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A screenwriter, novelist, labor leader, Hollywood insider, and feminist, Mary C. McCall Jr. was one of the film industry’s most powerful figures in the 1940s and early 1950s. She was elected the first woman president of the Screen Writers Guild after leading the fight to unionize the industry’s writers and secured the first contract guaranteeing a minimum wage, credit protection, and pay raises. Her advocacy was not welcomed by all: To screenwriters McCall was an “avenging goddess,” but to studio heads she was, in the words of one Hollywood executive, “the meanest bitch in town.” And after a clash with the mogul Howard Hughes in the blacklist-era 1950s, she disappeared from the pages of Hollywood history. J. E. Smyth tells McCall’s remarkable story for the first time, putting the spotlight on her trailblazing career and crucial influence. She explores McCall’s life and work, from her friendships with stars such as Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and James Cagney to her authorship of the hit Maisie series about a working-class showgirl’s adventures. Analyzing McCall’s deft political maneuvering, Smyth offers new insight on screenwriters’ struggle for equality and recognition. She also examines why McCall’s legacy is unrecognized, showing how the Hollywood blacklist and entrenched sexism obscured her accomplishments. Colorful and compelling, this biography provides a powerful account of how one extraordinary woman shaped golden age Hollywood.
Looking back on her career in 1977, Bette Davis remembered with pride, "Women owned Hollywood for twenty years." She had a point. Between 1930 and 1950, over 40% of film industry employees were women, 25% of all screenwriters were female, one woman ran MGM behind the scenes, over a dozen women worked as producers, a woman headed the Screen Writers Guild three times, and press claimed Hollywood was a generation or two ahead of the rest of the country in terms of gender equality and employment. The first comprehensive history of Hollywood's high-flying career women during the studio era, Nobody's Girl Friday covers the impact of the executives, producers, editors, writers, agents, designers, directors, and actresses who shaped Hollywood film production and style, led their unions, climbed to the top during the war, and fought the blacklist. Based on a decade of archival research, author J.E. Smyth uncovers a formidable generation working within the American film industry and brings their voices back into the history of Hollywood. Their achievements, struggles, and perspectives fundamentally challenge popular ideas about director-based auteurism, male dominance, and female disempowerment in the years between First and Second Wave Feminism. Nobody's Girl Friday is a revisionist history, but it's also a deeply personal, collective account of hundreds of working women, the studios they worked for, and the films they helped to make. For many years, historians and critics have insisted that both American feminism and the power of women in Hollywood declined and virtually disappeared from the 1920s through the 1960s. But Smyth vindicates Bette Davis's claim. The story of the women who called the shots in studio-era Hollywood has never fully been told-until now.
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.
In the early days of television, many of its actors, writers, producers and directors came from radio. This crossover endowed the American Radio Archives with a treasure trove of television documents. The collected scripts span more than 40 years of American television history, from live broadcasts of the 1940s to the late 1980s. They also cover the entire spectrum of television entertainment programming, including comedies, soap operas, dramas, westerns, and crime series. The archives cover nearly 1,200 programs represented by more than 6,000 individual scripts. Includes an index of personal names, program and episode titles and production companies, as well as a glossary of industry terms.
Actor William Powell is perhaps best known for his roles as charming Nick in The Thin Man films and blustery Clarence Day in Life with Father. As diverse as those characters are, they don't begin to reveal the full scope of talent demonstrated by one of Hollywood's most intelligent leading men. Elegant, witty and dignified, Powell created accessible and human characters in a great variety of roles. His talent was such that Powell has a large and growing fan base 50 years after his last film was released, evidenced by the popularity of DVD rereleases and the frequent appearance of his films on cable television. The focus of this book is Powell's work in more than 90 films, from the silent era to the age of CinemaScope, woven into the dramatic and touching story of the actor's life. It begins by leaping into how Powell and actress Myrna Loy were launched to stardom as husband and wife Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man. The next chapter sets the stage for the baby Powell's entry into the world in 1892 and details his childhood and upbringing. Following chapters trace Powell's journey into the film industry, his early career as a popular villain, and his transition to talkies in the late 1920s aided by his stage training. The book details his work at Warner Bros., which turned him into a leading man, and his years of stardom at MGM. The book describes turning points in Powell's life--the death of lover Jean Harlow, a 21-month hiatus from films while the actor battled cancer, and a new leap to the top in Life with Father. Concluding chapters detail another flurry of films and the actor's retirement. A filmography lists Powell's films from 1922 to 1955, including those believed to be lost.
Few people would argue with the films selected for detailed notices and reviews in this book. Many of the movies are award-winners, and most chalked up impressive figures at the box-office. Who would dispute the inclusion of Citizen Kane or Rebecca or The Best Years of Our Lives? However, along with The Yearling and Reap the Wild Wind and Hello, Frisco, Hello, I've also included a few surprises. A magnificent publication. -- Rodney Bourke in International Movie Making (April 2006).
Presents the result of conversations between writer James Curtis and Mae Clark (1910-1992), an actress who has the misfortune of being best known for a scene in which James Cagney grinds a grapefruit into her face, but whose talent and hard work in the acting business, in spite of personal misfortune, shine through. Includes an introduction by Curtis and bandw film stills. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR