Description
Book SynopsisThis 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, andThe Bells of St. Marys) explores the directors life as filtered through his art.
Trade ReviewLeo McCarey directed Laurel and Hardy in their first team efforts, Carey Grant and Irene Dunne in the Awful Truth, and Bing Crosby in Bells of St. Mary's, to cite just a few examples from a film career spanning 1920 to 1963. Gehring (film, Ball State U.) profiles his life and career, often offering critical reaction to McCarey's oeuvre, which spanned the gamut from the subversively screwball Marx Brothers' film Duck Soup to the anti-communist My Son John. * Reference and Research Book News *
...[Gehring] opens up the cultural landscape with fascinating links to Thurber, Benchley, Hemingway, and the McCarthy era in this wonderfully readable story. Recommended. All collections; all levels. * CHOICE *
A fascinating career clearly, and long overdue for the detailed treatment offered by author Wes D. Gehring in Leo McCarey: From Marx to McCarthy...McCarey is unquestionably a pantheon director, and his contributons to cinema and popular culture are vast; Gehring's book is highly recommended, and is especially enlightening regarding the director's early work at Roach with Charley Chase. * The National Board Of Review *
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Acknowledgments Chapter 3 Prologue Chapter 4 1. The Early Years Chapter 5 2. Silent Film Beginnings and Charley Chase Chapter 6 3. McCarey Teams and Molds Laurel & Hardy Chapter 7 4. The Early Features Chapter 8 5. Eddie Cantor, Ernest Hemingway, and the Marx Brothers Chapter 9 6. From Personality Comedians to an Attempted Kidnapping Chapter 10 7. Laughton, Lincoln, and Lloyd Chapter 11 8. Rethinking a Career and a Memorable 1937 Chapter 12 9. A Cowboy, A Cruise, A Crash, and Cary Chapter 13 10. From Dark Comedy to Father O'Malley Chapter 14 11. From O'Malley to McCarthy Chapter 15 12. Old Projects and Final Films Chapter 16 Epilogue Chapter 17 Filmography Chapter 18 Selected Bibliography Chapter 19 Index Chapter 20 About the Author
