Photoplay

Celebrity Culture and the American Dream, Second Edition considers how major economic and historical factors shaped the nature of celebrity culture as we know it today, retaining the first edition’s examples from the first celebrity fan magazines of 1911 to the present and expanding to include updated examples and additional discussion on the role of the internet and social media in today’s celebrity culture. Equally important, the book explains how and why the story of Hollywood celebrities matters, sociologically speaking, to an understanding of American society, to the changing nature of the American Dream, and to the relation between class and culture. This book is an ideal addition to courses on inequalities, celebrity culture, media, and cultural studies.

Photoplay editions--movie tie-in books published in conjunction with the release of the film--were first published around 1912, reached their height in the 1920s and 1930s, and continue, sporadically, to be published today. (And stage play editions go back to the 1890s.) For many lost films of early Hollywood, photoplay editions can be the most tangible reminders that they ever existed. The most popular, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, and King Kong, sell for thousands of dollars on those rare occasions when they are offered. Two text chapters trace the history of photoplay editions to the present and discuss the major and minor publishers and the various formats that developed. The condition, popularity, demand, and value of photoplay edition books are also discussed. Part One is a list of American (including Canadian) photoplay editions listed by book title and including such details as the author, publisher, date published, alternate titles, type of dust jacket and the number of photographic stills, main credits, and the estimated value in U.S. dollars. Part Two is a simple list by author of these photoplay editions. Parts Three and Four follow the same format but are listings of British (including Australian) photoplay editions. Part Five lists stage play editions by book title (with full data) and Part Six is a simple list of stage play editions by actor or actress.

The original Movies and Methods volume (1976) captured the dynamic evolution of film theory and criticism into an important new discipline, incorporating methods from structuralism, semiotics, and feminist thought. Now there is again ferment in the field. Movies and Methods, Volume II, captures the developments that have given history and genre studies imaginative new models and indicates how feminist, structuralist, and psychoanalytic approaches to film have achieved fresh, valuable insights. In his thoughtful introduction, Nichols provides a context for the paradoxes that confront film studies today. He shows how shared methods and approaches continue to stimulate much of the best writing about film, points to common problems most critics and theorists have tried to resolve, and describes the internal contraditions that have restricted the usefulness of post-structuralism. Mini-introductions place each essay in a larger context and suggest its linkages with other essays in the volume. A great variety of approaches and methods characterize film writing today, and the final part conveys their diversity—from statistical style analysis to phenomenology and from gay criticisms to neoformalism. This concluding part also shows how the rigorous use of a broad range of approaches has helped remove post-structuralist criticism from its position of dominance through most of the seventies and early eighties. The writings collected in this volume exhibit not only a strong sense of personal engagement but als a persistent awareness of the social importance of the cinema in our culture. Movies and Methods, Volume II, will prove as invaluable to the serious student of cinema as its predecessor; it will be an essential reference work for years to come.

Off-White Hollywood investigates how the 'ethnicity' of white European-American actresses has played a key role in the mythology of American identity and nation building. Negra focuses on key stars of the silent - Colleen Moore and Pola Negri - classical - Sonja Henie and Hedy Lamarr - and post-classical eras - Marisa Tomei and Cher - to demonstrate how each star illuminates aspects of ethnicity, gender, consumerism, and class at work in American culture.

Topics include: Clara Bow, Rudolph Valentino, Hollywood in the 1920s.

Actor and director John Derek was born in Hollywood, where his striking good looks helped get him a contract with David O' Selznick. Derek's career took off after Humphrey Bogart made him his costar in the cultish noir Knock at Any Doors. Derek appeared in such Academy Award-nominated films as All the King's Men, Run for Cover, The Ten Commandments and Exodus, and worked with directors like Nicholas Ray, Cecil B. DeMille, Otto Preminger and others. He was a competent, dedicated performer even in his last, trivial roles. In the 1960s, his career in decline, he began directing his own films. Although critics panned the string of movies he made starring his three wives--Ursula Andress, Linda Evans and Bo Derek--some were box-office hits, like Tarzan, the Ape Man. This biography covers his extraordinary life and career, with extensive analysis of his films.

An introduction to film history, this anthology covers the history of film from 1895. It is arranged chronologically, and each chapter contains an introduction on the key developments within the period. Various types of film history are undertaken to enable students to become familiar with different types of film historical research.

In 1916, an eminent psychologist recorded his impressions of the fledgling film industry. His penetrating and prescient observations foretold the most modern developments of the cinematic art, and his classic survey, The Film: A Psychological Study, remains a text of enduring relevance to movie historians as well as students of film and psychology. Ranging from considerations of the viewer's perception of on-screen depth and motion to examinations of the cinema's distinguishing and unique characteristics as an art form, this study arrives at strikingly modern conclusions about movies and their psychological values.

This new biography contains excerpts from interviews and articles by and about Curtis all the way from his teens in the Bronx to his death at 85 in 2010. Many of these are little known and provide insights into his complex relationship with fame, family and females, the three obsessions of his life. The book also documents his many struggles with substance abuse, his disenchantment with Hollywood when it failed to take him seriously, the violent deaths of his two brothers, the failure of four of his marriages, a heart attack, the death of a son from a drug overdose and, most importantly, the manner in which his resilient spirit saw him through these challenges and tragedies. It’s a revisionist biography which adds significantly to the received wisdom on his life and times, not only through personal interviews but also revelations from two recent books not yet available in English, one written by his daughter Allegra and the other by his ex-wife Christine Kaufmann.