Search results for ""Author Mark Vieira""

It's classic Hollywood -- uncensored. Filled with rare images and untold stories from producers, censors, stars, exhibitors, and the movie-going public, Forbidden Hollywood is the ultimate guide to a gloriously entertaining and strikingly modern time in early American films: the Pre-Code era."Pre-Code" -- a catchy misnomer for the days before a strict code of censorship purified the content of Hollywood films -- encompasses movies made from 1930 through 1934, when Hollywood censors were lax or absent. But there was already a Production Code in place, the result of a collaboration between Catholic bishops, Protestant politicians, and Jewish-American film producers with the aim of preventing federal censorship. The Code prohibited violent, vulgar, or sexual content in films. It was well intentioned, but no one abided by it, especially after the Great Depression began to keep filmgoers away from theaters. The easiest way to lure them back was with sex and violence. For the next four years -- before a grassroots movement caused the Code to be fully instated -- sinful cinema ruled the screen.Forbidden Hollywood is a history of Pre-Code like none other because it tells the story of the era by taking the reader there. Through the text you will eavesdrop on conferences between producers and writers, read nervous telegrams from executives to censors, and listen to conversations between censors and directors, where artistic decisions meant shifts in power -- and money -- when one third of a nation was desperate. You will see how these decisions were so artfully wrought as to fool some of the people just long enough to get films into theaters. You will read what theater managers thought of such craftiness. You will read letters from a variety of fans as they, depending on community standards, applauded creativity or condemned crassness.The book spotlights twenty-three films which author and film historian Mark A. Vieira identifies as the definitive list of movies that brought on strict enforcement of the Code in 1934, including a loincloth-clad Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan and His Mate; Barbara Stanwyck climbing the corporate ladder on her own terms in Baby Face; a group of misfits out for revenge in Freaks; and Paul Muni leading the crime world in the original Scarface. More than 200 newly restored (and some never-before-published) photographs throughout illustrate pivotal moments in the careers of such stars as Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Cary Grant, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Norma Shearer, Marlene Dietrich, and Jean Harlow, completing a definitive portrait of an unforgettable era in filmmaking.

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You know film noir when you see it: the shadowed setting the cynical detective the femme fatale and the twist of fate. Into the Dark captures this alluring genre with a cavalcade of compelling photographs and a guide to 82 of its best films. Into the Dark is the first book to tell the story of film noir in its own voice. Author Mark A. Vieira quotes the artists who made these movies and the journalists and critics who wrote about them, taking readers on a year-by-year tour of the exciting nights when movies like Double Indemnity , Mildred Pierce , and Sunset Boulevard were sprung on an unsuspecting public. For the first time, we hear the voices of film noir artists speak from the sets and offices of the studios, explaining the dark genre, even before it had a name. Those voices tell how the genre was born and how it thrived in an industry devoted to sweetness and light. Into the Dark is a ticket to a smoky, glamorous world. You enter a story conference with Raymond Chandler, visit the set of Laura , and watch Detour with a Midwest audience. This volume recreates the environment that spawned film noir. It also displays the wit and warmth of the genre's artists. Hedda Hopper reports on Citizen Kane , calling Orson Welles Little Orson Annie." Lauren Bacall says she enjoys playing a bad girl in To Have and Have Not . Bosley Crowther calls Joan Crawford in Possessed a ghost wailing for a demon lover beneath a waning moon." An Indiana exhibitor rates the classic Murder, My Sweet a passable program picture." Illustrated by hundreds of rare still photographs, Into the Dark conveys the mystery, glamour, and irony that make film noir surpassingly popular.About TCM:Turner Classic Movies is the definitive resource for the greatest movies of all time. It engages, entertains, and enlightens to show how the entire spectrum of classic movies, movie history, and movie-making touches us all and influences how we think and live today.

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George Hurrell (1904-1992) was the creator of the Hollywood glamour portrait, the maverick artist who captured movie stars of the most exalted era in Hollywood history with bold contrast and seductive poses. This lavishly illustrated book spans Hurrell's entire career, from his beginnings as a society photographer to his finale as the celebrity photographer who was himself a celebrity, and a living legend. From 1929 to 1944 Hurrell was the Rembrandt of Hollywood," creating portraits of Marlene Dietrich, Norma Shearer, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, and Joan Crawford that were a blend of the ethereal and the erotic. His photos of Jane Russell sulking in a haystack made the unknown girl a star,without a film credit to her name. He immortalized leading males stars of the day from the Barrymores to Clark Gable and Gary Cooper. Latter photo shoots magnified the glamour of the likes of Warren Beatty and Sharon Stone. Through newly acquired photos and in-depth research, photographer and historian Mark A. Vieira, author of Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits , offers not only a wealth of new images but a compelling sequel to the story presented in his earlier book on Hurrell. Hurrell was himself a star,rich, famous, successful. Then, at the height of his career, he suffered a vertiginous fall from grace. George Hurrell's Hollywood recounts, for the first time anywhere, Hurrell's rise from the ashes,how movie-still collectors and art dealers pulled the elderly artist into a nefarious world of theft and fraud how his undiminished powers gave him a second career and how his mercurial nature nearly destroyed it. The photographs that motivate this tale are luminous, powerful, and timeless. This book showcases more than four hundred, most of which have not been published since they were created. George Hurrell's Hollywood is the ultimate work on this trailblazing artist, a fabulous montage of fact and anecdote, light and shadow.

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In this official centennial history of the greatest studio in Hollywood, unforgettable stars, untold stories, and rare images from the Warner Bros. vault bring a century of entertainment to vivid life.The history of Warner Bros. is not just the tale of a legendary film studio and its stars, but of classic Hollywood itself, as well as a portrait of America in the last century. It's a family story of Polish-Jewish immigrants-the brothers Warner-who took advantage of new opportunities in the burgeoning film industry at a time when four mavericks could invent ways of operating, of warding off government regulation, and of keeping audiences coming back for more during some of the nation's darkest days.Innovation was key to their early success. Four years after its founding, the studio revolutionized moviemaking by introducing sound in The Jazz Singer (1927). Stars and stories gave Warner Bros. its distinct identity as the studio where tough guys like Humphrey Bogart and strong women like Bette Davis kept people on the edge of their seats. Over the years, these acclaimed actors and countless others made magic on WB's soundstages and were responsible for such diverse classics as Casablanca, A Streetcar Named Desire, A Star Is Born, Bonnie & Clyde, Malcolm X, Caddyshack, Purple Rain, and hundreds more.It's the studio that put noir in film with The Maltese Falcon and other classics of the genre, where the iconic Looney Tunes were unleashed on animation, and the studio that took an unpopular stance at the start of World War II by producing anti-Nazi films. Counter-culture hits like A Clockwork Orange and The Exorcist carried the studio through the 1970s and '80s. Franchise phenomena like Harry Potter, the DC universe, and more continue to shape a cinematic vision and longevity that is unparalleled in the annals of film history. These stories and more are chronicled in this comprehensive and stunning volume.Copyright © 2023 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

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Colossal. Stupendous. Epic. These adjectives, used by movie companies to hawk their wares, became clichés long ago. When used to describe the films of one director, they are accurate. More than any filmmaker in the history of the medium, Cecil B. DeMille mastered the art of the spectacle. In the process, he became a filmland founder. One hundred years ago, he made the first feature film ever shot in Hollywood and went on to become the most commercially successful producer-director in history. DeMille told his cinematic tales with painterly, extravagant images. The parting of the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments was only one of these. There were train wrecks ( The Greatest Show on Earth ) orgies ( Manslaughter ) battles ( The Buccaneer ) Ancient Rome ( The Sign of the Cross ) Ancient Egypt ( Cleopatra ) and the Holy Land ( The Crusades ). The best of these images are showcased here, in Cecil B. DeMille: The Art of the Hollywood Epic . This lavish volume opens the King Tut's tomb of cinematic treasures that is the Cecil B. DeMille Archives, presenting storyboard art, concept paintings, and an array of photographic imagery. Historian Mark A. Vieira writes an illuminating text to accompany these scenes. Cecilia de Mille Presley relates her grandfather's thoughts on his various films, and recalls her visits to his sets, including the Egyptian expedition to film The Ten Commandments.Like the director's works, Cecil B. DeMille: The Art of the Hollywood Epic is a panorama of magnificence,celebrating a legendary filmmaker and the remarkable history of Hollywood.

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