American Film Studies

Follow

• 

  My Life as a Mankiewicz: An Insider's Journey through Hollywood

  This book details writer-director Tom Mankiewicz's fascinating journey through the ups and downs of being a member of an iconic Hollywood family, the pressures of following in the footsteps of his Oscar-winning writer-director father, Joe Mankiewicz and his Oscar-winning writer uncle Herman Mankiewicz, and the expectations of a family and the film community. Mankiewicz carves out his own niche by writing scripts that his dad and uncle never would have worked on because the subject material didn't lie in their comfort zones. Mankiewicz became a script doctor first, rewriting Legal Eagles, War Games, and Superman among others. Then he turned ...Read More

• 

  Thomas Ince: Hollywood's Independent Pioneer

  Thomas H. Ince (1880–1924) turned movie-making into a business enterprise. Progressing from actor to director and screenwriter, he revolutionized the motion picture industry through developing the role of the producer. In addition to building the first major Hollywood studio facility, dubbed “Inceville,” he was responsible for more than 800 films. This book chronicles Ince's life from the stage to his sudden death as he was about to join forces with media tycoon William Randolph Hearst. It explores Ince's impact on Hollywood's production system, the Western, his creation of the first American movies starring Asian performers, and his cinematic exploration of ...Read More

• 

  Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director

  Raoul Walsh (1887–1980) was known as one of Hollywood's most adventurous, iconoclastic, and creative directors. He carved out an illustrious career and made films that transformed the Hollywood studio yarn into a thrilling art form. This book recounts Walsh's life and achievements in a career that spanned more than half a century and produced upwards of 200 films, many of them cinema classics. Walsh originally entered the movie business as an actor, playing the role of John Wilkes Booth in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). In the same year, under Griffith's tutelage, Walsh began to direct ...Read More

• 

  Von Sternberg

  Belligerent and evasive, Josef von Sternberg chose to ignore his illegitimate birth in Austria, deprived New York childhood, abusive father, and lack of education. The director who strutted onto the set in a turban, riding breeches, or a silk robe embraced his new persona as a world traveller, collected modern art, drove a Rolls Royce, and earned three times as much as the president. This book traces the choices that carried the unique director from poverty in Vienna to power in Hollywood, including his eventual ostracism in Japan. It reveals an artist few people knew: the aesthete who transformed Marlene ...Read More

• 

  Buzz: The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley

  Busby Berkeley was the premier dance director of motion pictures. His originality and sharply defined style brought him professional acclaim and financial reward. He saved a studio from bankruptcy and a doomed genre from senescence. He wasn't a choreographer. According to “Buzz”, choreographers were defined with artists such as Agnes de Mille. He defined “dance directing”. Busby Berkeley was a specialist in the best and limiting sense of the word. For musical pictures, he had no stylistic equal, yet he films he directed outside his purview were often middling and anonymous, lacking the imprimatur that defined his finest work. The ...Read More

• 

  Animating Space: From Mickey to WALL-E

  Animators work within a strictly defined, limited space that requires difficult artistic decisions. The blank frame presents a dilemma for all animators, and the decision as to what to include and leave out raises important questions about artistry, authorship, and cultural influence. This book explores how animation has confronted the blank template, and how responses to that confrontation have changed. Focusing on American animation, the book tracks the development of animation in line with changing cultural attitudes toward space and examines innovations that elevated the medium from a novelty to a fully realized art form. From Winsor McCay and the ...Read More

• 

  Hollywood's War with Poland, 1939-1945

  During World War II, Hollywood studios supported the war effort by making patriotic movies designed to raise the nation's morale. These movies often portrayed the combatants in very simple terms: Americans and their allies were heroes, and everyone else was a villain. Norway, France, Czechoslovakia, and England were all good because they had been invaded or victimized by Nazi Germany. Poland, however, was represented in a negative light in numerous movies. This book draws on a close study of prewar and wartime films such as To Be or Not to Be (1942), In Our Time (1944), and None Shall Escape ...Read More

• 

  Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel

  Hal Ashby (1929–1988) was always an outsider, and as a director he brought an outsider's perspective to Hollywood cinema. After moving to California from a Mormon household in Utah, he created eccentric films that reflected the uncertain social climate of the 1970s. Whether it is his enduring cult classic Harold and Maude (1971) or the iconic Being There (1979), Ashby's artistry is unmistakable. His skill for blending intense drama with off-kilter comedy attracted A-list actors and elicited powerful performances from Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail (1973), Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in Shampoo (1975), and Jon Voight and Jane ...Read More

• 

  Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder

  One of the most accomplished writers and directors of classic Hollywood, Billy Wilder (1906–2002) directed numerous acclaimed films, including Sunset Boulevard (1950), Sabrina (1954), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), and Some Like It Hot (1959). Offering a unique in-depth critical approach, this book provides an overview of a filmmaking icon. Wilder began his career as a screenwriter in Berlin but, because of his Jewish heritage, sought refuge in America when Germany came under Nazi control. Making fast connections in Hollywood, Wilder immediately made the jump from screenwriter to director. His classic films Five Graves to ...Read More

• 

  Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952

  Though it may come as a surprise to both cinema lovers and industry professionals who believe that 3-D film was born in the early 1950s, stereoscopic cinema actually began in 1838. It occurred more than 100 years before the 3-D boom in Hollywood, which was created by the release of Arch Oboler's African adventure film, “Bwana Devil”. This book not only discusses technological innovation and its cultural context, but also examines the aesthetic aspects of stereoscopic cinema in its first century of production. It also writes a new chapter in the history of early cinema.