Born the child of vaudevillians, she was on stage by age three. With her casual sex appeal, distinctive cello voice, megawatt smile, luminous saucer eyes, and flawless timing, she came into widespread fame in Warner Bros. musicals and comedies of the 1930s, including Blonde Crazy, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade.Frequent co-star to James Cagney, Clark Gable, Edward G. Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart, friend to Judy Garland, Barbara Stanwyck, and Bette Davis, and wife of Dick Powell and Mike Todd, Joan Blondell was a true Hollywood insider. By the time of her death, she had made nearly 100 films in a career that spanned over fifty years.Privately, she was unerringly loving and generous, while her life was touched by financial, medical, and emotional upheavals. Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes is meticulously researched, expertly weaving the public and private, and features numerous interviews with family, friends, and colleagues.

    This collection of profiles and interviews turns the spotlight on those unsung heroes, whose faces were often better known than their names. Maltin’s engaging conversations with such notables as Billy Gilbert, Gale Sondergaard, Hans Conried and Una Merkel evoke a bygone era as we see what life was like for these versatile players. Looking for anecdotes about W.C. Fields or Clark Gable? This book is for you. You’ll also learn about Bess Flowers, “the queen of the dress extras” and Rex Ingram, the black actor whose imposing presence eclipsed the stereotyping of the period. This well-illustrated e-book edition features a brand-new introduction by Leonard Maltin.

    If Stanley Kubrick had made only" 2001: A Space Odyssey" or "Dr. Strangelove," his cinematic legacy would have been assured. But from his first feature film, "Fear and Desire," to the posthumously released "Eyes Wide Shut," Kubrick created an accomplished body of work unique in its scope, diversity, and artistry, and by turns both lauded and controversial.In this newly revised and definitive edition of his now classic study, film critic Michel Ciment provides an insightful examination of Kubrick's thirteen films--including such favorites as "Lolita, A Clockwork Orange," and "Full Metal Jacket-"-alongside an assemblage of more than four hundred photographs that form a complementary photo essay. Rounding out this unique work are a short biography of Kubrick; interviews with the director, as well as cast and crew members, including Malcolm McDowell, Shelley Duvall, and Jack Nicholson; and a detailed filmography and bibliography. Meshed with masterful integrity, the book's text and illustrations pay homage to one of the most visionary, original, and demanding filmmakers of our time.

    Julius Henry Marx.

    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.

    There are production stills and in-depth accounts of the worldwide acclaim and financial success following the release of The Godfather. The study also details the production and release of The Godfather Part II and The Godfather Part III.

    A true auteur, Anderson is known for the visual artistry, inimitable tone, and idiosyncratic characterizations that make each of his films—Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom—instantly recognizable as “Andersonian.”The Wes Anderson Collection is the first in-depth overview of Anderson’s filmography, guiding readers through his life and career. Previously unpublished photos, artwork, and ephemera complement a book-length conversation between Anderson and award-winning critic Matt Zoller Seitz. The interview and images are woven together in a meticulously designed book that captures the spirit of his films: melancholy and playful, wise and childish—and thoroughly original.

    From Sergei Eisenstein, a legendary pioneer in filmmaking and director of Battleship Potemkin, Film Form collects twelve essays written between 1928 and 1945 that demonstrate key points in the development of his film theory and in particular his analysis of the sound-film medium."By turns savagely polemical and whimsically humorous...Eisenstein's last book, like all his writings, is on fire with imagination...Jay Leyda, well-known authority on Eisenstein's work, has done an excellently thorough job of editing and translating."??—??Saturday Review

    He started out as an actor (he debuted on the stage in his sixth-grade production of Finian’s Rainbow); he watched actors work (he went to the theater every week from the age of thirteen and saw every important show on, or off, Broadway for the next decade); he studied acting, starting at sixteen, with Stella Adler (his work with her became the foundation for all he would ever do as an actor and a director).Now, in his new book, Who the Hell’s in It, Bogdanovich draws upon a lifetime of experience, observation and understanding of the art to write about the actors he came to know along the way; actors he admired from afar; actors he worked with, directed, befriended. Among them: Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, John Cassavetes, Charlie Chaplin, Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, Ben Gazzara, Audrey Hepburn, Boris Karloff, Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, Frank Sinatra, and James Stewart.Bogdanovich captures—in their words and his—their work, their individual styles, what made them who they were, what gave them their appeal and why they’ve continued to be America’s iconic actors.On Lillian Gish: “the first virgin hearth goddess of the screen . . . a valiant and courageous symbol of fortitude and love through all distress.” On Marlon Brando: “He challenged himself never to be the same from picture to picture, refusing to become the kind of film star the studio system had invented and thrived upon—the recognizable human commodity each new film was built around . . . The funny thing is that Brando’s charismatic screen persona was vividly apparent despite the multiplicity of his guises . . . Brando always remains recognizable, a star-actor in spite of himself. ” Jerry Lewis to Bogdanovich on the first laugh Lewis ever got onstage: “I was five years old. My mom and dad had a tux made—I worked in the borscht circuit with them—and I came out and I sang, ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ the big hit at the time . . . It was 1931, and I stopped the show—naturally—a five-year-old in a tuxedo is not going to stop the show? And I took a bow and my foot slipped and hit one of the floodlights and it exploded and the smoke and the sound scared me so I started to cry. The audience laughed—they were hysterical . . . So I knew I had to get the rest of my laughs the rest of my life, breaking, sitting, falling, spinning.”John Wayne to Bogdanovich, on the early years of Wayne’s career when he was working as a prop man: “Well, I’ve naturally studied John Ford professionally as well as loving the man. Ever since the first time I walked down his set as a goose-herder in 1927. They needed somebody from the prop department to keep the geese from getting under a fake hill they had for Mother Machree at Fox. I’d been hired because Tom Mix wanted a box seat for the USC football games, and so they promised jobs to Don Williams and myself and a couple of the players. They buried us over in the properties department, and Mr. Ford’s need for a goose-herder just seemed to fit my pistol.”These twenty-six portraits and conversations are unsurpassed in their evocation of a certain kind of great movie star that has vanished. Bogdanovich’s book is a celebration and a farewell.From the Hardcover edition.

    Among filmmakers and film buffs, Cassavetes is revered, almost as a god. A major star of live television and a serious actor, he stumbled into making his first film, Shadows, and created a template for working outside the Hollywood system that would produce some of the most piercing and human films of the last thirty years including A Woman Under the Influence and Husbands. He became the prototypical outsider fighting the system for much of his career. Film critic Marshall Fine had unprecendented access to Cassavetes' wife, Gena Rowlands, and other members of their inner circle, as well as industry insiders who worked with Cassavetes -- some speaking publicly for the first time. Together, they tell his daring, tumultuous, and compelling story.

    In the animator's own words, accompanied by hundreds of previously unpublished photographs, sketches, and storyboards from his personal archive, this book details Harryhausen's entire film career, from 20 Million Miles to Earth and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers to Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts. In words and images, this book explains the basics of special effects and stop-motion animation, along the way telling entertaining tales of working with the film stars of the day, such as Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, and Lionel Jeffries. Film buffs will relish such revelations as how Raquel Welch was picked up by a flying dinosaur in One Million Years B.C., why the octopus in Mysterious Island was really only a sixtopus, and what Medusa's blood was made from in Clash of the Titans.

    Style assigns films to a tradition, distinguishes a classic, and signals the arrival of a pathbreaking innovation. David Bordwell now shows how film scholars have attempted to explain stylistic continuity and change across the history of cinema.Bordwell scrutinizes the theories of style launched by AndrE Bazin, NoEl Burch, and other film historians. In the process he celebrates a century of cinema, integrating discussions of film classics such as The Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane with analyses of more current box-office successes such as Jaws and The Hunt for Red October. Examining the contributions of both noted and neglected directors, he considers the earliest filmmaking, the accomplishments of the silent era, the development of Hollywood, and the strides taken by European and Asian cinema in recent years.On the History of Film Style proposes that stylistic developments often arise from filmmakers' search for engaging and efficient solutions to production problems. Bordwell traces this activity across history through a detailed discussion of cinematic staging. Illustrated with more than 400 frame enlargements, this wide-ranging study provides a new lens for viewing cinema.

    With never-heard-before anecdotes and new interviews with Reed's family, friends and peers, What Fresh Lunacy Is This? is a revealing examination of his mould-breaking personality.

    His book is as frank as it is revealing. Vadim tells the story of his life with Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deveuve, and Jane Fonda - three superstars whose private lives he changed as radically as he did their careers. His life (and theirs) reads like the best kind of romance novel, beginning with his love affair with the adolescent, bourgeoise Bardot, who threatened suicide if they couldn't be together... And he tells it all their tempestuous marriage, the making of their famous movie "And God Created Woman", Bridget becoming a celebrity, and their amiable divorce. And then Catherine Deneuve, described by the press as "the most beautiful woman in the world". Vadim observed and describes her transformation from adolescent to goddess: "With me she was docile. But I did notice that she wasted no time in getting her own way...She took her profession very seriously". And in private we see Deneuve the woman, pregnant with Vadim's baby and as she became an international star with "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", the end. Through Vadim's eyes we watch Jane Fonda's journey from the insecure child of Hollywood movie aristocracy to the mature woman she became. He tells us of their decision to have a baby - when Jane asked if the house wouldn't be too crowded with the two children already in residence Vadim pointed out, "We have five cats, six dogs and four Italians already". Of their "open marriage", "Jane and I were the guinea pigs of an unstable era and we did not know it". And finally of the breakup: "Jane wasn't leaving me for another man but for herself. I much preferred to see her taking off on the chariot of politics to her leaving me for another man. I found this to be loftier as well as much easier on my ego". It's all here, a memoir at once gossipy, explicit, and deeply moving, starring the three most beautiful and fascinating women in the world.

    Joseph McBride’s Searching for John Ford surpasses all previous biographies of the filmmaker in its depth, originality, and insight. Encompassing and illuminating Ford’s myriad complexities and contradictions, McBride traces the trajectory of Ford’s life from his beginnings as “Bull” Feeney, the nearsighted, football-playing son of Irish immigrants in Portland, Maine, to his recognition, after a long, controversial, and much-honored career, as America’s national mythmaker. Blending lively and penetrating analyses of Ford’s films with an impeccably documented narrative of the historical and psychological contexts in which those films were created, McBride has at long last given John Ford the biography his stature demands.