Wes Gehring's Books

Joe E. Brown

Film Comedian and Baseball Buffoon

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Joe E. Brown

Film Comedian and Baseball Buffoon

By: Wes D. Gehring

As a young boy in the depths of the 1890s depression, Joe E. Brown had a job: making faces at the firemen on passing coal-burning trains so they would throw coal at him. As a child he also worked as a circus acrobat and newsboy. His inventiveness and spunk helped his family get through hard times but also fueled his fascination with entertainment, and he built up a repertoire of rubber-faced expressions and funny antics that would make his stage and screen work memorable. Baseball was a favorite pursuit in his life and thus a recurring theme in his films and skits. In this biography--the first on one of the top film comedians of the 1930s--the reader learns of Joe's challenging childhood and how it prepared him for later screen roles, and how his love of baseball translated into screen successes. His early career in vaudeville is discussed, his work as a Broadway comedian in the Roaring Twenties, his road to movie stardom, and how he parlayed his love of sports into big hits like 1930's Elmer the Great. The year 1935 gets its own chapter; its films are considered the pinnacle of Brown's career, including Alibi Ike, Bright Lights and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The final chapters reveal what happened after he left Warner Bros., including the bittersweet 1940s, when he entertained troops around the globe while mourning a son lost to the war. The book concludes with a comprehensive filmography of his features from 1928 to 1963.

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229

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

0786483512

ISBN 13

9780786483518

Hitchcock and Humor

Modes of Comedy in Twelve Defining Films

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Hitchcock and Humor

Modes of Comedy in Twelve Defining Films

By: Wes D. Gehring

Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery has been described as "a kind of Rear Window for retirees." As this quote suggests, an analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's methodical use of comedy in his films is past due. One of Turner Classic Movies' on-screen scholars for their summer 2017 online Hitchcock class, the author grew tired of misleading throwaway references to the director's "comic relief." This book examines what should be obvious: Hitchcock systematically incorporated assorted types of comedy--black humor, parody, farce/screwball comedy and romantic comedy--in his films to entertain his audience with "comic" thrillers.

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Page Count

291

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

1476636214

ISBN 13

9781476636214

Irene Dunne

First Lady of Hollywood

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Irene Dunne

First Lady of Hollywood

By: Wes D. Gehring

Traces the life of the American film actress from her childhood days spent in Louisville, St. Louis, and Madison, Indiana, through her Hollywood career to her retirement, and receipt of the Kennedy Center Award in 1985.

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Page Count

252

Publisher

Scarecrow Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0810858649

ISBN 13

9780810858640

Romantic Vs. Screwball Comedy

Charting the Difference

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Romantic Vs. Screwball Comedy

Charting the Difference

By: Wes D. Gehring

It is an informative resource for film students and scholars and a thoroughly engaging read for film buffs."--BOOK JACKET.

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Page Count

242

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

0810844249

ISBN 13

9780810844247

Parody as Film Genre

Never Give a Saga an Even Break

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Parody as Film Genre

Never Give a Saga an Even Break

By: Wes D. Gehring

Parody is the least appreciated of all film comedy genres and receives little serious attention, even among film fans. This study elevates parody to mainstream significance. A historical overview places the genre in context, and a number of basic parody components, which better define the genre and celebrate its value, are examined. Parody is differentiated from satire, and the two parody types, traditional and reaffirmation, are explained. Chapters study the most spoofed genre in American parody history, the Western; pantheon members of American Film Comedy such as The Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, Mae West, and Laurel and Hardy; pivotal parody artists, Bob Hope and Woody Allen; Mel Brooks, whose name is often synonymous with parody; and finally, parody in the 1990s. Films discussed include Destry Rides Again (1939), The Road to Utopia (1945), My Favorite Brunette (1947), The Paleface (1948), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993) and Scream (1996). This examination of parody will appeal to scholars and students of American film and film comedy, as well as those interested in the specific comedians discussed and the Western genre. Gehring's work will also find a place in American pop culture studies and sociological studies of the period from the 1920s to the 1990s. The book is carefully documented and includes a selected bibliography and filmography.

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Page Count

249

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

031300353X

ISBN 13

9780313003530

Romantic Vs. Screwball Comedy

Charting the Difference

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Romantic Vs. Screwball Comedy

Charting the Difference

By: Wes D. Gehring

It is an informative resource for film students and scholars and a thoroughly engaging read for film buffs."--BOOK JACKET.

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242

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Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

0810844249

ISBN 13

9780810844247

The Charlie Chaplin Murder Mystery

By: Wes D. Gehring

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The Charlie Chaplin Murder Mystery

By: Wes D. Gehring

In the style of Stuart Kaminsky, Wes D. Gehring of Ball State University has written an intriguing murder mystery involving a lost Chaplin film and a host of nefarious characters who want it. Using his vast knowledge of all things Chaplinian, Gehring perfectly captures the mindset of the little tramp and has produced a short novel worthy of the subject.

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Page Count

162

Publisher

Lulu.com

Published Date

ISBN 10

0977452719

ISBN 13

9780977452712

Chaplin's War Trilogy

An Evolving Lens in Three Dark Comedies, 1918-1947

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Chaplin's War Trilogy

An Evolving Lens in Three Dark Comedies, 1918-1947

By: Wes D. Gehring

The book examines Charlie Chaplin's evolving perspective on dark comedy in his three war films, Shoulder Arms (1918), The Great Dictator (1940), and Monsieur Verdoux (1947). In the first he uses the genre in a groundbreaking manner but yet for a pro-war cause. In Dictator dark comedy is applied in an antiwar way. In Monsieur Verdoux Chaplin embraces the genre as an individual in defense against a society out to destroy him. All three are pivotal films in the development of the genre in film, with the latter two movies being very controversial for their time.

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Page Count

241

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

0786474653

ISBN 13

9780786474653

Genre-Busting Dark Comedies of the 1970s

Twelve American Films

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Genre-Busting Dark Comedies of the 1970s

Twelve American Films

By: Wes D. Gehring

This examination of dark comedies of the 1970s focuses on films which concealed black humor behind a misleading genre label. All That Jazz (1979) is a musical...about death--hardly Fred and Ginger territory. This masking goes beyond misnomer to a breaking of formula that director Robert Altman called "anti-genre." Altman's MASH (1970) ridiculed the military establishment in general--the Vietnam War in particular--under the guise of a standard military service comedy. The picaresque Western Little Big Man (1970) turned the bluecoats vs. Indians formula upside-down--the audience roots for the Indians instead of the cavalry. The book covers 12 essential films, including Harold and Maude (1971), Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Being There (1979), with notes on A Clockwork Orange (1971). These films reveal a compounding complexity that reinforces the absurdity at the heart of dark comedy.

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Page Count

251

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

0786495421

ISBN 13

9780786495429

Populism and the Capra Legacy

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Populism and the Capra Legacy

By: Wes D. Gehring

Traditionally identified with screwball comedies, Frank Capra has seldom been considered a conduit for populist concerns and issues. In this book, Gehring examines the influence of both Will Rogers and Frank Capra on modern populist movies, providing important background on Capra's links to the crackerbarrel personality of Rogers. He follows this theme forward, examining the populist roots in such films as The Electric Horseman, Field of Dreams, Dave, Grand Canyon, and others. A final chapter is a close-up of the contemporary, Capra-like director, Ron Howard. The inclusion of a bibliography and selected filmography makes this book an important contribution to film studies, popular culture, and American humor.

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Page Count

158

Publisher

Praeger

Published Date

ISBN 10

0313261830

ISBN 13

9780313261831

Film Clowns of the Depression

Twelve Defining Comic Performances

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Film Clowns of the Depression

Twelve Defining Comic Performances

By: Wes D. Gehring

The 1930s are routinely considered sound film's greatest comedy era. Though this golden age encompassed various genres of laughter, clown comedy is the most basic type. This work examines the Depression decade's most popular type of comedy--the clown, or personality comedian. Focusing upon the Depression era, the study filters its analysis through twelve memorable pictures. Each merits an individual chapter, in which it is critiqued. The films are deemed microcosmic representatives of the comic world and discussed in this context. While some of the comedians in this text have generated a great deal of previous analysis, funnymen like Joe E. Brown and Eddie Cantor are all but forgotten. Nevertheless, they were comedy legends in their time, and their legacy, as showcased in these movies, merits rediscovery by today's connoisseur of comedy. Even this book's more familiar figures, such as Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, are often simply relegated to being recognizable pop culture icons whose work has been neglected in recent years. This book attempts to address these oversights and to re-expose the brilliance and ingenuity with which the screen clowns contributed a comic resiliency that was desperately needed during the Depression and can still be greatly appreciated today. The films discussed are City Lights (1931, Chaplin), The Kid From Spain (1932, Cantor), She Done Him Wrong (1933, Mae West), Duck Soup (1933, Marx Brothers), Sons of the Desert (1933, Laurel and Hardy), Judge Priest (1934, Will Rogers), It's a Gift (1934, W.C. Fields), Alibi Ike (1935, Brown), A Night at the Opera (1935, Marx Brothers), Modern Times (1936, Chaplin), Way Out West (1937, Laurel and Hardy), and The Cat and the Canary (1939, Bob Hope).

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217

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

0786483520

ISBN 13

9780786483525

Kinds of American Film Comedy

Six Core Genres and Their Literary Roots

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Kinds of American Film Comedy

Six Core Genres and Their Literary Roots

By: Wes D. Gehring

This groundbreaking film study begins with a survey of American print humorists from eras leading up to and overlapping the advent of film--including some who worked both on the page and on the screen, like Robert Benchley, Will Rogers, Groucho Marx and W. C. Fields. Six comic film genres are identified as outgrowths of a national tradition of Cracker Barrel philosophers, personality comedy, parody, screwball comedy, romantic comedy and dark comedy. Whether it is Mark Twain or a parody film involving Steve Martin, comedy is most often about blowing "raspberries" at the world, and a reminder you are not alone.

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Page Count

243

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

1476688990

ISBN 13

9781476688992

Forties Film Funnymen

The Decade's Great Comedians at Work in the Shadow of War

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Forties Film Funnymen

The Decade's Great Comedians at Work in the Shadow of War

By: Wes D. Gehring

The twelve classic comedy films examined within these pages are distinguished by an equal number of defining comic performances. Ranging from The Great Dictator (1940) to A Southern Yankee (1948), each film focuses on the most central theme of "clown comedy": Resilience, the encouragement or hope that one can survive the most daunting of life's dilemmas--even during the war-torn 1940s. And each film can be regarded as a microcosm of the antiheroic world of its central clown (or clowns). Among the performers represented are Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, Abbott and Costello, Jack Benny, Eddie Bracken, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, the Marx Brothers, Harold Lloyd and Red Skelton. This lavishly illustrated work includes an introduction by noted film critic and historian Anthony Slide.

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Page Count

235

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

0786456655

ISBN 13

9780786456659

Leo McCarey

From Marx to McCarthy

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Leo McCarey

From Marx to McCarthy

By: Wes D. Gehring

This first full-length biography of a legendary and award-winning Hollywood writer, producer, and director (Duck Soup, My Favorite Wife, An Affair to Remember, Going My Way, and The Bells of St. Mary's) explores the director's life as filtered through his art. Gehring maintains that McCarey's films were often a reworking of his antiheroic self. In addition, the apparent diversity of his films actually represents an interrelated web of various comedy genres and a pattern of antiheroic characters and themes.

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Page Count

308

Publisher

Scarecrow Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0810852632

ISBN 13

9780810852631

Mr. Deeds Goes to Yankee Stadium

Baseball Films in the Capra Tradition

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Mr. Deeds Goes to Yankee Stadium

Baseball Films in the Capra Tradition

By: Wes D. Gehring

Celebrated film director Frank Capra was a central architect of the "feel good" movie genre now known as populism, which celebrates people, families, second chances, and other traditional American icons such as small town or pastoral life and baseball. Capra developed his own brand of populism by interweaving traditional values of the genre with a younger, more vulnerable hero starting with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town in 1936. The result, Capraesque populism, has had a significant influence on American pop culture in general and forms a small but important subgenre of baseball movie. This book examines eight of these Capraesque baseball films, starting with the all-important Pride of the Yankees (1942), which one admiring critic has called "Mr. Deeds Goes to Yankee Stadium." An introduction provides an overview of baseball and populism. Individual chapters are devoted to the populist legacy from Will Rogers (Capra's mentor) to Capra, The Pride of the Yankees, The Stratton Story, Angels in the Outfield, The Natural, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Frequency and The Rookie.

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Page Count

177

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

0786483504

ISBN 13

9780786483501

Charlie Chaplin and A Woman of Paris

The Genesis of a Misunderstood Masterpiece

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Charlie Chaplin and A Woman of Paris

The Genesis of a Misunderstood Masterpiece

By: Wes D. Gehring

Charlie Chaplin's A Woman of Paris (1923) was a groundbreaking film which was neither a simple recycling of Peggy Hopkins Joyce's story, nor quickly forgotten. Through heavily-documented "period research," this book lands several bombshells, including Paris is deeply rooted in Chaplin's previous films and his relationship with Edna Purviance, Paris was not rejected by heartland America, Chaplin did "romantic research" (especially with Pola Negri), and Paris' many ongoing influences have never been fully appreciated. These are just a few of the mistakes about Paris.

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Page Count

261

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

1476640726

ISBN 13

9781476640723

Leo McCarey

From Marx to McCarthy

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Leo McCarey

From Marx to McCarthy

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Page Count

308

Publisher

Scarecrow Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0810852632

ISBN 13

9780810852631

Robert Wise

Shadowlands

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Robert Wise

Shadowlands

By: Wes D. Gehring

Born in Winchester, Indiana, Robert Wise spent much of his youth sitting in darkened movie theaters enthralled by the swashbuckling heroics of screen legend Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Through these viewings, Wise developed a passion for film—a passion he followed for the rest of his life, making movies in Hollywood. Nationally known film historian Wes D. Gehring explores Wise’s life from his days in the Hoosier State to the beginning of his movie career at RKO studios working as the editor of Orson Welles’s classic movie Citizen Kane. Wise is best known for producing and directing two of the most memorable movie musicals in cinema history, West Side Story (co-director Jerome Robbins) and The Sound of Music, for which he won four Academy Awards—two Best Picture and Best Directors Oscars. But, as Gehring notes, other than Howard Hawks, Wise was arguably Hollywood’s most versatile director of various celebrated genre films.

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Page Count

351

Publisher

Indiana Historical Society

Published Date

ISBN 10

0871952963

ISBN 13

9780871952967

Red Skelton

The Mask behind the Mask

By: Wes Gehring

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Red Skelton

The Mask behind the Mask

By: Wes Gehring

For more than twenty years, Hoosier comic Red Skelton entertained millions of viewers who gathered around their television sets to delight in the antics of such notable characters as Freddie the Freeloader, Clem Kaddiddlehopper, Cauliflower McPugg, and Sheriff Deadeye. Noted film historian Wes D. Gehring examines the man behind the characters—someone who never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Gehring delves into Skelton's hardscrabble life with a shockingly dysfunctional family in the southern Indiana community of Vincennes, his days on the road on the vaudeville circuit, the comedian's early success on radio, his up-and-down movie career with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and his sometimes tragic personal life.

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Page Count

397

Publisher

Indiana Historical Society

Published Date

ISBN 10

0871953552

ISBN 13

9780871953551

Will Cuppy, American Satirist

A Biography

By: Wes D. Gehring

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Will Cuppy, American Satirist

A Biography

By: Wes D. Gehring

Back in the golden age of humor books (late 1920s-early 1950s), when wits of the pantheon like Robert Benchley, James Thurber, and S.J. Perelman were producing their signature works, there was another singular satirist who more than held his own with such fast company: Will Cuppy (1884-1949). This factual funnyman's metier is dark comedy that flirts with nihilism. His agenda is baldly stated in such classic Cuppy book titles as How to Be a Hermit (1929), How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931), and The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950). This biography doubles as a critical study of a satirist whose shish-kebabing of humanity was often done through the veiled anthropomorphic use of animals. For a biographer, Will Cuppy represents a treasure trove of possibilities. He was a great humorist, and most of his best work is still in print, but until now he has never been the subject of a book-length study. His mesmerizingly complex and eccentric private life almost trumps the comic accomplishments of his public persona.

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