Hollywood Through the Backdoor uncovers the story of actor-writer-composer MICHAEL ST. JOHN, arriving in Hollywood, with no great expectations, just to survive. It was a time when artists of color were forced to accept any kind of demeaning role in the business. When not in a class at U.S.C., Michael found on a film set, observing and meeting stars or those who might make it happen for him. He pulled some outlandish stunts to get the job or part he wanted, but managed to garner the respect of some of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry i.e., Dan Dailey, Marlon Brando, Hedda Hopper, and so many other highly respected creative-movers in the industry, who held out their hand, giving him the necessary push needed. The Backdoor? Hell, Michael didn't care, it was an entrance! Segment Film Productions : Michael Plaster - Steven F. Proctor
An action-packed tour of famed director John Rich's half century career as producer or director of such hits as All in the Family, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and MacGyver
A young man arrives in Hollywood from Scotland looking to scale the heights as a screenwriter. He embarks on a series of adventures and misadventures as he encounters a succession of the weird, wonderful and downright wacky. To get by he works as an extra on sitcoms like Friends and Frasier, dramas such as ER and CSI, and some big budget movies. He then finds himself being selected to work as Ben Affleck’s double. In between times he attends celebrity parties, functions and works in some of Hollywood’s most exclusive bars and nightclubs. Our narrator joins the antiwar movement after 9/11 and commits himself with his new found comrades to halting Bush’s drive to war in Iraq. He throws himself into organising demos, meetings and campaigning to stop the war. Soon he’s leading a double life - by day working on a big budget movie as a double for one of Hollywood’s biggest stars; by night engrossed in radical politics.
120 movies are detailed in this 8th book in the "Hollywood Classics" series. The movies range from marvels of special effects like "King Kong" to the first sound-on-disc feature, "Don Juan". Charismatic film stars like Humphrey Bogart, Jeanette MacDonald, Bing Crosby, Deanna Durbin, John Wayne, Errol Flynn, Eddie Cantor, Lana Turner, Alan Ladd, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, Kay Francis, John Garfield, Jane Powell and Roy Rogers enlivened many of these classic films.
What was it like to work behind the scenes, away from the spotlight's glare, in Hollywood's so-called Golden Age? The interviews in this book provide eye-witness accounts from the likes of Steven Spielberg and Terry Gilliam, to explore the creative decisions that have shaped some of Classical Hollywood's most-loved films.
John Meredyth Lucas, son of silent screen star and screenwriter Bess Meredyth (Ben-Hur, The Sea Beast, When a Man Loves, Don Juan) and stepson of renowned Hungarian-born director Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Life with Father), came of age in Hollywood during the 1930s. Lucas went on to an impressive career of his own as a writer-producer-director. He made films with Hal Wallis, Ross Hunter, Walt Disney, and others, and he wrote, produced, and directed such classic television series as Mannix, The Fugitive and Star Trek. Completed shortly before his death in 2002, Lucas' memoir is filled with never-before-told recollections of many Hollywood greats and features previously unpublished photographs. With Lucas, we go behind the scenes, onto the studio lots and into the parties with family friends John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Errol Flynn and Jack Warner, to name just a few. It's a boy's-eye-view of Hollywood in a time of glamour, decadence, and the golden years of filmmaking.
Fans of John Leguizamo's smash-hit one-man shows (Mambo Mouth, Spic-o-rama, Freak, and Sexaholix) have already gotten a glimpse into his life, but this book tells the whole story, carrying readers along on a wild journey from his childhood in Queens to his current home at the top of the Hollywood pyramid. An acclaimed director, producer, and play-wright, and one of the highest-paid Latin actors in the world, Leguizamo shares the stories behind his many roles—what inspired them and what transpired as he created them—while dishing on his personal relationships with his family, friends, and celebrity colleagues. Here is both an intimate self-portrait and a unique behind-the-scenes look at the magic and chaos of stardom, a keenly intelligent and insanely funny book that celebrates a remarkably talented artist's greatest achievement: growing up Latino in America and succeeding on his own terms.
Preliminary arguments : culture, economy, and the city -- Origins and early growth of the Hollywood motion picture industry -- A new map of Hollywood -- The other Hollywood : television program production -- Dream factories : studios, soundstages, and sets -- The digital visual effects industry -- Local labor markets in Hollywood -- Hollywood in America and the world : distribution and markets -- Cinema, culture, globalization.
Hollywood Fastride on a Dream uncovers the story of actor-writer-composer MICHAEL ST. JOHN, arriving in Hollywood, with no great expectations, just to survive. It was a time when artists of color were forced to accept any kind of demeaning role in the business. When not in a class at U.S.C., Michael found on a film set, observing and meeting stars or those who might make it happen for him. He pulled some outlandish stunts to get the job or part he wanted, but managed to garner the respect of some of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry i.e., Dan Dailey, Marlon Brando, Hedda Hopper, and so many other highly respected creative-movers in the industry, who held out their hand, giving him the necessary push needed. The Backdoor? Hell, Michael didn't care, it was an entrance!
A chilling expose of true murder, lust, depravity and greed--everything the press never dared reveal to the public! Exposes how Universal Pictures kept Rock Hudson's homosexuality secret for 30 years, how Raquel Welch won a $15-million-dollar lawsuit against MGM (and why she'll never act in Hollywood again!), plus more compellings accounts on Burt Reynolds, Cliff Robertson, and others. Photographs.
Bizarre inside stories of Hollywood's most beautiful women who were doomed for death. Hollywood's Babylon Women takes the reader behind closed doors and beyond the official reports of law enforcement agencies and studio public relations departments to reveal the sordid romantic, sexual, political and financial factors behind these tragedies. Photos.
Longlisted for the 2020 Moving Image Book Award by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation As only an accomplished author, consummate collector, and savvy insider can, John Kobal tells the story of the man who invented Hollywood, Cecil Blount DeMille (1881–1959). Kobal narrates the story of DeMille’s life and follows the director’s career from his first film, The Squaw Man, in 1914, through the seventy films he directed culminating with The Ten Commandments in 1956 before his death in 1959. Even that first film received an enthusiastic response from the public, and that popular enthusiasm would follow DeMille throughout his career. DeMille got his start by observing a film being shot—once standing for hours on a box looking through a window, watching every move made by the director, players, and cameraman. From that humble beginning, he soon mastered the craft of directing and created one of show business’s greatest careers. Autocrat and artist, DeMille immersed himself totally in each picture he directed and demanded complete fealty from his casts and crews. DeMille was said to know more about what the American public wanted than anyone else in Hollywood. He pushed the boundaries of censorship, and audiences responded by forming long lines at the box office. From the American West to ancient Egypt, he created such magical films as The Crusades and The Greatest Show on Earth that brought vividly to life fantasies perfectly suited to post–World War I and mid-century America. Kobal describes DeMille’s impact on Hollywood as a director and showman. He argues that this master filmmaker stands for something largely lost in American filmmaking, a sort of naïve, generous, big-thinking self-confidence—a belief that all things are possible. John Kobal wrote over thirty books on film and photography. His final manuscript, The Lost World of DeMille, was completed shortly before his death in 1991. It is published at last by University Press of Mississippi.
Absorbing, scholarly study of the portrayal in nearly 200 movies and TV episodes of the least visible disabled group in American society. Includes the first filmography (annotated) of films designed for general audiences that deal with deafness or include a deaf character in a mator or pivotal role. For all film study collections. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2003 From Tom Joad to Norma Rae to Spike Lee's Mookie in Do the Right Thing, Hollywood has regularly dramatized the lives and struggles of working people in America. Ranging from idealistic to hopeless, from sympathetic to condescending, these portrayals confronted audiences with the vital economic, social, and political issues of their times while providing a diversion—sometimes entertaining, sometimes provocative—from the realities of their own lives. In Blue-Collar Hollywood, John Bodnar examines the ways in which popular American films made between the 1930s and the 1980s depicted working-class characters, comparing these cinematic representations with the aspirations of ordinary Americans and the promises made to them by the country's political elites. Based on close and imaginative viewings of dozens of films from every genre—among them Public Enemy, Black Fury, Baby Face, The Grapes of Wrath, It's a Wonderful Life, I Married a Communist, A Streetcar Named Desire, Peyton Place, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Coal Miner's Daughter, and Boyz N the Hood—this book explores such topics as the role of censorship, attitudes toward labor unions and worker militancy, racism, the place of women in the workforce and society, communism and the Hollywood blacklist, and faith in liberal democracy. Whether made during the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, or the Vietnam era, the majority of films about ordinary working Americans, Bodnar finds, avoided endorsing specific political programs, radical economic reform, or overtly reactionary positions. Instead, these movies were infused with the same current of liberalism and popular notion of democracy that flow through the American imagination.
Hollywood's Golden Era? I'd pick the period from 1939 through 1960. Here are 144 classic movies from this Golden Age of the Cinema, ranging (alphabetically) from "The Admiral Was a Lady" to "You Were Never Lovelier". Other films discussed in comprehensive detail (and with full background and release information) in this book include "The Adventures of Mark Twain", "The Chase", "Daisy Kenyon", "The Ghost of Frankenstein", "Humoresque", "In Old California", "Joan of Paris", "Letter from an Unknown Woman", "Magic Town", "Nightmare Alley", The Paradine Case", "Roughly Speaking", "The Scarlet Claw", "Where the Sidewalk Ends" and "You'll Never Get Rich".
Hollywood movies are famous for promoting negative stereotypes of all kinds, especially against minorities, women, Southerners, and Christians. To what extent are biographical films selected for production according to certain biases, conscious or unconscious, among the Hollywood elite? An expert on the U.S. film industry gives readers brief synopses of Hollywood biopics produced and/ or released from 1912 through 1994. This survey provides the basis for discussion and analysis. Tracking these one-sided depictions over a longer period of time, the patterns of bias - and the source of the problem - become more clear. The problem appears to be that most of the people who have green-light authority in the U.S. film industry - for either the production and/or distribution of a motion picture - share a common ethnic/religious/cultural background. Thus, the stories of their own cohort and those of all other ethnic, religious and/or cultural groups (whose members seldom achieve positions of power in Hollywood) are being filtered through the cultural sensibilities of a single group. John Cones suggests that the solution could lie in increasing diversity at the highest levels in the U.S. film industry.
J.P. McGowan (1880ndash;1952) was one of Hollywood's most prolific pioneers: actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and industrial advocate for the motion picture industry. Known as the "Railroad Man" for his specialization in action movies involving railroads, he made common the image of the terrified beauty tied to a track-his first wife was Helen Holmes of his iconic silent series The Hazards of Helen. This work, the first biography of the Australian-born adventurer, covers a screen career spanning 30 years and over 600 productions from the dawn of the Silent Era. It chronicles his entire life and places him within the context of the times in which he lived and worked. Previously unknown details are unearthed on his family background and early life as well as his participation in the Boer War and his move to the United States. The work concludes with a comprehensive filmography of McGowan's work.
Hollywood columnist and author John Austin takes readers well beyond the prepared and doctored statements of studio publicists to expose omissions and contradictions in police and coroners' reports. Includes information on the deaths of Elvis, Marilyn, Jean Harlow, and more.
Tall, dark and handsome, with a manufactured name and a scrupulously designed professional image, Rock Hudson represented the Hollywood ideal of American masculinity during the 1950s and 60s; an ideal that was to be questioned and ultimately undermined during the years to follow by lurid accounts of his private life and his death from AIDS related illness. This illuminating analysis of Hudson's career reassesses the perceived disparity between his public persona and his 'true' nature. Exploring his unique qualities as a performer and exposing the role of his agent, producers and directors in the construction of his image, John Mercer unpicks Hudson's stardom to reveal a more complex star identity than has hitherto been understood. Foregrounding the ways in which Hudson's career provides insights into the nature of American popular culture and attitudes towards gender and sexuality, Mercer ultimately depicts Hudson as a star who embodied a period of transition between the old Hollywood and the new.
At a time of life when most people think of retiring, Jack Nicholson remains as energetic and charismatic as ever. Known for his trademark shark's grin and sunglasses, Nicholson has been acting for the past 37 years, and has just celebrated 25 years since the classicThe Shiningwas released. This book shares the truth about this avid LA Lakers fan, partying legend, and charismatic performer, revealed with the help and cooperation of many of Nicholson's Hollywood associates. John Parker traces the astonishing rise to stardom of a boy who was brought up to believe his grandmother was his mother and his mother his sister. This unorthodox childhood was the start of an incredible journey that included Oscar success, a string of high-profile lovers, and a long-term relationship with Anjelica Huston. This comprehensive biography goes behind the wolfish grin to discover that there is much more to Nicholson than the good-time partying figure found regularly in gossip columns; he does remain, after all these years, untamed and wild.
Substantially revised and updated, this book highlights how Hollywood has transformed itself to attain ever global clout and reach and the material factors underlining Hollywood's apparent artistic success. Takes into consideration recent events affecting Hollywood such as 9/11, US foreign policy and developments in consumer technology.
Monster is John Gregory Dunne's mordant account of the eight years it took to get the 1996 Robert Redford/Michelle Pfeiffer film Up Close & Personal made. A bestselling novelist, Dunne has a cold eye, perfect pitch for the absurdities of Hollywood, and sharp elbows for the film industry's savage infighting. 192 pp. Author tour & national ads. 25,000 print.
Here is the much requested sequel to 'Hollywoods Unsolved Mysteries', which gained national attention for its controversial revelations about the mysterious deaths of Natalie Wood, Bob Crane, George Reeves, and others. In 'More of Hollywood's Unsolved Mysteries' John Austin picks up where he left off, answering the tough questions and uncovering the truth -- the truth that Hollywood doesnt want you to know.
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