Film

LEIGHWARD “A consummate actress, hampered by beauty” is how George Cukor, the original Gone with the Wind director, described Vivien Leigh. Leigh is almost unique among movie stars (a label she detested) in that she was as celebrated on the stages of London and New York as on the cinema screens of the world. Best…

VITAL VITAGRAPH This is the story of two motion picture pioneers, but their names are not Griffith, Chaplin, or any of the usual suspects found in the history books. J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith were prime movers in the film world of their time, but are forgotten today, mainly because others who came…

HARDLY AN AVERAGE JANE The Hollywood Golden Age biography market is glutted with studies of Crawford, Davis, Dietrich, Hepburn, Hepburn, Monroe, Taylor and their peers. Is there anything left to say about these fabled creatures? The answer in most cases is a resounding “No!” Consequently, many writers are now exploring less well-trodden paths, and it’s…

A BUST OF PERSONALITY “Ladies and Gentlemen, here they are, Jayne Mansfield.” Talk-show host Jack Paar allegedly paid his writer Dick Cavett $5,000 for that line and it pretty much says it all. He was of course referring to Ms. Mansfield’s celebrated twin assets, but as Eve Golden reveals in this ferociously readable biography, there…

THE BEST FILM ADAPTATIONS OF THE CLASSICS Most of the time, when you ask someone how a movie was that’s based on a book that they’ve read before, you’ll hear them say that the book was better. This is the case in most of today’s movie adaptations, where a long and brilliantly written novel is…

THE HISTORY OF CINEMA IS A HISTORY OF US In A Chronology of Film, Ian Haydn Smith takes on the history of Cinema (and incidentally the history of the world) from the late nineteenth century to the present.   As befits the recounting of a primarily visual medium, the book is a visual treat with a…