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The first book-length study of pioneering and prolific filmmakers Ted and Leo Wharton, Silent Serial Sensations offers a fascinating account of the dynamic early film industry. As Barbara Tepa Lupack demonstrates, the Wharton brothers were behind some of the most profitable and influential productions of the era, including The Exploits of Elaine and The Mysteries of Myra, which starred such popular performers as Pearl White, Irene Castle, Francis X. Bushman, and Lionel Barrymore. Working from the independent film studio they established in Ithaca, New York, Ted and Leo turned their adopted town into "Hollywood on Cayuga." By interweaving contemporary events and incorporating technological and scientific innovations, the Whartons expanded the possibilities of the popular serial motion picture and defined many of its conventions. A number of the sensational techniques and character types they introduced are still being employed by directors and producers a century later.
The floozy, the gangster's moll, the nasty debutante: Most Hollywood actresses played at least one of these bad girls in the 1930s. Since censorship customarily demanded that goodness prevail, vixens were in mainly supporting roles--but the actresses who played them were often colorful scene stealers. These characters and the women who played them first began to appear in film in 1915 when Theda Bara played home-wrecker Elsie Drummond in The Vixen. Movie theaters filled and the industry focused on heaving bosoms and ceaseless lust. Bara never shed the vamp image. The type evolved into the flapper, the gangster's moll, the "dame," and the "bad girl." This work covers the lives and careers of 28 actresses, providing details about their lives and giving complete filmographies of their careers.
While many fans remember The Lone Ranger, Ace Drummond and others, fewer focus on the facts that serials had their roots in silent film and that many foreign studios also produced serials, though few made it to the United States. The 471 serials and 100 series (continuing productions without the cliffhanger endings) from the United States and 136 serials and 37 series from other countries are included in this comprehensive reference work. Each entry includes title, country of origin, year, studio, number of episodes, running time or number of reels, episode titles, cast, production credits, and a plot synopsis.
Billy the Kid, Wild Bill Hickok, Belle Starr, Wyatt Earp, the Younger Gang, the Dalton-Doolin Gang and Bat Masterson--these real-life lawmen and lawbreakers have been the basis of so many Hollywood Westerns that it has become difficult to discover where the truth ends and the legend begins. All actually became larger-than-life characters during their lifetimes, as contemporary newspapers and books embellished their deeds for their own purposes. But it was in Hollywood that the line between reality and myth was completely blurred. Each chapter-length entry here first focuses on the known facts of the people's lives and how each became truly legendary during their lifetimes. The reality is then compared to how they have been portrayed in the movies.
Destination Moon; George Pal's 1950 Technicolor epic, is generally cited as the first noteworthy science fiction film. Usually ignored or casually dismissed in genre histories are the serials, the low-budget chapterplays exhibited as Saturday matinee fare and targeted almost exclusively at children. Lacking stars and top-notch writers or directors, the serials went largely unnoticed and unacknowledged by either critics or by the film industry. Yet serials were financially important to the Hollywood studios, and were often free to exploit risky or outlandish subjects that producers of "distinguished" movies would not touch. Influential serials such as The Phantom Empire (1935) and Flash Gordon (1936) finally brought science fiction themes to the big screen. Those serials and 29 others are exhaustively covered in this work, which provides complete cast and credit information along with plot descriptions and historical commentary for each serial. Video distributors (if available) are also listed.
Pearl White, William Duncan, William Desmond, Ben Wilson, Walter Miller, Francis Ford, Charles Hutchinson, Jack Dougherty, and Eddie Polo are just a few of the stars to start up a whirlwind of enthusiasm among serial devotees. They offered a thrill-a-minute world of ridiculous plots, weird disguises, hair-raising escapes, hidden treasures, diabolic scientific devices, wild animals, depraved men, runaway trains, and an endless procession of knock-down, drag-out fights. Who could resist? This reference work highlights 446 serial performers who thrilled generations. Each entry includes the performer's birth and death dates, serial credits, major films and details of life before and after the movies.
In The Othering of Women in Silent Film: Cultural, Historical, and Literary Contexts, Barbara Tepa Lupackexplores the rampant racial and gender stereotyping depicted in early cinema, demonstrating how those stereotypes helped shape American attitudes and practices. Using social, cultural, literary, and cinema history as a focus, this book offers insights into issues of Othering, including discrimination, exclusion, and sexism, that are as timely today as they were a century ago. Lupack not only examines the ways that dominant cinema of the era imprinted indelible and pejorative images of women—including African Americans, Native Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and New Women/Suffragists—but also reveals the ways in which a number of pioneering early filmmakers and performers attempted to counter those depictions by challenging the imagery, interrogating the stereotypes, and re-politicizing the familiar narratives. Scholars of film, gender, history, and race studies will find this book of particular interest.
Feminist Hollywood examines the differences between commercial cinema and counter cinema by focusing on the work of contemporary women directors who have entered Hollywood from the realm of independent filmmaking. Christina Lane compares their early documentaries or avant-garde films with their more mainstream endeavors as she explores the possibilities and limits of feminist expression within the male-dominated industry of commercial filmmaking. Feminist Hollywood incorporates interviews with directors Susan Seidelman, Martha Coolidge, Kathryn Bigelow, Lizzie Borden, Darnell Martin, and Tamra Davis in an attempt to bridge the "theory gap" that often excludes women's professional experiences and makes false assumptions about how the industry operates. Lane balances these firsthand accounts with cultural theory and an understanding of the current film industry, in which the line between commercial and independent filmmaking has become blurred. The timely and comprehensive nature of this volume will make it a welcome addition to the bookshelves of film scholars and amateur movie buffs alike.
1970- issued in 2 vols.: v. 1, General reference, social sciences, history, economics, business; v. 2, Fine arts, humanities, science and engineering.