F. Zanuck

The Gentleman Preferred Blondes

By: Bernard F. Dick

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The Golden Age Musicals of Darryl F. Zanuck

The Gentleman Preferred Blondes

By: Bernard F. Dick

Beginning with The Jazz Singer (1927) and 42nd Street (1933), legendary Hollywood film producer Darryl F. Zanuck (1902–1979) revolutionized the movie musical, cementing its place in American popular culture. Zanuck, who got his start writing stories and scripts in the silent film era, worked his way to becoming a top production executive at Warner Bros. in the later 1920s and early 1930s. Leaving that studio in 1933, he and industry executive Joseph Schenck formed Twentieth Century Pictures, an independent Hollywood motion picture production company. In 1935, Zanuck merged his Twentieth Century Pictures with the ailing Fox Film Corporation, resulting in the combined Twentieth Century-Fox, which instantly became a new major Hollywood film entity. The Golden Age Musicals of Darryl F. Zanuck: The Gentleman Preferred Blondes is the first book devoted to the musicals that Zanuck produced at these three studios. The volume spotlights how he placed his personal imprint on the genre and how—especially at Twentieth Century-Fox—he nurtured and showcased several blonde female stars who headlined the studio’s musicals—including Shirley Temple, Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Vivian Blaine, June Haver, Marilyn Monroe, and Sheree North. Building upon Bernard F. Dick’s previous work in That Was Entertainment: The Golden Age of the MGM Musical, this volume illustrates the richness of the American movie musical, tracing how these song-and-dance films fit within the career of Darryl F. Zanuck and within the timeline of Hollywood history.

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320

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1496838645

ISBN 13

9781496838643

Hal Wallis: Producer to the Stars

By: Bernard F. Dick

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Hal Wallis: Producer to the Stars

By: Bernard F. Dick

Few ships in American history have had as illustrious a history as the heavy cruiser USS Portland (CA-33), affectionately known by her crew as 'Sweet Pea.' With the destructionof most of the U.S. battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor, cruisers such as Sweet Pea carried the biggest guns the Navy possessed for nearly a year after the start of World War II. Sweet Pea at War describes in harrowing detail how Portland and her sisters protected the precious carriers and held the line against overwhelming Japanese naval strength. Portland was instrumental in the dramatic American victories at the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, and the naval battle of Guadalcanal--conflicts that historians regard as turning points in the Pacific war. She rescued nearly three thousand sailors from sunken ships, some of them while she herself was badly damaged. Only a colossal hurricane ended her career, but she sailed home from that, too. Based on extensive research in official documents and interviews with members of the ship's crew, Sweet Pea at War recounts from launching to scrapping the history of USS Portland, demonstrating that she deserves to be remembered as one of the most important ships in U.S. naval history.

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344

Publisher

University Press of Kentucky

ISBN 10

0813129079

ISBN 13

9780813129075

Hellman in Hollywood

By: Bernard F. Dick

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Hellman in Hollywood

By: Bernard F. Dick

Though Hellman is best known for her work in theater and for her memoirs, much of her work has been adapted for movies. She was deeply involved in writing film scripts and adapting the work of others to the screen. Dick tells the history of Hellman's contributions to American film as a playwright, screenwriter and adapter and analyses each play and its corresponding film to determine whether the adaptation achieves as a film what the original achieved as literature. ISBN 0-8386-3140-1.

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194

Publisher

Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0838631401

ISBN 13

9780838631409

The Merchant Prince of Poverty Row

Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures

By: Bernard F. Dick

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The Merchant Prince of Poverty Row

Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures

By: Bernard F. Dick

Ben Hecht called him "White Fang", and director Charles Vidor took him to court for verbal abuse. The image of Harry Cohn as vulgarian is such a part of Hollywood lore that it is hard to believe there were other Harry Cohns: the only studio president who was also head of production; the ex-song plugger who scrutinized scripts and grilled writers at story conferences; a man who could look on actresses as either "broads" or goddesses. Drawing on personal interviews as well as previously unstudied source material (conference notes, memos, and especially the teletypes between Harry and his brother Jack), Bernard Dick offers a radically different portrait of the man who ran Columbia Pictures - and who "had to be boss" - from 1932 to 1958. A latecomer to the movie business, Harry turned to film only after Jack won acclaim as an editor at Universal. Harry's determination to eclipse Jack drove him to gain control of Columbia and to woo talent like Frank Capra who could achieve his goal of transforming a Poverty Row studio into one of the majors (while maintaining some of the lowest budgets in Hollywood). A study of Columbia's 1930s films, most of them rarely shown, proves that Capra/Cohn - not "Capracorn" - studio policy during that crucial decade. By interweaving biography, studio history, and film criticism, Dick argues a new approach to the studio heads of Hollywood's Golden Age: Harry Cohn was Columbia Pictures, and Columbia's pictures were Harry Cohn in all his complexity.

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250

Publisher

University Press of Kentucky

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813133548

ISBN 13

9780813133546

Hollywood Madonna

Loretta Young

By: Bernard F. Dick

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Hollywood Madonna

Loretta Young

By: Bernard F. Dick

Loretta Young (1913–2000) was an Academy Award-winning actress known for devout Catholicism and her performances in The Farmer's Daughter, The Bishop's Wife, and Come to the Stable, and for her long-running and tremendously popular television series. But that was not the whole story. Hollywood Madonna explores the full saga of Loretta Young's professional and personal life. She made her film debut at age four, became a star at fifteen, and many awards and accolades later, made her final television movie at age seventy-six. This biography withholds none of the details of her affair with Clark Gable and the daughter that powerful love produced. Bernard F. Dick places Young's affair in the proper context of the time and the choices available to women in 1935, especially a noted Catholic like Young, whose career would have been in ruins if the public knew of her tryst. With the birth of a daughter, who would have been branded a love child, Loretta Young reached the crossroads of disclosure and deception, choosing the latter path. That choice resulted in an illustrious career for her and a tortured childhood for her daughter.

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298

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1617030805

ISBN 13

9781617030802

Webster's New World College Dictionary

By: Victoria Neufeldt,David Bernard Guralnik

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Webster's New World College Dictionary

By: Victoria Neufeldt,David Bernard Guralnik

Offers hundreds of new words and meanings, including many unique to American English, with thousands of examples of current usage.

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1608

Publisher

MacMillan Publishing Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0028603338

ISBN 13

9780028603339

Radical Innocence

A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten

By: Bernard F. Dick

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Radical Innocence

A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten

By: Bernard F. Dick

On October 30, 1947, the House Committee on Un-American Activities concluded the first round of hearings on the alleged Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry. Hollywood was ordered to "clean its own house," and ten witnesses who had refused to answer questions about their membership in the Screen Writers Guild and the Communist party eventually received contempt citations. By 1950, the Hollywood Ten (as they quickly became known), which included writers, directors, and a producer, were serving prison sentences ranging from six months to one year. Since that time, the members of the Hollywood Ten have been either dismissed as industry hacks or eulogized as Cold War martyrs, but never have they been discussed in terms of their professions. Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten is the first study to focus on the work of the Ten: their short stories, plays, novels, criticisms, poems, memoirs, and, of course, their films. Drawing on myriad sources, including archival materials, unpublished manuscripts, black market scripts, screenplay drafts, letters, and personal interviews, Bernard F. Dick describes the Ten's survival tactics during the blacklisting and analyzes the contributions of these ten individuals not only to film but also to the arts. Radical Innocence captures the personality of each of the Ten, including the arrogant Herbert J. Biberman, the witty Ring Lardner Jr., the patriarchal Samuel Ornitz, the compassionate Adrian Scott, and the feisty Dalton Trumbo.

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201

Publisher

University Press of Kentucky

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813152674

ISBN 13

9780813152677

Forever Mame

The Life of Rosalind Russell

By: Bernard F. Dick

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Forever Mame

The Life of Rosalind Russell

By: Bernard F. Dick

When it comes to living life to its fullest, Rosalind Russell's character Auntie Mame is still the silver screen's exemplar. And Mame, the role Russell (1907–1976) would always be remembered for, embodies the rich and rewarding life Bernard F. Dick reveals in the first biography of this Golden Age star, Forever Mame: The Life of Rosalind Russell. Drawing on personal interviews and information from the archives of Russell and her producer-husband Frederick Brisson, Dick begins with Russell's childhood in Waterbury, Connecticut, and chronicles her early attempts to achieve recognition after graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Frustrated by her inability to land a lead in a Broadway show, she headed for Hollywood in 1934 and two years later played her first starring role, the title character in Craig’s Wife. Dick discusses all of her films along with her triumphal return to Broadway, first in the musical Wonderful Town and later in Auntie Mame. Forever Mame details Russell's social circle of such stars as Loretta Young, Cary Grant, and Frank Sinatra. It traces an extraordinary career, ending with Russell's courageous battle against the two diseases that eventually caused her death: rheumatoid arthritis and cancer. Russell devoted her last years to campaigning for arthritis research. So successful was she in her efforts to alert lawmakers to this crippling disease that a leading San Francisco research center is named after her.

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302

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1604731397

ISBN 13

9781604731392

Claudette Colbert

She Walked in Beauty

By: Bernard F. Dick

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Claudette Colbert

She Walked in Beauty

By: Bernard F. Dick

Claudette Colbert's mixture of beauty, sophistication, wit, and vivacity quickly made her one of the film industry's most famous and highest-paid stars of the 1930s and 1940s. Though she began her career on the New York stage, she was beloved for her roles in such films as Preston Sturges's The Palm Beach Story, Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra, and Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, for which she won an Academy Award. She showed remarkable prescience by becoming one of the first Hollywood stars to embrace television, and she also returned to Broadway in her later career. This is the first major biography of Colbert (1903–1996) published in over twenty years. Bernard F. Dick chronicles Colbert's long career, but also explores her early life in Paris and New York. Along with discussing how she left her mark on Broadway, Hollywood, radio, and television, the book explores Colbert's lifelong interests in painting, fashion design, and commercial art. Using correspondence, interviews, periodicals, film archives, and other research materials, the biography reveals a smart, talented actress who conquered Hollywood and remains one of America's most captivating screen icons.

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433

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1628467932

ISBN 13

9781628467932

Hollywood Madonna

Loretta Young

By: Bernard F. Dick

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Hollywood Madonna

Loretta Young

By: Bernard F. Dick

The first comprehensive biography of the talented devout Catholic who deceived the world by falsely adopting her love child

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299

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Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1617030791

ISBN 13

9781617030796

The Star-Spangled Screen

The American World War II Film

By: Bernard F. Dick

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The Star-Spangled Screen

The American World War II Film

By: Bernard F. Dick

The American World War II film depicted a united America, a mythic America in which the average guy, the girl next door, the 4-F patriot, and the grieving mother were suddenly transformed into heroes and heroines, warriors and goddesses. The Star-Spangled Screen examines the historical accuracy—or lack thereof—of films about the Third Reich, the Resistance, and major military campaigns. Concerned primarily with the films of the war years, it also includes discussions of such postwar movies as Battleground (1949), Attack! (1956), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and Patton (1970). This revised edition includes new material covering recent films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001), Dunkirk (2017), and JoJo Rabbit (2019), and their place in the war movie tradition. The Star-Spangled Screen makes a major contribution to popular culture by re-creating an era that, for all its tragedy, was one of the most creative in the history of American film.

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340

Publisher

University Press of Kentucky

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813196809

ISBN 13

9780813196800

Engulfed

The Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood

By: Bernard F. Dick

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Engulfed

The Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood

By: Bernard F. Dick

From Double Indemnity (1944) to The Godfather (1972), the stories behind some of the greatest films ever made pale beside the story of the studio that made them. In the golden age of Hollywood, Paramount was one of the Big Five studios. Gulf + Western's 1966 takeover of the studio signaled the end of one era and heralded the arrival of a new way of doing business in Hollywood. Bernard F. Dick reconstructs the battle that reduced the studio to a mere corporate commodity and traces Paramount's devolution from freestanding studio to subsidiary—first of Gulf + Western, then of Paramount Communications, and currently, of Viacom-CBS. Dick portrays the new Paramount as a paradigm of today's Hollywood, where the only real art is the art of the deal. In modern Hollywood, former merchandising executives find themselves in charge of production on the assumption that anyone who can sell a movie can make one. CEOs exit in disgrace from one studio, only to emerge in triumph at another. Corporate raiders vie for power and control, purchasing and selling film libraries, studio property, television stations, book publishers, and more. The history of Paramount is filled with larger-than-life people, including Billy Wilder, Adolph Zukor, Sumner Redstone, Shari Redstone, Sherry Lansing, Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and more.

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Page Count

306

Publisher

University Press of Kentucky

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813159288

ISBN 13

9780813159287

The Merchant Prince of Poverty Row

Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures

By: Bernard F. Dick

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The Merchant Prince of Poverty Row

Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures

By: Bernard F. Dick

Ben Hecht called him "White Fang," and director Charles Vidor took him to court for verbal abuse. The image of Harry Cohn as vulgarian is such a part of Hollywood lore that it is hard to believe there were other Harry Cohns: the only studio president who was also head of production; the ex-song plugger who scrutinized scripts and grilled writers at story conferences; a man who could see actresses as either "broads" or goddesses. Drawing on personal interviews as well as previously unstudied source material (conference notes, memos, and especially the teletypes between Harry and his brother, Jack), Bernard Dick offers a radically different portrait of the man who ran Columbia Pictures—and who "had to be boss"—from 1932 to 1958.

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319

Publisher

University Press of Kentucky

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813153328

ISBN 13

9780813153322

Hal Wallis

Producer to the Stars

By: Bernard F. Dick

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Hal Wallis

Producer to the Stars

By: Bernard F. Dick

Hal Wallis might not be as well known as David O. Selznick or Samuel Goldwyn, but the films he produced -- Casablanca, Jezebel, Now Voyager, The Life of Emile Zola, Becket, True Grit, and many other classics (as well as scores of Elvis movies) -- have certainly endured. As producer of numerous films, Wallis made an indelible mark on the course of America's film industry, but his contributions are often overlooked and no full-length study has yet assessed his incredible career. A former office boy and salesman, Wallis first engaged with the business of film as the manager of a Los Angeles movie theater in 1922. He attracted the notice of the Warner brothers, who hired him as a publicity assistant. Within three months he was director of the department, and appointments to studio manager and production executive quickly followed. Wallis went on to oversee dozens of productions and formed his own production company in 1944. Bernard F. Dick draws on numerous sources such as Wallis's personal production files and exclusive interviews with many of his contemporaries to finally tell the full story of his illustrious career. Dick combines his knowledge of behind-the-scenes Hollywood with fascinating anecdotes to create a portrait of one of Hollywood's early power players.

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336

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813195381

ISBN 13

9780813195384

The President’s Ladies

Jane Wyman and Nancy Davis

By: Bernard F. Dick

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The President’s Ladies

Jane Wyman and Nancy Davis

By: Bernard F. Dick

A fascinating story of Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan, and Nancy Davis

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303

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1617039802

ISBN 13

9781617039805

The Screen Is Red

Hollywood, Communism, and the Cold War

By: Bernard F. Dick

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The Screen Is Red

Hollywood, Communism, and the Cold War

By: Bernard F. Dick

The Screen Is Red portrays Hollywood's ambivalence toward the former Soviet Union before, during, and after the Cold War. In the 1930s, communism combated its alter ego, fascism, yet both threatened to undermine the capitalist system, the movie industry's foundational core value. Hollywood portrayed fascism as the greater threat and communism as an aberration embraced by young idealists unaware of its dark side. In Ninotchka, all a female commissar needs is a trip to Paris to convert her to capitalism and the luxuries it can offer. The scenario changed when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, making Russia a short-lived ally. The Soviets were quickly glorified in such films as Song of Russia, The North Star, Mission to Moscow, Days of Glory, and Counter-Attack. But once the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, the scenario changed again. America was now swarming with Soviet agents attempting to steal some crucial piece of microfilm. On screen, the atomic detonations in the Southwest produced mutations in ants, locusts, and spiders, and revived long-dead monsters from their watery tombs. The movies did not blame the atom bomb specifically but showed what horrors might result in addition to the iconic mushroom cloud. Through the lens of Hollywood, a nuclear war might leave a handful of survivors (Five), none (On the Beach, Dr. Strangelove), or cities in ruins (Fail-Safe). Today the threat is no longer the Soviet Union, but international terrorism. Author Bernard F. Dick argues, however, that the Soviet Union has not lost its appeal, as evident from the popular and critically acclaimed television series The Americans. More than eighty years later, the screen is still red.

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