Joan Crawford's remarkable forty-five-year motion picture career is one of the industry's longest. Signing her first contract in 1925, she was crowned an MGM star four years later and by the mid-1930s was the most popular actress in America. In the early 1940s, Crawford's risky decision to move to Warner Bros. was rewarded with an Oscar for Mildred Pierce. This triumph launched a series of film noir classics. She teamed with rival Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?...

Robert Dance’s new evaluation of Joan Crawford looks at her entire career and—while not ignoring her early years and tempestuous personal life—focuses squarely on her achievements as an actress, and as a woman who mastered the studio system with a rare combination of grit, determination, beauty, and talent.Crawford’s remarkable forty-five-year motion picture career is one of the industry’s longest. Signing her first contract in 1925, she was crowned an MGM star four years later and...

Named a 2022 Richard Wall Award Finalist by the Theatre Library AssociationFrom the late 1920s through the thirties, Greta Garbo (1905–1990) was the biggest star in Hollywood. She stopped making films in 1941, at only thirty-six, and thereafter sought a discreet private life. Still, her fame only increased as the public and press clamored for news of the former actress. At the time of her death, forty-nine years later, photographers continued to stalk her, and her ...

Famously elusive, Greta Garbo only had her picture taken when a contract required it. She shunned publicity, kept her private life a secret, and rejected the spotlight. Though ambivalent about fame and her public image, Garbo saved all of her favorite portraits, carefully archiving original prints.Garbo is the defining actress of early Hollywood. Her image was created by films, but also by photography. Garbo worked as hard at portraits as she did at acting. The result are the most ...

Famously elusive, Greta Garbo only had her picture taken when a contract required it. She shunned publicity, kept her private life a secret, and rejected the spotlight. Though ambivalent about fame and her public image, Garbo saved all of her favorite portraits, carefully archiving original prints.Garbo is the defining actress of early Hollywood. Her image was created by films, but also by photography. Garbo worked as hard at portraits as she did at acting. The result are the most ...

Longlisted for the 2020 Moving Image Book Award by the Kraszna-Krausz FoundationAs only an accomplished author, consummate collector, and savvy insider can, John Kobal tells the story of the man who invented Hollywood, Cecil Blount DeMille (1881–1959). Kobal narrates the story of DeMille’s life and follows the director’s career from his first film, The Squaw Man, in 1914, through the seventy films he directed culminating with The Ten C...

“Letters and journals always make lively intimate listening.” The IndependentUnveil history’s hidden gems with the Classic Letters & Journals Box Set, as we bring their intimate letters and journals masterfully to life.The Letters of Jane Austen portrayed by the incomparable Fiona Shaw. Austen's candid and occasionally scandalous correspondence offers a mesmerizing glimpse into the life of England's beloved wordsmith....

"A fascinating biography that re-creates Hollywood's Golden Age of Glamour" as it recounts the life of the star and inventor ( Publishers Weekly).Hedy Lamarr's exotic beauty was heralded across Europe in the early 1930s. Yet she became infamous for her nude scenes in the scandalous movie Ecstasy. Trapped in a marriage to one of Austria's munitions barons, a friend of Mussolini's who hid his Jewish heritage to become an "honorary Aryan" at the onset...

"An engrossing new page turner" about one of old Hollywood's royal families: "theater people don't get more interesting, and it's a true tale well told" ( Hollywood Reporter).In the early 1930s, Constance Bennett was the highest paid star in Hollywood, famous for dramatic roles before reinventing herself in the classic comedy Topper, starring opposite Cary Grant. Her sister Joan played the femme fatale in films like Scarlet Street and als...

Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling are virtually unknown outside of Hollywood and little-remembered even there, but as General Manager and Head of Publicity for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, they lorded over all the stars in Hollywood's golden age from the 1920s through the 1940s--including legends like Garbo, Dietrich, Gable and Garland. When MGM stars found themselves in trouble, it was Eddie and Howard who took care of them--solved their problems, hid their crimes, and kept their secrets...

You know film noir when you see it: the shadowed setting; the cynical detective; the femme fatale; and the twist of fate. Into the Dark captures this alluring genre with a cavalcade of compelling photographs and a guide to 82 of its best films.Into the Dark is the first book to tell the story of film noir in its own voice. Author Mark A. Vieira quotes the artists who made these movies and the journalists and critics who wrote about them, taking rea...

Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography explores the life and career of one of Hollywood's great dames. She was a leading film personality for more than fifty years, from her beginnings as a dancer in silent films of the 1920s, to her portrayals of working-class shop girls in the Depression thirties, to her Oscar-winning performances in classic films such as Mildred Pierce. Crawford's legacy, however, has become somewhat tarnished in the wake of her daughter Christina's me...