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Like a lovingly guided midnight tour, this book covers the seductive shadows of the most fascinating horror films and melodramas from the 1930s and 1940s. From the bloody censorship battles behind 1935's Bride of Frankenstein, to the sexual controversies of 1941's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the gruesome Nazi atrocities of 1943's Women in Bondage, this book delves into newly excavated research to tell the behind-the-scenes sagas of some of Hollywood's most frightening films. Peek behind the scenes, revel in on-the-set anecdotes and get a look at the script notes illuminating characters like WereWolf of London, Richard III, Panther Woman and Rasputin. Included are profiles of the performers and filmmakers who made the nightmares feel all too real in the darkened theaters of yesteryear, and an examination of the factors that have kept these films popular so many decades later.
Thirteen of Hollywood's horror classics in detail: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), The Old Dark House(1932), The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), Mark of the Vampire (1935), Mad Love (1935), The Black Room (1935), The Walking Dead (1936), Cat People (1942), Bluebeard (1944), The Lodger (1944), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), Hangover Square (1945) and Bedlam (1946). From original interviews and research, the styles of the various studios (from giant M-G-M to Poverty Row's PRC), along with the performers, directors, and backstage events, are examined.
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Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster are horror cinema icons, and the actors most deeply associated with the two roles also shared a unique friendship. Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff starred in dozens of black-and-white horror films, and over the years managed to collaborate on and co-star in eight movies. Through dozens of interviews and extensive archival research, this greatly expanded new edition examines the Golden Age of Hollywood, the era in which both stars worked, recreates the shooting of Lugosi and Karloff's mutual films, examines their odd and moving personal relationship and analyzes their ongoing legacies. Features include a fully detailed filmography of the eight Karloff and Lugosi films, full summaries of both men's careers and more than 250 photographs, some in color.
In Hollywood Cartoons, Michael Barrier takes us on a glorious guided tour of American animation in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, to meet the legendary artists and entrepreneurs who created Bugs Bunny, Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse, Wile E. Coyote, Donald Duck, Tom and Jerry, and many other cartoon favorites. Beginning with black-and-white silent cartoons, Barrier offers an insightful account, taking us inside early New York studios and such Hollywood giants as Disney, Warner Bros., and MGM. Barrier excels at illuminating the creative side of animation--revealing how stories are put together, how animators develop a character, how technical innovations enhance the "realism" of cartoons. Here too are colorful portraits of the giants of the field, from Walt and Roy Disney and their animators, to Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. Based on hundreds of interviews with veteran animators, Hollywood Cartoons gives us the definitive inside look at this colorful era and at the creative process behind these marvelous cartoons.
Theatre Library Association's Wall Award Finalist Silent film superstar Douglas Fairbanks was an absolute charmer. Irrepressibly vivacious, he spent his life leaping over and into things, from his early Broadway successes to his marriage to the great screen actress Mary Pickford to the way he made Hollywood his very own town. The inventor of the swashbuckler, he wasn't only an actor—he all but directed and produced his movies, and in founding United Artists with Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith, he challenged the studio system. But listing his accomplishments is one thing and telling his story another. Tracey Goessel has made the latter her life's work, and with exclusive acce...
Ben Hecht called him "White Fang," and director Charles Vidor took him to court for verbal abuse. The image of Harry Cohn as vulgarian is such a part of Hollywood lore that it is hard to believe there were other Harry Cohns: the only studio president who was also head of production; the ex-song plugger who scrutinized scripts and grilled writers at story conferences; a man who could see actresses as either "broads" or goddesses. Drawing on personal interviews as well as previously unstudied source material (conference notes, memos, and especially the teletypes between Harry and his brother, Jack), Bernard Dick offers a radically different portrait of the man who ran Columbia Pictures—and who "had to be boss"—from 1932 to 1958.
The first Latin American actor to become a superstar, Ramon Novarro was for years one of Hollywood's top actors. Born Ramon Samaniego to a prominent Mexican family, he arrived in America in 1916, a refugee from civil wars. By the mid-1920s, he had become one of MGM's biggest box office attractions, starring in now-classic films, including The Student Prince, Mata Hari, and the original version of Ben-Hur. He shared the screen with the era's top leading ladies, such as Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, Joan Crawford, and Norma Shearer, and he became Rudolph Valentino's main rival in the “Latin Lover” category. Yet, despite his considerable professional accomplishments, Novarro's enduring hold on fa...
What makes a movie memorable? Has it won awards? Is it still constantly aired on television? Did it have an enormous influence in its day? Nearly 100 films of the 1940s are examined in detail, with complete cast, credit and background information. Pictures include "Casablanca," "Meet Me in St Louis," "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "All About Eve," "Cobra Woman," "Laura," "The Three Musketeers," "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," "The Picture of Dorian Gray," "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," "He Walked By Night," "Forever Amber," "The Paleface," etc.
The book covers unusual and often surprising areas of horror film history: (1) The harrowingly tragic life of Dracula's leading lady, Helen Chandler, as intimately remembered by her sister-in-law. (2) John Barrymore's 1931 horror vehicles Svengali and The Mad Genius, and their rejection by the public. (3) The disastrous shooting of 1933's Murders in the Zoo, perhaps the most racy of all Pre-Code horror films. (4) A candid interview with the son of legendary horror star Lionel Atwill. (5) The censorship battles of One More River, as waged by Frankenstein director James Whale. (6) The adventures (and misadventures) of Boris Karloff as a star at Warner Bros. (7) The stage and screen versions of...