The Complete Films of Laurence Olivier

The Complete Films of Laurence Olivier
Author: Jerry Vermilye
Publisher: Citadel Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1992
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780806513027

Laurence Olivier portrayed characters that were as diverse as they were memorable. From Hamlet to Heathcliff, from a Nazi dentist in 'Marathon Man' to a cunning mystery writer in 'Sleuth' his roles made him one of the most highly acclaimed actors of all time. This book celebrates his career, including casts, credits, synopses and production notes from every movie in which he appeared. Photographs illustrate the text, wit hrare candids borrowed from Olivier collectors.

The Real Life of Laurence Olivier

The Real Life of Laurence Olivier
Author: Roger Lewis
Publisher: Arrow Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre: Actors
ISBN: 9780099513667

Laurence Olivier was both an enchanter and a force of nature. Most of all, Olivier's life and work become a love story - the tale of the relationship with Vivien Leigh, who was destroyed by the extent of her passion for him, as he himself was cast into a frenzy of guilt and disillusionment.

Scandals of Classic Hollywood

Scandals of Classic Hollywood
Author: Anne Helen Petersen
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2014-09-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1101635479

Celebrity gossip meets history in this compulsively readable collection from Buzzfeed reporter Anne Helen Peterson. This guide to film stars and their deepest secrets is sure to top your list for movie gifts and appeal to fans of classic cinema and hollywood history alike. Believe it or not, America’s fascination with celebrity culture was thriving well before the days of TMZ, Cardi B, Kanye's tweets, and the #metoo allegations that have gripped Hollywood. And the stars of yesteryear? They weren’t always the saints that we make them out to be. BuzzFeed's Anne Helen Petersen, author of Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, is here to set the record straight. Pulling little-known gems from the archives of film history, Petersen reveals eyebrow-raising information, including: • The smear campaign against the original It Girl, Clara Bow, started by her best friend • The heartbreaking story of Montgomery Clift’s rapid rise to fame, the car accident that destroyed his face, and the “long suicide” that followed • Fatty Arbuckle's descent from Hollywood royalty, fueled by allegations of a boozy orgy turned violent assault • Why Mae West was arrested and jailed for "indecency charges" • And much more Part biography, part cultural history, these stories cover the stuff that films are made of: love, sex, drugs, illegitimate children, illicit affairs, and botched cover-ups. But it's not all just tawdry gossip in the pages of this book. The stories are all contextualized within the boundaries of film, cultural, political, and gender history, making for a read that will inform as it entertains. Based on Petersen's beloved column on the Hairpin, but featuring 100% new content, Scandals of Classic Hollywood is sensationalism made smart.

History and Popular Memory

History and Popular Memory
Author: Paul A Cohen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2014-04-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231537298

When people experience a traumatic event, such as war or the threat of annihilation, they often turn to history for stories that promise a positive outcome to their suffering. During World War II, the French took comfort in the story of Joan of Arc and her heroic efforts to rid France of foreign occupation. To bring the Joan narrative more into line with current circumstances, however, popular retellings modified the original story so that what people believed took place in the past was often quite different from what actually occurred. Paul A. Cohen identifies this interplay between story and history as a worldwide phenomenon, found in countries of radically different cultural, religious, and social character. He focuses here on Serbia, Israel, China, France, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, all of which experienced severe crises in the twentieth century and, in response, appropriated age-old historical narratives that resonated with what was happening in the present to serve a unifying, restorative purpose. A central theme in the book is the distinction between popular memory and history. Although vitally important to historians, this distinction is routinely blurred in people's minds, and the historian's truth often cannot compete with the power of a compelling story from the past, even when it has been seriously distorted by myth or political manipulation. Cohen concludes by suggesting that the patterns of interaction he probes, given their near universality, may well be rooted in certain human propensities that transcend cultural difference.

Olivier

Olivier
Author: Philip Ziegler
Publisher: MacLehose Press
Total Pages: 538
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1623650437

A finalist for the Sheridan Morley Prize that has been called "probably the best Olivier book for general readers" (Kirkus Reviews), Philip Ziegler's Olivier provides an incredibly accessible and comprehensive portrait of this Hollywood superstar, Oscar-winning director, and one who is considered the greatest stage actor of the twentieth century. The era abounded in great actors--Gielgud, Richardson, Guinness, Burton, O'Toole--but none could challenge Laurence Olivier's range and power. By the 1940s he had achieved international stardom. His affair with Vivien Leigh led to a marriage as glamorous and as tragic as any in Hollywood history. He was as accomplished a director as he was a leading man: his three Shakespearian adaptations are among the most memorable ever filmed. And yet, at the height of his fame, he accepted what was no more than an administrator's wage to become the founding Director of the National Theatre. In 2013 the theatre celebrates its fiftieth anniversary; without Olivier's leadership it would never have achieved the status that it enjoys today. Off-stage, Olivier was the most extravagant of characters: generous, yet almost insanely jealous of those few contemporaries whom he deemed to be his rivals; charming but with a ferocious temper. With access to more than fifty hours of candid, unpublished interviews, Ziegler ensures that Olivier's true character--at its most undisguised--shines through as never before.

Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh
Author: Kendra Bean
Publisher: Running Press Adult
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2013-10-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0762451033

Vivien Leigh's mystique was a combination of staggering beauty, glamour, romance, and genuine talent displayed in her Oscar-winning performances in Gone With the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire. For more than thirty years, her name alone sold out theaters and cinemas the world over, and she inspired many of the greatest visionaries of her time: Laurence Olivier loved her; Winston Churchill praised her; Christian Dior dressed her. Through both an in-depth narrative and a stunning array of photos, Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait presents the personal story of one of the most celebrated women of the twentieth century, an engrossing tale of success, struggles, and triumphs. It chronicles Leigh's journey from her birth in India to prominence in British film, winning the most-coveted role in Hollywood history, her celebrated love affair with Laurence Olivier, through to her untimely death at age fifty-three in 1967. Author Kendra Bean is the first Vivien Leigh biographer to delve into the Laurence Olivier Archives, where an invaluable collection of personal letters and documents ranging from interview transcripts to film contracts to medical records shed new insight on Leigh's story. Illustrated by hundreds of rare and never-before-published images, including those by Leigh's "official" photographer, Angus McBean, Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait is the first illustrated biography to closely examine the fascinating, troubled, and often misunderstood life of Vivien Leigh: the woman, the actress, the legend.

Lord Larry

Lord Larry
Author: Michael Munn
Publisher: Anova Books
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2007-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781861059772

This exciting new biography of Laurence Olivier reveals the life, work and personality of arguably one of the greatest actors of all time as well as a fascinating secret. Michael Munn's candid analysis is based on his association with Olivier through formal and informal conversations, in which the great actor spoke candidly to Munn about life, sex, secrets and Shakespeare. Michael Munn first met Olivier in 1971 and from then, the two became great friends. At the peak of their friendship, Olivier revealed a secret to him which he had told very few, mainly because of his lifelong fear of alienating the American public, but most curious of all, he kept it to himself out of an impulse not to be thought as a hero, which greatly contradicted his famously incredible ego. This secret has been disclosed by Munn for the first time and reveals that Laurence Olivier was recruited by SOE and MI-5, through film producer Alexander Korda, to promote the cause of Britain's war against Germany while in the USA at a time when many Americans were isolationists. This book reveals some highly personal and rarely expressed thoughts from Olivier and from the people who knew him best.

Filming Shakespeare's Plays

Filming Shakespeare's Plays
Author: Anthony Davies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1990-06-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780521399135

Shakespeare's plays provide wonderfully challenging material for the film maker. While acknowledging that dramatic experiences for theatre and cinema audiences are significantly different, this book reveals some of the special qualities of cinema's dramatic language in the film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays by four directors - Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Peter Brook and Akira Kurosawa - each of whom has a distinctly different approach to a film representation. Davies begins his study with a comparison of theatrical and cinematic space showing that the dramatic resources of cinema are essentially spatial. The central chapters focus on Laurence Olivier's Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III; Orson Welles' Macbeth, Othello and Chimes at Midnight; Peter Brook's King Lear and Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. Davies discusses the dramatic problems posed by the source plays for these films for the film maker and he examines how these films influenced later theatrical stagings. He concludes with an examination of the demands that distinguish the work of the Shakespearean stage actor from that of his counterpart in film.

Theatre and Celebrity in Britain 1660-2000

Theatre and Celebrity in Britain 1660-2000
Author: Mary Luckhurst
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2005-10-18
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0230523846

Theatre has always been a site for selling outrage and sensation, a place where public reputations are made and destroyed in spectacular ways. This is the first book to investigate the construction and production of celebrity in the British theatre. These exciting essays explore aspects of fame, notoriety and transgression in a wide range of performers and playwrights including David Garrick, Oscar Wilde, Ellen Terry, Laurence Olivier and Sarah Kane. This pioneering volume examines the ingenious ways in which these stars have negotiated their own fame. The essays also analyze the complex relationships between discourses of celebrity and questions of gender, spectatorship and the operation of cultural markets.