Hollywood's Last Golden Age

Hollywood's Last Golden Age
Author: Jonathan Kirshner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2012-11-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0801465400

Between 1967 and 1976 a number of extraordinary factors converged to produce an uncommonly adventurous era in the history of American film. The end of censorship, the decline of the studio system, economic changes in the industry, and demographic shifts among audiences, filmmakers, and critics created an unprecedented opportunity for a new type of Hollywood movie, one that Jonathan Kirshner identifies as the "seventies film." In Hollywood's Last Golden Age, Kirshner shows the ways in which key films from this period—including Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces, The Graduate, and Nashville, as well as underappreciated films such as The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Klute, and Night Moves—were important works of art in continuous dialogue with the political, social, personal, and philosophical issues of their times. These "seventies films" reflected the era's social and political upheavals: the civil rights movement, the domestic consequences of the Vietnam war, the sexual revolution, women's liberation, the end of the long postwar economic boom, the Shakespearean saga of the Nixon Administration and Watergate. Hollywood films, in this brief, exceptional moment, embraced a new aesthetic and a new approach to storytelling, creating self-consciously gritty, character-driven explorations of moral and narrative ambiguity. Although the rise of the blockbuster in the second half of the 1970s largely ended Hollywood’s embrace of more challenging films, Kirshner argues that seventies filmmakers showed that it was possible to combine commercial entertainment with serious explorations of politics, society, and characters’ interior lives.

Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age at the American Film Institute

Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age at the American Film Institute
Author: George Stevens, Jr.
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 734
Release: 2009-05-27
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0307518124

ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S 100 GREATEST FILM BOOKS OF ALL TIME • The first book to bring together interviews of master moviemakers from the American Film Institute’s renowned seminars, Conversations with the Great Moviemakers, offers an unmatched history of American cinema in the words of its greatest practitioners. Here are the incomparable directors Frank Capra, Elia Kazan, King Vidor, David Lean, Fritz Lang (“I learned only from bad films”), William Wyler, and George Stevens; renowned producers and cinematographers; celebrated screenwriters Ray Bradbury and Ernest Lehman; as well as the immortal Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini (“Making a movie is a mathematical operation. It’s absolutely impossible to improvise”). Taken together, these conversations offer uniquely intimate access to the thinking, the wisdom, and the genius of cinema’s most talented pioneers.

Hollywood Lives

Hollywood Lives
Author: Graham Bannock
Publisher:
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2012
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781432780494

Golden Age Movie Actors as Writers 'Hollywood Lives' is about the movies in the Golden Age (1930-1950). It reviews some 175 star autobiographies distilling out of them the actor's accounts of the Communist Witch Hunt, racial prejudice, studio pressures, the glamour of movie stardom, the bosses, fellow actors and much else. This is the first ever book about movie actors as writers and contains many surprises. Graham Bannock, a British author now in his seventies, has been watching movies and reading about them since he was in his teens. He has authored or co-authored some 30 books, mostly on economics and business.

Special Photographer

Special Photographer
Author:
Publisher: powerHouse Books
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2010
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 157687558X

Leo Fuchs is a Hollywood veteran who spent over 40 years shooting some of the most moving and memorable images ever made of 1950s and 1960s film icons. Starting as a freelance magazine photographer, he was one of the rare outsiders invited onto movie sets, where he often befriended movie stars and captured candid shots both during and after shooting. The resulting photographs from Hollywood's undisputed heyday are here collected for the first time, including portraits of Sean Connery, Shirley MacLaine, Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando and Cary Grant.

My Place in the Sun

My Place in the Sun
Author: George Stevens Jr.
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 662
Release: 2022-05-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 081319525X

The son of a celebrated Hollywood director emerges from his father's shadow to claim his own place as a visionary force in American culture. George Stevens, Jr. tells an intimate and moving tale of his relationship with his Oscar-winning father and his own distinguished career in Hollywood and Washington. Fascinating people, priceless stories and a behind-the-scenes view of some of America's major cultural and political events grace this riveting memoir. George Stevens, Jr. grew up in Hollywood and worked on film classics with his father and writes vividly of his experience on the sets of A Place in the Sun (1951), Shane (1953), Giant (1956) and The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). He explores how the magnitude of his father's talent and achievements left him questioning his own creative path. The younger Stevens began to forge his unique career when legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow recruited him to elevate the Motion Picture Service at the United States Information Agency in John F. Kennedy's Washington. Stevens' trailblazing efforts initiated what has been called the "golden era" of USIA filmmaking and a call to respect motion pictures as art. His appointment as founding director of the American Film Institute in 1967 placed him at the forefront of culture and politics, safeguarding thousands of endangered films and training a new generation of filmmakers. Stevens' commitment to America's cultural heritage led to envisioning the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors and propelled a creative life of award-winning films and television programs that heightened attention to social justice, artistic achievement, and the American experience. Stevens provides a rare look at a pioneering American family spanning five generations in entertainment: from the San Francisco stage in the 19th century to silent screen comedies, Academy Award-winning films, Emmy Award-winning television programs and a Broadway play in the 21st century. He reveals the private side of the dazzling array of American presidents, first ladies, media moguls, and luminaries who cross his path, including Elizabeth Taylor, Sidney Poitier, the Kennedys, Yo-Yo Ma, Cary Grant, James Dean, Bruce Springsteen, Barack and Michelle Obama, and many more. In My Place in the Sun, George Stevens, Jr. shares his lifelong passion for advancing the art of American film, enlightening audiences, and shining a spotlight on notable figures who inspire us. He provides an insightful look at Hollywood's Golden Age and an insider's account of Washington spanning six decades, bringing to life a sparkling era of American history and culture.

Infamous Players

Infamous Players
Author: Peter Bart
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2011-05-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1602861439

In 1967, Peter Bart, then a young family man and rising reporter for the New York Times, decided to upend his life and enter the dizzying world of motion pictures. Infamous Players is the story of Bart's whirlwind journey at Paramount, his role in its triumphs and failures, and how a new kind of filmmaking emerged during that time. When Bart was lured to Paramount by his friend and fellow newcomer, the legendary Robert Evans, the studio was languishing, its slate riddled with movies that were out of touch with the dynamic sixties. By the time Bart left Paramount, in 1975, the studio had completed a remarkable run, with films such as The Godfather, Rosemary's Baby, Harold and Maude, Love Story, Chinatown, Paper Moon, and True Grit. But this new golden era at Paramount was also fraught with chaos and company turmoil. Drugs, sex, runaway budgets, management infighting, and even the Mafia found their way onto the back lot, making Paramount surely one of the most unpredictable, even bizarre, studios in the history of the movie industry. Bart reflects on Paramount's New Hollywood era with behind-the scenes details and insightful analysis; here too are his fascinating recollections of the icons from that time: Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Francis Ford Coppola, Roman Polanski, and Frank Sinatra, among others. For over four decades, first on the inside as a studio executive and later as the longtime editor in chief of Variety, Peter Bart has viewed Hollywood from an incomparable vantage point. The stories he tells and the lessons we learn from Infamous Players are essential for anyone who loves movies.

"It's the Pictures That Got Small"

Author: Charles Brackett
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2014-12-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0231538227

“Brackett’s diaries read like a funnier, better-paced version of Barton Fink.” —Newsweek Screenwriter Charles Brackett is best remembered as the writing partner of director Billy Wilder, who once referred to the pair as “the happiest couple in Hollywood,” collaborating on such classics as The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard. He was also a perceptive chronicler of the entertainment industry, and in this annotated collection of writings from dozens of Brackett’s unpublished diaries, film historian Anthony Slide clarifies Brackett's critical contribution to Wilder’s films and enriches our knowledge of Wilder’s achievements in writing, direction, and style. Brackett’s diaries re-create the initial meetings of the talent responsible for Ninotchka, Hold Back the Dawn, Ball of Fire, The Major and the Minor, Five Graves to Cairo, The Lost Weekend, and Sunset Boulevard, recounting the breakthroughs and the breakdowns that ultimately forced these collaborators to part ways. In addition to a portrait of Wilder, this is rare view of a producer who was a president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Screen Writers Guild, a New Yorker drama critic, and a member of the Algonquin Round Table. With insight into the dealings of Paramount, Universal, MGM, and RKO, and legendary figures such as Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Edna Ferber, and Dorothy Parker, this book reveals the political and creative intrigue at the heart of Hollywood’s most significant films. “A fascinating look at Hollywood in its classic period, and a unique and indispensable must-have for any movie buff.” —Chicago Tribune “This feels as close as we can get to being in the presence of Wilder’s genius, and he emerges as the cruelest as well as the wittiest of men.” —The Guardian “Not only rare insight into their often-stormy partnership but also an insider’s view of Hollywood during that era.” —Los Angeles Times “Very entertaining.” —Library Journal

Portraits from Hollywood's Golden Age of Glamour

Portraits from Hollywood's Golden Age of Glamour
Author: Colin Slater and The Hollywood Photo Archive
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2019-09-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1493033468

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.

Back Story (Caught Dead in Wyoming western mystery series, Book 6)

Back Story (Caught Dead in Wyoming western mystery series, Book 6)
Author: Patricia McLinn
Publisher: Craig Place Books
Total Pages: 2
Release: 2017-10-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1939215668

Even long memories fade, but murder never dies. Elizabeth Danniher has been among TV journalism’s elite. But divorcing her network exec husband ends not only her marriage but her career, and she’s banished to tiny KWMT in Sherman, Wyoming, to finish out her contract. Now she’s exploring what comes next – in her career, her life and her relationships with family, friends and those who’d like to be more than friends. But she’s not being left in peace to wrestle with these issues because she keeps being drawn in to murder investigations. Now Elizabeth, and handsome KWMT colleague Mike Paycik, rugged rancher Tom Burrell, and her colorful cast of collaborators, plunge into mysteries from the past that threaten the present. To succeed, they must untangle characters and plotlines from a long-hidden Back Story. Don't miss any of Elizabeth Danniher's Caught Dead in Wyoming adventures: Sign Off Left Hanging Shoot First Last Ditch Look Live Back Story Cold Open Hot Roll Reaction Shot Body Brace Cross Talk Air Ready Cue Up "Colorful characters, intriguing, intelligent mystery, plus the state of Wyoming leaping off every page." -- Emilie Richards, USA Today bestselling author What readers are saying about the Caught Dead in Wyoming series: “McLinn's mysteries set in Wyoming are addictive. The writing is excellent, the twists and turns keep the brain engaged, and Elizabeth's wry commentary keeps a smile on my face.” "I love the whole series Caught Dead in Wyoming. The writing is witty and sharp; the story is gripping; and the characters are so realistic. Even the supporting characters are fully defined and interesting. What I didn’t expect was a renewed appreciation given by this “inside” view of the world of journalism. With all the current focus on Fake News, I loved being reminded of how vital news people are to our society. E.M. Danniher changes her community and certain individuals – for the better – due to her dogged pursuit of truth and justice." "I confess to being addicted to this series and characters. I LIKE them. I wish they were real." “E.M.’s internal monologues are sharp, snappy and often hilarious.” "A terrific series with a western flair. . . . Great characters that you would want as your friends. Smart, funny, but not perfect." “Hoping this series lasts forever!” “McLinn has created in E.M. a female protagonist who is flawed but likable, never silly or cartoonish, and definitely not made of cardboard." More mystery from Patricia McLinn Secret Sleuth series Death on the Diversion Death on Torrid Avenue Death on Beguiling Way Death on Covert Circle Death on Shady Bridge Death on Carrion Lane Death on ZigZag Trail Death on Puzzle Place The Innocence Trilogy Proof of Innocence Price of Innocence Premise of Innocence Ride the River: Rodeo Knights (includes Caught Dead in Wyoming characters) female sleuth, amateur detective, women detectives, traditional mystery, mystery with humor, mysteries with humor, humorous mysteries, mystery with dog, mystery with animal, American crime murder, women sleuths, traditional mystery, krimis kriminalromane