Jon Lewis
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520284319
- eISBN:
- 9780520959910
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520284319.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The gossip industry underwent a fundamental transition after the war, from the gawking clatter of the classical era fan magazines to the gossip columns of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons and scandal ...
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The gossip industry underwent a fundamental transition after the war, from the gawking clatter of the classical era fan magazines to the gossip columns of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons and scandal sheets that so successfully harried the Hollywood community after the war. Movie stars were lucky and pretty, rich and famous. But they were as well political neophytes and their everyday lives were, thanks to the columnists after the war, lumbered with undue consequence. It was one thing for the columnists to bemoan the unearned privileges of celebrity, and then to cut folks so lucky and full of themselves down to size. But it was quite another to cast the private and personal lives of these celebrities as fundamentally anti-social and un-American, to subject the lives and loves of movie stars to a narrow and frankly unrelated notion of patriotism, one that asked movie stars to behave, or at least pretend to behave, like the rest of us.Less
The gossip industry underwent a fundamental transition after the war, from the gawking clatter of the classical era fan magazines to the gossip columns of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons and scandal sheets that so successfully harried the Hollywood community after the war. Movie stars were lucky and pretty, rich and famous. But they were as well political neophytes and their everyday lives were, thanks to the columnists after the war, lumbered with undue consequence. It was one thing for the columnists to bemoan the unearned privileges of celebrity, and then to cut folks so lucky and full of themselves down to size. But it was quite another to cast the private and personal lives of these celebrities as fundamentally anti-social and un-American, to subject the lives and loves of movie stars to a narrow and frankly unrelated notion of patriotism, one that asked movie stars to behave, or at least pretend to behave, like the rest of us.
Harlow Robinson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780813178332
- eISBN:
- 9780813178349
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813178332.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book tells the remarkable personal and professional story of Lewis Milestone (1895-1980), one of the most prolific, creative and respected film directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Among his ...
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This book tells the remarkable personal and professional story of Lewis Milestone (1895-1980), one of the most prolific, creative and respected film directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Among his many films are the classics All Quiet on the Western Front, Of Mice and Men, A Walk in the Sun, Pork Chop Hill, the original Ocean’s Eleven and Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando. Born in Ukraine, he came to America as a teenager and learned about film in the U.S. Army in World War I. By the early 1920s he was editing silent films in Hollywood, and soon graduated to shooting his own features. His films were nominated for 28 different Academy Awards during a career that lasted 40 years. Among the many stars whom he directed were Barbara Stanwyck, Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, Frank Sinatra, Joan Crawford and Kirk Douglas. Providing biographical information, production history and critical analysis, this first major scholarly study of Milestone places his films in a political, cultural and cinematic context. Also discussed in depth, using newly available archival material, is Milestone’s experience during the Hollywood Blacklist period, when he was one of the first prominent Hollywood figures to fall under suspicion for his alleged Communist sympathies. Drawing on his personal papers at the AMPAS library, my book gives Milestone the honored place herichly deserves in the American film canon.Less
This book tells the remarkable personal and professional story of Lewis Milestone (1895-1980), one of the most prolific, creative and respected film directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Among his many films are the classics All Quiet on the Western Front, Of Mice and Men, A Walk in the Sun, Pork Chop Hill, the original Ocean’s Eleven and Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando. Born in Ukraine, he came to America as a teenager and learned about film in the U.S. Army in World War I. By the early 1920s he was editing silent films in Hollywood, and soon graduated to shooting his own features. His films were nominated for 28 different Academy Awards during a career that lasted 40 years. Among the many stars whom he directed were Barbara Stanwyck, Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, Frank Sinatra, Joan Crawford and Kirk Douglas. Providing biographical information, production history and critical analysis, this first major scholarly study of Milestone places his films in a political, cultural and cinematic context. Also discussed in depth, using newly available archival material, is Milestone’s experience during the Hollywood Blacklist period, when he was one of the first prominent Hollywood figures to fall under suspicion for his alleged Communist sympathies. Drawing on his personal papers at the AMPAS library, my book gives Milestone the honored place herichly deserves in the American film canon.
Harlow Robinson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780813178332
- eISBN:
- 9780813178349
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813178332.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The introduction explores reasons for the relative scholarly neglect of Lewis Milestone and his films: his diverse body of work, his troubles during the Blacklist period, the serious nature of most ...
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The introduction explores reasons for the relative scholarly neglect of Lewis Milestone and his films: his diverse body of work, his troubles during the Blacklist period, the serious nature of most of his films, his difficulty getting along with studio bosses, his distaste for the “star system,” changing Hollywood tastes. It provides an overview of his career, from the silent to the sound era, and his huge early success with All Quiet on the Western Front, which came to haunt him in later years. Milestone was drawn repeatedly to the theme of war, especially its impact on ordinary soldiers. Also discussed is how Milestone’s life embodies the “rag-to-riches” American dream of millions of immigrants.Less
The introduction explores reasons for the relative scholarly neglect of Lewis Milestone and his films: his diverse body of work, his troubles during the Blacklist period, the serious nature of most of his films, his difficulty getting along with studio bosses, his distaste for the “star system,” changing Hollywood tastes. It provides an overview of his career, from the silent to the sound era, and his huge early success with All Quiet on the Western Front, which came to haunt him in later years. Milestone was drawn repeatedly to the theme of war, especially its impact on ordinary soldiers. Also discussed is how Milestone’s life embodies the “rag-to-riches” American dream of millions of immigrants.
