film industry

London, Faber & Faber, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 384 pages. Orson Welles was a metamorphic man, a magical shape-changer who made up myths about himself and permitted others to add to their store. On different occasions, he likened himself to Christ--mankind's redeemer--and to Lucifer--the rebel angel who brought about the fall. His persona compounded the roles he played--kings, despots, generals, captains of industry, autocratic film directors--and the more or less fictitious exploits with which he regaled other people or which they attributed to him. Hailed in childhood as a genius, he remained mystified by his own promise, unable to understand or control an intellect that he came to think of as a curse; and he ended his days shilling wine and performing magic tricks on talk shows. At times, he saw the collapse of his early ambitions as a tragedy; in other moods, he viewed his life as a humbling comedy, and settled down--like another favorite character, Shakespeare's Falstaff --to eat, drink and be irresponsibly merry. Rather than producing another conventional biography of Welles, Peter Conrad has set out to investigate the stories Welles told about his life--the myths and secret histories hidden in films both made and unmade, in the books Welles wrote and those he read. The result takes us deep into Welles' imagination, showing how he created, then ultimately destroyed himself. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Lexington KY, University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 320 pages, in a bright unclipped dust jacket, b&w illustrations. Pola Negri (1897-1987) rose from an impoverished childhood in Warsaw, Poland, to become one of early Hollywood's greatest stars. After tuberculosis ended her career as a ballerina in 1912, she turned to acting and worked under legendary directors Max Reinhardt and Ernst Lubitsch in Germany. Negri preceded Lubitsch to Hollywood, where she quickly became a fan favorite thanks to her beauty, talent, and diva personality. Known for her alluring sexuality and biting artistic edge, she starred in more than sixty films and defined the image of the cinematic femme fatale. Author Mariusz Kotowski brings the screen siren's story to English-speaking audiences for the first time in this fascinating biography. At the height of her fame, Negri often portrayed exotic and mysterious temptresses, headlining in such successes as The Spanish Dancer (1923) and Forbidden Paradise (1924), before returning to Europe in the 1930s. The devastating effects of World War II soon drove her back to the United States, where she starred in Hi Diddle Diddle (1943) and pursued her vaudeville career before retiring from the entertainment industry. Kotowski also illuminates Negri's dramatic personal life, detailing her numerous love affairs-including her engagement to Charlie Chaplin and her romance with Rudolph Valentino-as well as her multiple marriages. This long-overdue biography not only paints a detailed portrait of one classic Hollywood's most intriguing stars and the film industry's original Jezebel, but also explores the link between Hollywood and European cinema during the interwar years.

Softcover. San Francisco, Mercury House, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 112 pages, b&w photographs. Sanford Roth (d. 1962) quit an executive position in 1946 to pursue photography in Paris. His wife's anecdotal essay recalls their experiences photographing figures in the arts, including Colette, Picasso, Cocteau, and Stravinsky. Roth later became photographer to the film industry and made portraits of James Dean, Ava Gardner, and dozens of others. His photographs, which appeared in Life , Paris-Match , etc., are photojournalistic and new to today's audience.

Hardcover. NY, powerHouse Books, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 256 pages. Sylvia Plachy, a photographer for the Village Voice, and James Ridgeway, a reporter for the same publication, have delved into the depths of the pornography trade to explore and explain both its allure and its vulgarity. There is a sense of shock value in exposing the most lurid of fantasies--a man who has his dominatrix mummify him in concrete--that is tempered with theories as to how such an industry could have evolved. We also get to meet for ourselves those in the trade, providing a walk on the wild side within the safe confines of photographs and words.

Hardcover. Lexington KY, University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 328 pages, in a bright unclipped dust jacket, b&w illustrations. Noted for his charisma, talent, and striking good looks, director Rex Ingram (18931950) is ranked alongside D. W. Griffith, Marshall Neilan, and Erich von Stroheim as one of the greatest artists of the silent cinema. Ingram briefly studied sculpture at the Yale University School of Art after emigrating from Ireland to the United States in 1911; but he was soon seduced by the new medium of moving pictures and abandoned his studies for a series of jobs in the film industry. Over the next decade, he became one of the most popular directors in Hollywood, directing smash hits such as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), The Prisoner of Zenda (1922), and Scaramouche (1923). n Rex Ingram, Ruth Barton explores the life and legacy of the pioneering filmmaker, following him from his childhood in Dublin to his life at the top of early Hollywood's A-list and his eventual self-imposed exile on the French Riviera. Ingram excelled in bringing visions of adventure and fantasy to eager audiences, and his films made stars of actors like Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro, and Alice Terry-his second wife and leading lady. With his name a virtual guarantee of box office success, Ingram's career flourished in the 1920s despite the constraints of an increasingly regulated industry and the hostility of Louis B. Mayer, who regarded him as a dangerous maverick.Barton examines the virtuoso director's career and controversial personal life-including his conversion to Islam, the rumors surrounding his ambiguous sexuality, and the circumstances of his untimely death. This definitive biography not only restores the visionary filmmaker to the spotlight but also provides an absorbing look at the daring and exhilarating days of silent-era Hollywood.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow & Co. , 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The movie critic for "Time" magazine explores the works and legacies of thirteen filmmaking giants, discussing how they shaped the industry and offering a revised perspective on The Hollywood Ten. Indexed. Essays on Marlon Brando, James Cagney,Harold Lloyd, Stanley Kubrick, John Ford, others. 312 pages, indexed. Clean copy.

Hardcover. london, Reaktion Books, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 444 pages, b&w illustrations. Show People offers a comprehensive history of the idea of the film star from Mary Pickford to Andy Serkis, traversing more than one hundred years and drawing on examples from America, Britain, Europe, and Asia. Renowned film writer Michael Newton explores our enduring love affair with fame, glamour, and the cinematic image. Newton builds up an expansive picture of movie stardom through explorations of striking and diverse figures such as Ingrid Bergman and John Wayne, Anna Karina and Sidney Poitier, Maggie Cheung, and Raj Kapoor. He celebrates the great performers of the past, and he looks forward to developments in the future, while also illuminating the inner workings of the movie industry and what moves us in a film and in an actor's performance. An encyclopedic, illustrated history of film idols ready for their close-ups, Show People is ultimately a book about cinephilia, the love of cinema, and our complex connection to that celebrated and beleaguered figure, the movie star. Clean, like new.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 205 pages, b&w illustrations. The distinguished filmmaker chronicles his life from his birth in 1910 to the worldwide success in 1951 of his film "Rashomon" and provides a provocative account of the Japanese film industry. Much of the book focuses on his early life, and the reader empathizes greatly with the young Kurosawa. There was much tragedy in his young life, both within his family, but also with the nation of Japan during the years leading up to and including the war. Much of his early career was spent trying to work on and create good films while appeasing the Japanese censors. Remainder dot on top edge otherwise a clean copy.

Softcover. London/NY, Routledge, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 340 pages, b&w illustrations. In the past stars have been studied as cogs in a mass entertainment industry selling desires and ideologies. But since the 1970s, new approaches have reopened debate, as film and cultural studies try to account for the active role of the star in producing meanings, pleasures, and identites for a diversity of audiences. Stardom brings together for the first time some of the major writing of the last decade which seeks to understand the phenomenon of stars and stardom. Gathered under four headings - The System, Stars and Society, Performers and Signs, Desire and Politics - these essays represent a range of approaches drawn from film history, sociolgy, textual analysis, audience research, psychoanalysis, and cultural politics. They raise important issues about the politics of representation and the cultural limitations and possibilities of stars. Clean copy.

Softcover. New York , Museum of Modern Art , 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 96 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. Softcover exhibition catalog. The Stenberg brothers, like their contemporaries Aleksandr Rodchenko and El Lissitzky, were artists of immensely varied interests and eclectic skills. They were sculptors, architects, and stage and costume designers, and were enamored of the film and montage theories developed in the suddenly burgeoning Soviet film industry. As seen in this book's superb color plates, they brought to film poster design an extraordinary compositional dynamism, originality, and contrast of scale, employing many of the artistic conventions of the Constructivist movement to great effect.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 384 pages. Noel Burch and Genevieve Sellier adopt a sociocultural approach to films made in France before, during, and after World War II, paying particular attention to the Occupation years (1940-44). The authors contend that the films produced from the 1930s until 1956--when the state began to subsidize the movie industry, facilitating the emergence of an "auteur cinema"--are important, both as historical texts and as sources of entertainment.Citing more than 300 films and providing many in-depth interpretations, Burch and Sellier argue that films made in France between 1930 and 1956 created a national imaginary that equated masculinity with French identity. They track the changing representations of masculinity, explaining how the strong patriarch who saved fallen or troubled women from themselves in prewar films gave way to the impotent, unworthy, or incapable father figure of the Occupation. After the Liberation, the patriarch reemerged as protector and provider alongside assertive women who figured as threats not only to themselves but to society as a whole. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Softcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st pbk, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 417 pages, b&w illustrations. Hollywood celebrities feared her. William Randolph Hearst adored her. Between 1915 and 1960, Louella Parsons was America's premier movie gossip columnist and in her heyday commanded a following of more than forty million readers. This first full-length biography of Parsons tells the story of her reign over Hollywood during the studio era, her lifelong alliance with her employer, William Randolph Hearst, and her complex and turbulent relationships with such noted stars, directors, and studio executives as Orson Welles, Joan Crawford, Louis B. Mayer, Ronald Reagan, and Frank Sinatra-as well as her rival columnists Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell. Loved by fans for her "just folks," small-town image, Parsons became notorious within the film industry for her involvement in the suppression of the 1941 film Citizen Kane and her use of blackmail in the service of Hearst's political and personal agendas. As she traces Parsons's life and career, Samantha Barbas situates Parsons's experiences in the broader trajectory of Hollywood history, charting the rise of the star system and the complex interactions of publicity, journalism, and movie-making.

Hardcover. Museums of San Francisco/ DelMonico Books, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. In 1974 the photojournalist and art photographer Steve Kahn began a series of provocative black-and-white Polaroids of porn-industry models posing in seedy Hollywood apartments. What began as an exploration of staged photography and portraiture evolved over the next three years into "The Hollywood Suites," a multi-faceted conceptual project in which Kahn turned his lens away from the models to deconstruct their seemingly mundane and monotonous surroundings. Endlessly fascinating, Kahn's series touches on myriad themes including bondage, containment, isolation, and the poetics of absence. This volume includes more than 100 works arranged in chronological groupings based on the original Polaroid film sessions and features essays that offer a scholarly assessment of a groundbreaking work. Published on the occasion of the exhibition "Steve Kahn: The Hollywood Suites" at the de Young museum, San Francisco, from September 9, 2018 to March 31, 2019.

Hardcover. Museums of San Francisco/ DelMonico Books, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. In 1974 the photojournalist and art photographer Steve Kahn began a series of provocative black-and-white Polaroids of porn-industry models posing in seedy Hollywood apartments. What began as an exploration of staged photography and portraiture evolved over the next three years into "The Hollywood Suites," a multi-faceted conceptual project in which Kahn turned his lens away from the models to deconstruct their seemingly mundane and monotonous surroundings. Endlessly fascinating, Kahn's series touches on myriad themes including bondage, containment, isolation, and the poetics of absence. This volume includes more than 100 works arranged in chronological groupings based on the original Polaroid film sessions and features essays that offer a scholarly assessment of a groundbreaking work. Published on the occasion of the exhibition "Steve Kahn: The Hollywood Suites" at the de Young museum, San Francisco, from September 9, 2018 to March 31, 2019.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1st, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, tan cloth with dark blue lettering, 293 pages. Early book on Adolph Zuckor & the pioneer days of the motion picture industry. 15 photos. Zukor was a Hungarian-American who produced one of the first feature-length films (The Prisoner of Zenda, 1913) and was one of the three founders of Paramount Studios. The book covers his rise from nickelodeon arcades to the heights of Hollywood. No dust jacket. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Ontario CA, Hanover Square Press, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Uncovers the life and work of Milicent Patrick--one of Disney's first female animators and the only woman in history to create one of Hollywood's classic movie monsters As a teenager, Mallory O'Meara was thrilled to discover that one of her favorite movies, Creature from the Black Lagoon , featured a monster designed by a woman, Milicent Patrick. But for someone who should have been hailed as a pioneer in the genre, there was little information available. For, as O'Meara soon discovered, Patrick's contribution had been claimed by a jealous male colleague, her career had been cut short and she soon after had disappeared from film history. No one even knew if she was still alive. As a young woman working in the horror film industry, O'Meara set out to right the wrong, and in the process discovered the full, fascinating story of an ambitious, artistic woman ahead of her time. Patrick's contribution to special effects proved to be just the latest chapter in a remarkable, unconventional life, from her youth growing up in the shadow of Hearst Castle, to her career as one of Disney's first female animators. And at last, O'Meara discovered what really had happened to Patrick after The Creature's success, and where she went. A true-life detective story and a celebration of a forgotten feminist trailblazer, Mallory O'Meara's The Lady from the Black Lagoon establishes Patrick in her rightful place in film history while calling out a Hollywood culture where little has changed since.

Hardcover. Santa Fe NM, Twin Palms Publishers, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 188 pages with color plates. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. This book is the first comprehensive selection of Jeff Burton's work in pornography which began in the 1980s with his portraits and stills for pornographic video boxes. This oversize volume captures the lush atmosphere and isolation of the men and women working in the California pornographic industry through the eyes of one of its most brilliant observers.

Hardcover. NY, Viking Studio, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This lavish, photo-laden tour of Tinsel Town's history is coffee-table condensation of 87 years of Vanity Fair coverage of the Hollywood scene. Visually, it's a thrilling compendium of images that have defined not only the film industry and its workers but how the American public has understood them. Ranging from Edward Steichen's iconographic black-and-white portraits of Louise Brooks, Norma Shearer and Irving Thalberg, and Gloria Swanson (which defined the "look" of Hollywood in its first half-century) to the contemporary and often shocking color photographs of Annie Leibovitz (of nearly everyone from Sylvester Stallone and John Travolta to Cate Blanchette and Johnny Depp)Dand peppered with shots by Bruce Weber, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Griege Hurrell and othersDthe book traces how these stars have come to embody pop mythologies of everyday life. The photos are interspersed among 13 (mostly short) essays by writers as diverse as Carl Sandberg, Patricia Bosworth, P.G. Wodehouse, Dorothy Parker, Peter Biskind and D.H. Lawrence, which range from the humorous to the illuminating. Clean copy.

London, Hardie Grant, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, embossed black boards stamped in white, 250 pages, color photos. Wanting You to Want Me is a collection of anonymous stories from the world of London strip clubs, documented by the women themselves. The stories range from behind-the-scenes conversations in the changing rooms, to dancefloor and private room etiquette, from emotional and intellectual connections between dancer and client, to the often-blurred boundaries that exist in between.Journalist Emily Dinsdale and filmmaker Bronwen Parker-Rhodes have collected images and stories from the women working in the London strip clubs over several years. Having been part of the industry themselves, they have a unique and intimate access to the seldom-heard stories, giving voice to an age-old industry, from the perspective of the traditionally voiceless workers. Supported by original, behind the scenes photography from the authors, these narratives express vulnerability, empowerment, curiosity and the complexity and duplicity of relationships--in short, what it is to be human.