Douglas Fairbanks

Douglas Fairbanks
Author: Jeffrey Vance
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780520256675

"Douglas Fairbanks takes the full measure of the star's remarkable life. Jeffrey Vance bases his portrait on a rich array of sources, including Fairbanks's personal and professional papers and scrapbooks, newly available documentation and rediscovered films, and his own extensive interviews with those who knew or worked with Fairbanks. Engagingly written and sumptuously designed, with 237 photographs, the book goes beyond Fairbanks's public persona to thoroughly explore his art and his far-reaching influence."--BOOK JACKET.

The First King of Hollywood

The First King of Hollywood
Author: Tracey Goessel
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781613738948

"The first truly definitive biography of Douglas Fairbanks, the greatest leading man of the silent film era"--

Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford
Author: Christel Schmidt
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 654
Release: 2012-11-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0813140552

“Explains Pickford’s roles as not only a talented actress, but also as a philanthropist and industry leader who managed to end up her own producer.” —Time Out In the early days of cinema, when actors were unbilled and unmentioned in credits, audiences immediately noticed Mary Pickford. Moviegoers everywhere were riveted by her magnetic talent and appeal as she rose to become cinema’s first great star. In this engaging collection, co-published with the Library of Congress, an eminent group of film historians sheds new light on this icon’s incredible life and legacy. Pickford emerges from the pages in vivid detail, revealed as a gifted actress, a philanthropist, and a savvy industry leader who fought for creative control of her films and ultimately became her own producer. With extensive photos and illustrations, this book paints a fascinating portrait of a key figure in American cinematic history. Includes over 200 photos, illustrations, and stills from the collections of the Library of Congress and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century

Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century
Author: John C. Tibbetts
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 437
Release: 2014-06-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1626741476

Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century brings to life the most popular movie star of his day, the personification of the Golden Age of Hollywood. At his peak, in the teens and 1920s, the swashbuckling adventurer embodied the new American century of speed, opportunity, and aggressive optimism. The essays and interviews in this volume bring fresh perspectives to his life and work, including analyses of films never before examined. Also published here for the first time in English is a first-hand production account of the making of Fairbanks's last silent film, The Iron Mask. Fairbanks (1883–1939) was the most vivid and strenuous exponent of the American Century, whose dominant mode after 1900 was the mass marketing of a burgeoning democratic optimism, at home and abroad. During those first decades of the twentieth century, his satiric comedy adventures shadow-boxed with the illusions of class and custom. His characters managed to combine the American easterner's experience and pretension and the westerner's promise and expansion. As the masculine personification of the Old World aristocrat and the New World self-made man—tied to tradition yet emancipated from history—he constructed a uniquely American aristocrat striding into a new age and sensibility. This is the most complete account yet written of the film career of Douglas Fairbanks, one of the first great stars of the silent American cinema and one of the original United Artists (comprising Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith). John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh's text is especially rich in its coverage of the early years of the star's career from 1915 to 1920 and covers in detail several films previously considered lost.

Silent Stars

Silent Stars
Author: Jeanine Basinger
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 799
Release: 2012-10-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0307829189

From one of America's most renowned film scholars: a revelatory, perceptive, and highly readable look at the greatest silent film stars -- not those few who are fully appreciated and understood, like Chaplin, Keaton, Gish, and Garbo, but those who have been misperceived, unfairly dismissed, or forgotten. Here is Valentino, "the Sheik," who was hardly the effeminate lounge lizard he's been branded as; Mary Pickford, who couldn't have been further from the adorable little creature with golden ringlets that was her film persona; Marion Davies, unfairly pilloried in Citizen Kane; the original "Phantom" and "Hunchback," Lon Chaney; the beautiful Talmadge sisters, Norma and Constance. Here are the great divas, Pola Negri and Gloria Swanson; the great flappers, Colleen Moore and Clara Bow; the great cowboys, William S. Hart and Tom Mix; and the great lover, John Gilbert. Here, too, is the quintessential slapstick comedienne, Mabel Normand, with her Keystone Kops; the quintessential all-American hero, Douglas Fairbanks; and, of course, the quintessential all-American dog, Rin-Tin-Tin. This is the first book to anatomize the major silent players, reconstruct their careers, and give us a sense of what those films, those stars, and that Hollywood were all about. An absolutely essential text for anyone seriously interested in movies, and, with more than three hundred photographs, as much a treat to look at as it is to read.

Mary Pickford Rediscovered

Mary Pickford Rediscovered
Author: Kevin Brownlow
Publisher: Abradale Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1999-05
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Not only does this volume feature, as the title suggests, many previously unpublished photos of the silent film star (these consisting of film stills, production shots, and personal photographs drawn from the collection of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), it also contains extensive commentary on Pickford's career and each of her films. Not merely the most popular actress of her day, Pickford also exercised complete control over her films, making her a pioneer for women in positions of power in the film industry. For film historians and fans, this valuable volume contains a wealth of otherwise unavailable information about--as well as images of--her career. 9x12". Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Laugh and Live

Laugh and Live
Author: Douglas Fairbanks
Publisher:
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1917
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Pickford

Pickford
Author: Eileen Whitfield
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2007-08-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780813191799

A comprehensive biography of film's first star traces her rise to fame with the growth of the medium, her influence as a partner in United Artists, her relationship with Douglas Fairbanks, and her struggles later in life. UP.

Douglas Fairbanks

Douglas Fairbanks
Author: Ralph Hancock
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2019-02-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1493039938

Few people have influenced Hollywood history than Douglas Fairbanks. And who better than his niece and Fairbanks family historian, Letitia, to relate that story? On-screen and offscreen, he was a force of nature, progressing in easy leaps and bounds from the Broadway stage to silent movies when feature-length film was just a few years old. His happy, healthy characters and acrobatic acting style brought a new energy to the medium. But it was through his extraordinary success as a producer that Fairbanks achieved the goal of all creative people: to run his own show. This he did by co-founding United Artists in 1919 with his soon-to-be wife Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith. As a producer, he showed visionary taste, collaborating with his directors and designers to enact gallant tales in spectacular settings. Whether he played a young man on the go or a swashbuckling hero in a fairy-tale land, Fairbanks—one of the thirty-six founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—put America’s hopes and dreams on film. This updated version of the original 1953 biography has been expanded by the Fairbanks family with archival materials as well as never-before-seen photographs from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library.