Search results for ""author holly"
Icon Books Black Sunset: Hollywood Sex, Lies, Glamour, Betrayal, and Raging Egos
For me it begins in such an ordinary way ... with a gorilla, a blonde,and a gun ...Mid- 20th century Hollywood; 'RaymondChandler's LA before Pilates and cell phones'. Clancy Sigal (who would later bethe inspiration for Doris Lessing's 'Saul Green') is just back fromfighting in the Second World War and an abortive solo attempt to assassinate HermannGoering at the Nurenburg trials. Charming his way into a job as anagent with the Sam Jaffe agency, Sigal plunges into a chaotic Hollywood peopled by fastwomen, washed-up screenwriters, wily directors, and starstruck FBI agentstrailing 'subversives'. He parties with the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, TonyCurtis and an anxious Peter Lorre, who becomes a drinking buddy.But this is the era of the Hollywood Blacklistand Sigal, like many of his contemporaries, is subpoenaed to testify before theHUAC. Will he give up the list of nine names, burning a hole in his pocket, tosave his own skin? Hilarious, touching, intimate and revealing: Sigal'smemoir reads like a forgotten hardboiled detective novel and has all the makings of aninstant classic.
£12.99
Orion Publishing Co Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: The Deluxe Hardback Edition
THE DELUXE HARDBACK EDITION FEATURING NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN PHOTOS, BONUS MATERIAL & AN EXCLUSIVE BOUNTY LAW SCRIPT BY QUENTIN TARANTINOQuentin Tarantino's long-awaited first work of fiction - at once hilarious, delicious, and brutal - is the always surprising, sometimes shocking new novel based on his Academy Award-winning film.The sunlit studio back lots and the dark watering holes of Hollywood are the setting for this audacious, hilarious, disturbing novel about life in the movie colony, circa 1969. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood tells the story of washed-up actor Rick Dalton. Once Rick had his own television series, a famous western called "Bounty Law." But "it ain't been that time in a long time" and now Rick's only regular parts are as the heavy, ready to be bested by whichever young "swingin' dick" the networks want to make a new star out of come pilot season. When a talent agent approaches Rick about starring in Italian Westerns ("Eye-talian Westerns"?), it only ignites a new crisis of confidence for the perpetually insecure actor. And then there's Rick's stunt double, Cliff Booth, a war hero who killed more Japanese soldiers during the Second World War than any other American, and who never thought he'd make it back home. If Rick's career has stalled, Cliff's has flamed out. Already living under a cloud of suspicion after the strange death of his wife at sea, Cliff makes the mistake of picking the wrong fight on set, and is soon reduced to the status of Rick's full-time gofer. Right next door to Rick's still glamourous Benedict Canyon home ("the house that Bounty Law built") some Hollywood dreams are coming true, and these dreams belong to Sharon Tate. Not only is she Mrs. Roman Polanski - married to the only true rock star director - but Sharon is fast becoming a star in her own right, living life on the upswing in a tough town. Only a few miles away, in the desert around Chatsworth, lives a different kind of dreamer. Charles Manson is an ex-con who has spellbound a group of hippie misfits living with him in squalor on an old "movie ranch." Little do his young followers know to what degree Charlie himself is an industry striver, more desperate for Columbia Records and Tapes's attentions than for the revolution he preaches. These indelible characters - and many more: an acting child prodigy beaming with hope; a booze-drenched former A-lister who's lost it all - occupy a vanished world from not so long ago that is brought to brilliant life in these pages. Here is 1969, the music, the cars, the movies and TV shows. And here is Hollywood, both the fairy tale and the real thing, as given to us by a master storyteller who knows it like the back of his hand. FEATURING NEW PHOTOS AND BONUS MATERIAL: - Two color inserts featuring never-before-seen photos from the set and posters and other memorabilia from Rick Dalton's career - An original, exclusive script for a Bounty Law episode by Quentin Tarantino titled "Incident at Inez" - A Mad Magazine parody of Bounty Law titled "Lousy Law: Loser's Last Ride"
£22.50
Rowman & Littlefield Warner Bros.: Hollywood's Ultimate Backlot
Movie studios are the wondrous, almost magical locales where not just films, but legends, are created. Unfortunately, these celebrity playgrounds are, and always have been, largely hidden from public view. Although some movie studios offer tours, few guests from outside the Hollywood community have ever been witness to the artistry, politics, and scandals that routinely go on behind the soundstage walls and away from the carefully orchestrated scenes visible to them from their tram carts. In this book, studio staff historian and Hollywood insider Steven Bingen throws open Hollywood’s iron gates and takes you inside the greatest and yet most mysterious movie studio of them all: Warner Bros. Long home to the world’s biggest stars and most memorable films and television shows, the Warner Bros. Studio lot functions as a small city and is even more fascinating, glamorous, and outrageous than any of the stars or movies that it has been routinely minting for more than ninety years. Accompanied by stunning behind-the-scenes photos and maps, and including a revealing backstory, this book is your ticket to a previously veiled Hollywood paradise.
£17.99
The History Press Ltd Me and Mr Welles: Travelling Europe with a Hollywood Legend
In late autumn 1968, Dorian Bond was tasked with travelling to Yugoslavia to deliver cigars and film stock to the legendary Hollywood director Orson Welles. The pair soon struck up an unlikely friendship, and Welles offered Bond the role of his personal assistant – as well as a part in his next movie. No formal education could prepare him for the journey that would ensue. This fascinating memoir follows Welles and Bond across Europe during the late 1960s as they visit beautiful cities, stay at luxury hotels, and reminisce about Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, among others. It is filled with Welles’ characteristic acerbic wit – featuring tales about famous movie stars such as Laurence Olivier, Marlene Dietrich and Steve McQueen – and is a fresh insight into both the man and his film-making. Set against the backdrop of the student riots of ’68, the Vietnam War, the Manson killings, the rise of Roman Polanski, the Iron Curtain, and Richard Nixon’s presidency, Me and Mr Welles is a unique look at both a turbulent time and one of cinema’s most charismatic characters.
£9.99
University of Exeter Press Screening Europe in Australasia: Transnational Silent Film Before and After the Rise of Hollywood
Through a detailed study of the circulation of European silent film in Australasia in the early twentieth century, this book challenges the historical myopia that treats Hollywood films as having always dominated global film culture. Before World War I, European silent feature films were ubiquitous in Australia and New Zealand, teaching Antipodean audiences about Continental cultures and familiarizing them with glamorous European stars, from Asta Nielsen to Emil Jannings. After the rise of Hollywood and then the shift to sound film, this history—and its implications for cross-cultural exchange—was lost. Julie K. Allen recovers that history, with its flamboyant participants, transnational currents, innovative genres, and geopolitical complications, bringing it all vividly to life. Making ground-breaking use of digitized Australian and New Zealand newspapers, the author reconstructs the distribution and exhibition of European silent films in the Antipodes, along the way incorporating compelling biographical sketches of the ambitious pioneers of the Australasian cinema industry. She reveals the complexity and competitiveness of the early cinema market, in a region with high consumer demand and low domestic production, and frames the dramatic shift to almost exclusively American cinema programming during World War I, contextualizing the rise of the art film in the 1920s in competition with mainstream Hollywood productions.
£80.00
Humanoids, Inc Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Dracula
A biography chronicling the tumultuous personal and professional life of horror icon Bela Lugosi.Lugosi, the tragic life story of one of horror’s most iconic film stars, tells of a young Hungarian activist forced to flee his homeland after the failed Communist revolution in 1919. Reinventing himself in the U.S., first on stage and then in movies, he landed the unforgettable role of Count Dracula in what would become a series of classic feature films. From that point forward, Lugosi’s stardom would be assured...but with international fame came setbacks and addictions that gradually whittled his reputation from icon to has-been. Lugosi details the actor’s fall from grace and an enduring legacy that continues to this day.
£17.99
Random House USA Inc How to Fake It in Hollywood: A Novel
£11.24
University of California Press Lois Weber in Early Hollywood
Among early Hollywood's most renowned film makers, Lois Weber was considered one of the era's three great minds" alongside D W Griffith and Cecil B DeMille. Despite her accomplishments, Weber has been marginalized in relation to her contemporaries, who have long been recognized as fathers of American cinema. Drawing on a range of materials untapped by previous historians, Shelley Stamp offers the first comprehensive study of Weber's remarkable career as director, screenwriter, and actress. Lois Weber in Early Hollywood provides compelling evidence of the extraordinary role that women played in shaping American movie culture. Weber made films on capital punishment, contraception, poverty, and addiction, establishing cinema's power to engage topical issues for popular audiences. Her work grappled with the profound changes in women's lives that unsettled Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century, and her later films include sharp critiques of heterosexual marriage and consumer capitalism. Mentor to many women in the industry, Weber demanded a place at the table in early professional guilds, decrying the limited roles available for women on-screen and in the 1920s protesting the growing climate of hostility toward female directors. Stamp demonstrates how female film makers who had played a part in early Hollywood's bid for respectability were in the end written out of that industry's history. Lois Weber in Early Hollywood is an essential addition to histories of silent cinema, early film making in Los Angeles, and women's contributions to American culture.
£27.00
Zuleika A Fate Worse than Hollywood
David Ambrose’s fascination with the world of entertainment began aged five sitting under the stairs of an isolated rural cottage, listening to the radio. He realised there was a life out there beyond anything on offer in bleak post-war Lancashire. His enthusiasm for theatre and film failed to be derailed by a law degree from Oxford, where his first plays were performed while he was still an undergraduate. Three years later he was sitting with Orson Welles and Laurence Harvey shooting a major Roman epic for which he had written the screenplay. An international career followed, taking in theatre, films, and eventually a series of mind-bending novels which have been described as ‘Hitchcock meets Hawking’. Fifty years on Ambrose is still trying to work out how it all happened to that kid under the stairs with his radio. A Fate Worse than Hollywood is his attempt at an answer.
£22.50
OUP Oxford Oxford Bookworms Library Factfiles Level 1 Hollywood audio pack
Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR.Listen along with downloadable MP3 audio.Hollywood - nine big white letters against the Hollywood Hills. Every year millions of people come from all over the world and look up at this famous sign. Why do they come? They come to see the stars on the HollywoodWalk of Fame, and to see the hand and foot prints outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre. They come to visit Universal Studios, and perhaps to see a movie star or two. Most of all, they come to be in the most famous place in movie history - exciting, wonderful Hollywood!CEFR A1/A2Word count 5,686
£16.02
Rare Bird Books Making It: What I Got Away With In Hollywood
Have you ever wondered what Angelina Jolie fears the most, or what Dustin Hoffman did to ease tension on a film set? What did Whitney Houston think about fame? Find out the secrets of the stars as you go behind the scenes of some of your favorite films with Reba Merrill, and international entertainment journalist who has interviewed hundreds of celebrities while promoting over 500 feature films. Follow Reba's personal journey as she conquers her own addiction and survives the challenging road to success in Hollywood, learning along the way that a celebrity's problems are not so different from our own.
£14.99
University of California Press Go West, Young Women!: The Rise of Early Hollywood
In the early part of the twentieth century, migrants made their way from rural homes to cities in record numbers and many traveled west. Los Angeles became a destination. Women flocked to the growing town to join the film industry as workers and spectators, creating a "New Woman." Their efforts transformed filmmaking from a marginal business to a cosmopolitan, glamorous, and bohemian one. By 1920, Los Angeles had become the only western city where women outnumbered men. In Go West, Young Women! Hilary A. Hallett explores these relatively unknown new western women and their role in the development of Los Angeles and the nascent film industry. From Mary Pickford's rise to become perhaps the most powerful woman of her age, to the racist moral panics of the post-World War I years that culminated in Hollywood's first sex scandal, Hallett describes how the path through early Hollywood presaged the struggles over modern gender roles that animated the century to come.
£22.50
The University of North Carolina Press Movie-Made Appalachia: History, Hollywood, and the Highland South
While Hollywood deserves its reputation for much-maligned portrayals of southern highlanders on screen, the film industry also deserves credit for a long-standing tradition of more serious and meaningful depictions of Appalachia's people. Surveying some two dozen films and the literary and historical sources from which they were adapted, John C. Inscoe argues that in the American imagination Appalachia has long represented far more than deprived and depraved hillbillies. Rather, the films he highlights serve as effective conduits into the region's past, some grounded firmly in documented realities and life stories, others only loosely so. In either case, they deserve more credit than they have received for creating sympathetic and often complex characters who interact within families, households, and communities amidst a wide array of historical contingencies. They provide credible and informative narratives that respect the specifics of the times and places in which they are set. Having used many of these movies as teaching tools in college classrooms, Inscoe demonstrates the cumulative effect of analyzing them in terms of shared themes and topics to convey far more generous insights into Appalachia and its history than one would have expected to emerge from southern California's ""dream factory.
£29.66
Rowman & Littlefield Elvis Through the Ages: Images from the Hollywood Photo Archive
From the beginning of his career to his death as the Hollywood icon Elvis Presley sang and enchanted thousands of people. Publicity photos and behind-the-scenes shots from the Hollywood Photo Archives include scores of long been forgotten or abandoned images in neglected studio archives. This book collects 100 of the rarest of the rare, seldom previously seen images of his career. For the Elvis fans who think that they have seen it all, this book will provide a new lens on a beloved American icon.
£18.99
Taylor Trade Publishing Deanna Durbin, Judy Garland, and the Golden Age of Hollywood
£25.00
Hodder & Stoughton General Division Alex Hollywood My Busy Kitchen A lifetime of family recipes
Original recipes from Mrs Paul Hollywood -- the real cook at home.
£20.69
HarperCollins Publishers Rebel Heir Hollywood Ex Factor
The Rebel Heir by Niobia Bryant When it's too hot in the kitchen He'll take it to the bedroom...
£8.88
Secant Publishing Stardust by the Bushel: Hollywood on the Chesapeake Bay's Eastern Shore
Hollywood on the Chesapeake Bay's Eastern Shore. One-hundred years of moviemaking on Delmarva, from Easton to Ocean City and Wilmington to Chincoteague. This is the first comprehensive history of the stars of stage and screen who called the Eastern Shore home during (or after) their lives ... as well as major motion pictures produced on location here. Written with meticulous care and infectious joy by Brent Lewis, a tenth-generation Eastern Shoreman known for his mastery of regional history and lore.
£27.89
Headline Publishing Group Tinseltown: Hollywood and the Beautiful Game - a Match Made in Wrexham
*** LONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ****** ONE OF THE DAILY TELEGRAPH'S SPORTS BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2023 ****** ONE OF THE TIMES' SPORTS BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2023 ***The remarkable inside story of how two Hollywood A-listers, Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, stunned the football world by buying a non-league club in North Wales.'astute, lovingly detailed ... so entertaining ... so charming' Victoria Segal, the Sunday Times'A superb account of a modern-day success story, told beautifully by one of the best writers in the business. This is one of the great football stories of recent years. No matter who you support, if you love football, you will love the story of Tinseltown.' Daniel Taylor, The Athletic'This is a compelling, multi-layered, page turner, underpinned by a real sense of both place and connection with the eclectic characters involved. It will appeal to anyone with even the slightest interest in the game's enduring place in a changing world.' Louise Taylor, Guardian'...the best sports book I've read all year for many years...It's full on factual but funny, exhaustive but not exhausting and well written and wonderful.' Paul Ross, talkSPORT'terrific ... A richly layered and fascinating story of a club and community reborn' FourFourTwo'This book comes from the heart. It tells the story of how Wrexham, the club I love, has always been special and achieved so much in the past, as well as the present. I really enjoyed it.' Mickey Thomas, Wrexham FC legend and 1992 FA Cup heroIt was one of the most extraordinary takeovers British football has known. In February 2021, Ryan Reynolds joined with Rob McElhenney to buy Wrexham FC, a non-league team in North Wales. Wrexham, a former coal and steel town dealing with its post-industrial legacy, suddenly found itself at the centre of global attention, with broadcast networks around the world descending to discover what was going on. The club became the subject of a smash hit Disney+ docu-series, Welcome to Wrexham.Tinseltown tells the story of this extraordinary, unpredictable and often surreal football takeover and the remarkable events that followed. Written with the full cooperation of Wrexham FC, it is the inside story of what happened when Hollywood met a dot on a map. How a town was transformed when its football club, aspiring only to survive on the fifth rung of the British football ladder, was sprinkled with gold dust and found ambition again. With unique access to key figures, the book charts the club's attempts to climb up the pyramid, providing a vivid sense of what it is like to play for this 'Hollywood' team and the pressure and spotlight that comes with it.At their only press conference since buying the club, nobody laughed when Reynolds and McElhenney said the Premier League could be an aspiration. 'Couldn't we theoretically make this happen?' McElhenney asked. 'Why not dream big?' added Reynolds. 'If you don't dream big, you will never go there, so why not?' Tinseltown is the story of how they did just that.
£19.80
Dover Publications Inc. Hollywood Glamor Portraits: 145 Portraits of Stars, 1926-49
£13.04
HarperCollins Publishers Inc Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction
Who can forget the over-the-top, white-on-white, high gloss interiors through which Fred Astaire danced in Top Hat? The stark modernist high-rise architecture, inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, in the adaptation of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead"? The lavish, opulent drawing rooms of Martin Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence"? Through the use of interior design - called production design in the film industry - movies can transport us to new worlds of luxury, highlight the ornament of the everyday, offer a vision of the future, or evoke the realities of a distant era. In "Designs on Film", journalist and interior designer Cathy Whitlock illuminates the role of art direction and production design in the creation of the most memorable moments in film history. Through a lush collection of rare archival photographs, Whitlock narrates the evolving story of art direction - from the massive Roman architecture of "Ben Hur", to the infamous Dakota apartment in "Rosemary's Baby", to the digital CGI enhanced city of Gotham in "Batman Begins". With behind-the-scenes stories of how sets are imagined, drawn, built, and decorated, and features on the most notable designers, "Designs on Film" is a must have for film lovers and movie buffs - or anyone who wants to lift the curtain on movie magic to better understand how art direction and set design allow us to truly loose ourselves in the diverse worlds showcased on the big screen.
£49.50
Edinburgh University Press Designs on the Past: How Hollywood Created the Ancient World
Explore how history was brought to life on the silver screen and how the Hollywood's epic movies dictated our vision of the past. This lively study analyses how Hollywood producers, directors, designers, costumiers, publicity agents, movie stars, and, inevitably, 'a cast of thousands' literally designed the ancient world from scratch.
£29.99
Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc McQueen's Machines: The Cars and Bikes of a Hollywood Icon
No other Hollywood star has been so closely linked with cars and bikes, from the 1968 Ford Mustang GT Fastback he drove in Bullitt (in the greatest car chase of all time) to the Triumph motorcycle of The Great Escape. McQueens Machines gives readers a close-up look at the cars and motorcycles McQueen drove in movies, those he owned, and others he raced. With a foreword by Steves son, Chad McQueen, and a wealth of details about of the stars racing career, stunt work, and car and motorcycle collecting, McQueens Machines draws a fascinating picture of one outsized mans driving passion. Now in paperback.
£17.99
Aark House Publishing Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon -- Arnon Milchan
£20.99
Schiffer Publishing Ltd Collectible Sheet Music:: Hollywood Movie Songs
Hollywood Movie Songs is the fifth book in Marion Short's popular series about collectible sheet music, taking up where she left off in From Footlights to "The Flickers." This time she concentrates on movie music after sound took over. The golden years, from the dazzling Busby Berkeley movies of the 1930s to the present day, are presented in an exciting kaleidoscope of more than 700 colorful and dramatic sheet music covers from famous movies that feature photos of the world's most beloved film stars. The first section sets the stage for the new Hollywood that took on the challenge of adding sound to motion pictures, and follows significant trends from Al Jolson's first astounding declaration in The Jazz Singer, "You ain't heard nothing yet!" through each decade of increasingly sophisticated development. The second part features brief biographical sketches of 170 well-known film stars with a listing of their movies that yielded sheet music, and representative photos of each star on selected movie covers. This most requested book also includes extensive indexes of songs, stars, and movies, and a thoughtful price guide that will prove invaluable to movie buffs, nostalgia seekers, and dedicated sheet music collectors.
£25.19
Faber & Faber The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood
Sight & Sound's #1 Film Book of 2020Chinatown is the Holy Grail of 1970s cinema. Its ending is the most notorious in American film and its closing line of dialogue the most haunting. Here for the first time is the incredible true story of its making. In Sam Wasson's telling, it becomes the defining story of its most colorful characters. Here is Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers, embarking on his great, doomed love affair with Anjelica Huston. Here is director Roman Polanski, both predator and prey, haunted by the savage murder of his wife, returning to Los Angeles, where the seeds of his own self-destruction are quickly planted. Here is the fevered deal-making of "The Kid" Robert Evans, the most consummate of producers. Here too is Robert Towne's fabled script, widely considered the greatest original screenplay ever written. Wasson for the first time peels off layers of myth to provide the true account of its creation. Looming over the story of this classic movie is the imminent eclipse of the '70s filmmaker-friendly studios as they gave way to the corporate Hollywood we know today.
£12.99
North Star Editions The LongLost Secret Diary of the Worldâs Worst Hollywood Director
Meet Claraâa girl living in Los Angeles, California, in 1915. Major motion-picture companies have moved out to Hollywood, and sheâs right in the middle of all the action. When she finds herself working behind the scenes in the film industry, sheâs determined to make it to the top in showbiz as a renowned director.
£26.99
Gefen Publishing House All About Eva: A Holocaust-Related Memoir, with a Hollywood Twist
£16.99
Rowman & Littlefield The 50 MGM Films That Transformed Hollywood: Triumphs, Blockbusters, and Fiascos
Movies don’t exist in a vacuum. Each MGM movie is a tiny piece of a large, colorful (although often black & white) quilt, with threads tying it into all of the rest of that studio’s product, going forward, yes, but also backwards, and horizontally and three dimensionally across its entire landscape. Not necessarily a “best of” compilation, this book discusses the films that for one reason or another (and not all of them good ones) changed the trajectory of MGM and the film industry in general, from the revolutionary use of “Cinerama” in 1962’s How the West Was Won to Director Alfred Hitchcock’s near extortion of the profits from the 1959 hit thriller North by Northwest. And there aere the studio’s on-screen self-shoutouts to its own past, or stars, in films like Party Girl (1958), the That’s Entertainment series, Garbo Talks (1984) Rain Man (1955) and De-Lovely (2004), or the studio’s acquisition of other successful franchises such as James Bond. But fear not, what we consider MGM’s classic films all get their due here, often with a touch of irony or fascinating anecdote. Singin in the Rain (1952), for example, was in its day neither a financial blockbuster nor crtitically acclaimed but rather an excuse the studio to reuse some old songs which the studio already owned. TheWizard of Oz (1939) cost almost as much to make as Gone With the Wind (also 1939) took ten years to recoup its costs. But still, the MGM mystique endures. Like the popular Netflix series “The Movies that Made Us,” this is a fascinating look behind the scenes of the greatest—and at times notorious—films ever made.
£31.50
McFarland & Co Inc The Unfilmable Confederacy of Dunces: How Ignatius J. Reilly Defeated Hollywood
For more than 40 years, dozens of film directors, writers and producers tried and failed to adapt John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces. Along the way lawsuits were filed, filming locations destroyed, friendships shattered, reputations trashed, production companies bankrupted. Drawing on exclusive interviews, internal documents and private correspondence, this book tells the remarkable story of the non-making of A Confederacy of Dunces as a breathless and absurdist thriller. Celebrity appearances include John Belushi, Steven Soderbergh, Stephen Fry, Robin Williams, Warren Beatty and Harvey Weinstein, among others.
£35.96
Oxford University Press Inc Behind the Screen: Tap Dance, Race, and Invisibility During Hollywood's Golden Age
How and why was outdated racial content - and specifically blackface minstrelsy - not only permitted, but in fact allowed to thrive during the 1930s and 1940s despite the rigid motion picture censorship laws which were enforced during this time? Introducing a new theory of covert minstrelsy, this book illuminates Hollywood's practice of capitalizing on the Africanist aesthetic at the expense of Black lived experience. Through close examination of the musicals made during this period, this book shows how Hollywood utilized a series of covert "guises" or subterfuges-complicated and further masked by a film's narrative framing and novel technology to distract both censors and audiences from seeing the ways in which they were being fed a nineteenth-century White narrative of Blackness. Drawing on the annals of Hollywood's most popular and its extremely rare films, Behind the Screen uncovers a half century of blackface application by delicately removing the individual layers of disguise through close analyses of films which paint tap dance, swing, and other predominantly Africanist forms in a negative light. This book goes beneath the image of recognizable White performers including Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Fred Astaire, and Eleanor Powell, exploring the high cost of their onscreen representational politics. The book also recuperates the stories of several of the Black artists whose labor was abused during the choreographic and filming process. Some of the many newly documented stories include those of The Three Chocolateers, The Three Eddies, The Three Gobs, The Peters Sisters, Jeni Le Gon, and Cora La Redd. In stripping away the various disguises involved during Hollywood's Golden Age, Behind the Screen recovers the visibility of Black artists whose names Hollywood omitted from the credits and whose identities America has written out of the national narrative.
£43.70
Edinburgh University Press Contemporary Disney Animation: Genre, Gender and Hollywood
Reconsiders contemporary Disney animation through the critical lens of genre theory Reveals new directions for the study of Disney's gender portrayals by combining a film genre perspective and the concept of post-feminism Examines the multifaceted interactions between Disney animated films, Pixar, Marvel, and other properties, providing insight into Disney's expanding cinematic universe Supported throughout by close analyse of the films, marketing materials, merchandising, and a wide range of comparative case studies from mainstream animation and Hollywood cinema Contemporary Disney Animation: Genre, Gender and Hollywood is the first in-depth study of Disney's latest animated output from the perspective of genre theory. Analysing a decade in Disney's history (2008-2018), Benhamou examines the multifaceted interactions between animated films, Disney properties such as Pixar and Marvel, and popular genres including the romantic comedy, the superhero film and the cop buddy film. Through this extensive critical lens, combined with a focus on gender, she provides illuminating and original insights on films such as Tangled, Frozen and Moana. Informed by wider discourses on contemporary Hollywood and post-feminism, this book challenges conventional approaches to Disney, and foregrounds the importance of animation in understandings of film genres.
£85.00
Rowman & Littlefield Portraits from Hollywood's Golden Age of Glamour
In photographs only seen briefly as part of studio press kits distributed upon release of a new film, these long-lost stills of Hollywood’s leading ladies have been reverently rendered into color portraits that not only evoke a treasured past of beauty and glamour, but also seem comfortably familiar to the contemporary eye. These posed photos have been chosen not only for their bespoke sensuality, but also for how the discrete addition of color has elevated a black and white still to a kind of artistic grace, prompting rediscovery of classic Hollywood’s most beautiful women. Actresses portrayed here include Julie Andrews, Anna Mae Wong, Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, Carroll Baker, Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, Angie Dickinson, Eva Marie Saint, and many others.
£25.00
Edition Axel Menges New Hollywood: The American Film After 1968
Text in English and German. The surprising success of Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and Easy Rider in the late 60s marks a turning-point in the history of the American cinema, as these are films that differ fundamentally from the traditional Hollywood style. They revised the traditional genre formulae and overturned the rules of classical narrative structure, but they were also aimed at a young audience influenced by alternative culture, a group that the big studios had ignored until then. The American film industry, which was in financial crisis and a phase of artistic stagnation in the sixties because it had tried to meet increasing competition from television by producing blockbusters, started to think again, and became more receptive to new ideas. This created a degree of artistic scope that young directors and filmmakers with artistic ambitions were not slow to exploit in order to realise their creative ideas in the context of mainstream cinema. A period of artistic renewal began, of a kind that had never been possible before in America on such a radical scale. The first wave of New Hollywood was starting to die down in 1971, as the films were often too experimental, too self-referential and too alien for a mass audience, and the market for the limited target group of a young audience interested in culture was quickly saturated. But important stimuli emerged, and made it possible for a series of film-makers like Robert Altman, Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols, Alan Pakula, Sydney Pollack, Stanley Kubrick, Sam Peckinpah, Paul Mazursky, Hal Ashby and ultimately an exceptional figure like Woody Allen establish themselves permanently. They were joined in the seventies by the younger generation of so-called 'whiz kids' like Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, William Friedkin, Martin Scorcese, Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Paul Schrader or George Lucas. They all represented the liberation of the director from the dictates of the studio, the acquisition of a right to have individual artistic handwriting and the era of the director as superstar.
£28.80
Orion Publishing Co Napoleon's Spy: The brand-new historical adventure about Napoleon, hero of Ridley Scott’s new Hollywood blockbuster
'An epic tale that never loses sight of the raw experience of the hero. I loved Napoleon's Spy' Simon Scarrow 'Exciting, immersive, well researched and great fun.' Giles Kristian'Harrowing and totally gripping. A masterclass in writing fiction about real historical events' Leonora Nattrass, author of Black Drop Russia, 1812. Has France finally met its match?On the eve of the invasion of Russia, half-French, half-English Matthieu Carrey finds himself in the ranks of Napoleon's five hundred thousand strong army. With Tsar Alexander seemingly ill-prepared, a French victory seems certain. The Grande Armée will obliterate everything in its path. Carrey's purpose is less clear. Blackmailed into becoming a spy in the emperor's army, he hopes to follow his lover, a French actress who has gone to work in the Moscow theatre. As supplies grow scarce and temperatures plummet, the Grande Armée begins to crumble. Caught up in the maelstrom of war, Carrey embarks on an epic journey, while the Russians circle like hungry wolves. Hundreds of miles lie between Carrey and safety. To reach it seems utterly impossible.
£16.99
University of California Press A Very Dangerous Citizen: Abraham Lincoln Polonsky and the Hollywood Left
When he was summoned before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951, Abraham Lincoln Polonsky (1911-1999) was labeled 'a very dangerous citizen' by Harold Velde, a congressman from Illinois. Lawyer, educator, novelist, labor organizer, radio and television scriptwriter, film director and screenwriter, wartime intelligence operative, and full-time radical romantic, Polonsky was blacklisted in Hollywood for refusing to be an informer. The "New York Times" called his blacklisting the single greatest loss to American film during the McCarthy era, and his expressed admirers include Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, Warren Beatty, and Harry Belafonte. In this first critical and cultural biography of Abraham Polonsky, Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner present both an accomplished consideration of a remarkable survivor of America's cultural cold war and a superb study of the Hollywood left. The Bronx-born son of immigrant parents, Polonsky - in the few years after the end of World War II and just before the blacklist - had one of the most distinguished careers in Hollywood. He wrote two films that established John Garfield's postwar persona, "Body and Soul" (1947), still the standard for boxing films and the model for such movies as "Raging Bull" and "Pulp Fiction"; and "Force of Evil" (1948), the great noir drama that he also directed. Once blacklisted, Polonsky quit working under his own name, yet he proved to be one of television's most talented writers. Later in life he became the most acerbic critic of the Hollywood blacklist's legacy while writing and directing films such as "Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here" (1970). "A Very Dangerous Citizen" goes beyond biography to help us understand the relationship between art and politics in American culture and to uncover the effects of U.S. anticommunism and anti-Semitism. Rich in anecdote and in analysis, it provides an informative and entertaining portrait of one of the most intriguing personalities of twentieth-century American culture.
£27.00
Little, Brown Book Group Women vs Hollywood: The Fall and Rise of Women in Film
'A fascinating polemic' Sunday Times 'A powerful, sobering and vital work' The Mail on Sunday 'A page-turning read, peppered with humour' Sight & Sound'A must read' Edgar WrightA call to arms from Empire magazine's 'geek queen', Helen O'Hara, that explores women's roles - both in front of and behind the camera - since the birth of Hollywood, how those roles are reflected within wider society and what we can do to level the playing field. Hollywood was born just over a century ago, at a time of huge forward motion for women's rights. With no rules in place to stop them, there were women who forged ahead in many areas of filmmaking. Yet, despite the work of early pioneers like Dorothy Arzner, Mabel Normand, Mary Pickford and Alice Guy-Blache, it soon came to embody the same old sexist standards. Women found themselves fighting a system that fed on their talent, creativity and beauty but refused to pay them the same respect as their male contemporaries - until now . . . The tide has finally begun to turn. A new generation of women, both in front of and behind the camera, are making waves in the industry and are now shaping some of the biggest films to hit our screens. In Women vs Hollywood: The Fall and Rise of Women in Film, film critic Helen O'Hara takes a closer look at the pioneering and talented women of Hollywood and their work in film since Hollywood began. And in understanding how women were largely written out of Hollywood's own origin story, and how the films we watch are put together, we can finally see how to put an end to a picture that is so deeply unequal - and discover a multitude of stories out there just waiting to be told.
£10.99
Columbia University Press Hollywood's Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World
Winner - 2022 Richard Wall Memorial Award, Theatre Library AssociationBeginning in the 1920s, audiences around the globe were seduced not only by Hollywood films but also by lavish movie theaters that were owned and operated by the major American film companies. These theaters aimed to provide a quintessentially “American” experience. Outfitted with American technology and accoutrements, they allowed local audiences to watch American films in an American-owned cinema in a distinctly American way.In a history that stretches from Buenos Aires and Tokyo to Johannesburg and Cairo, Ross Melnick considers these movie houses as cultural embassies. He examines how the exhibition of Hollywood films became a constant flow of political and consumerist messaging, selling American ideas, products, and power, especially during fractious eras. Melnick demonstrates that while Hollywood’s marketing of luxury and consumption often struck a chord with local audiences, it was also frequently tone-deaf to new social, cultural, racial, and political movements. He argues that the story of Hollywood’s global cinemas is not a simple narrative of cultural and industrial indoctrination and colonization. Instead, it is one of negotiation, booms and busts, successes and failures, adoptions and rejections, and a precursor to later conflicts over the spread of American consumer culture. A truly global account, Hollywood’s Embassies shows how the entanglement of worldwide movie theaters with American empire offers a new way of understanding film history and the history of U.S. soft power.
£27.00
Wallflower Press The Trouble with Men Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema
£17.09
Rowman & Littlefield The MGM Effect: How a Hollywood Studio Changed the World
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s emblem, which has opened thousands of movies since 1924, is the most recognized corporate symbol in the world. Not just in the entertainment industry, it should be noted, but of any industry, anywhere, in the history of human civilization. But MGM has been a competitively insignificant force in the motion picture industry for nearly as long as it once, decades ago, dominated that industry. In fact, the MGM lion now presides not over movies alone, but over thirty world-class resorts, and is, or has been, also a recognized leader in the fields of real estate, theme parks, casinos, golf courses, consumer products, and even airlines, all around the world. But the MGM mystique remains. This book is a look at what made MGM the Mount Rushmore of studios, how it presented itself to the world, and how it influenced everything from set design to merchandising to music and dance, and continues to do so today.
£31.50
University of California Press The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies
Hollywood moviemaking is one of the constants of American life, but how much has it changed since the glory days of the big studios? David Bordwell argues that the principles of visual storytelling created in the studio era are alive and well, even in today's bloated blockbusters. American filmmakers have created a durable tradition-one that we should not be ashamed to call artistic, and one that survives in both mainstream entertainment and niche-marketed indie cinema. Bordwell traces the continuity of this tradition in a wide array of films made since 1960, from romantic comedies like Jerry Maguire and Love Actually to more imposing efforts like A Beautiful Mind. He also draws upon testimony from writers, directors, and editors who are acutely conscious of employing proven principles of plot and visual style. Within the limits of the "classical" approach, innovation can flourish. Bordwell examines how imaginative filmmakers have pushed the premises of the system in films such as JFK, Memento, and Magnolia. He discusses generational, technological, and economic factors leading to stability and change in Hollywood cinema and includes close analyses of selected shots and sequences. As it ranges across four decades, examining classics like American Graffiti and The Godfather as well as more recent success like The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, this book provides a vivid and engaging interpretation of how Hollywood moviemakers have created a vigorous, resourceful tradition of cinematic storytelling that continues to engage audiences around the world.
£27.00
McFarland & Co Inc The Columbia Comedy Shorts: Two-Reel Hollywood Film Comedies, 1933-1958
Columbia produced over 500 two-reel shorts from 1933 through 1958, with Hollywood’s finest comics (the Three Stooges, Andy Clyde, Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Charley Chase, others). Fully illustrated with never-before-published photographs, the book chronicles the history of all, including interviews with the veterans. The filmography covers all of the 526 two-reelers: credits, date, synopsis.
£26.96
Jolly Fish Press The Long-Lost Secret Diary of the Worldâ s Worst Hollywood Director
£10.99
Random House USA Inc J Is for Judy: Classic Hollywood's Leading Ladies from A to Z
£14.39
Silman-James Press,U.S. Movie Money: Understanding Hollywood's (Creative) Accounting Practices
£26.99
Rowman & Littlefield Marilyn: Lost Images from the Hollywood Photo Archive
From the beginning of her modeling career in 1944 as Norma Jeane Mortensen to her death as the voluptuous Hollywood icon in 1962, Marilyn Monroe posed for thousands of modeling and publicity photos, scores of which have long been forgotten or abandoned in neglected studio archives. This book collects 100 of the rarest of the rare, seldom previously seen images of her brief modeling career, early days on the 20th Century Fox lot, then in candids between scene takes and traveling as a public figure as the wife of Arthur Miller and Joe DiMaggio. For the Monroe fans who think that they have seen it all, this book will provide a new lens on a beloved American icon.
£17.09
Dynamite Entertainment Bettie Page: Hollywood Adventures on Murder Island!
Stunning starlet Bettie Page has signed on to a new "tastefully sensual" fantasy film, shooting on a secluded tropical island. But when one of her cast members is MURDERED, everyone on the island is a suspect! WHO is the killer? WHAT is the film's producer hiding? HOW do they get off the island? You'll have to read to discover WHODUNNIT...!
£17.99
University of California Press Hollywood Remaking How Film Remakes Sequels and Franchises Shape Industry and Culture
£25.00