Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Dead [courtesy of HuffPost Books]
Roger Ebert Dead [courtesy HuffPost Entertainment]
[Book Nerd News] Roger Ebert, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Dead
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Tag Archives: Film
New Year’s Day Book Hunt
My favourite New Year’s Day tradition doesn’t involve parades or football games or overindulging in sweets. For this girl, it is all about books. Shocking, no?
A pile ‘o books and calendars.
This pile ‘o goodies is the result of my annual New Year’s Day Book and Calendar Hunt. As you can see, the 2013 edition was quite successful. I decided to by-pass literature in favour of selections from the genres of art, biography, and silent film. Here are a few of the highlights:
Egon Schiele by Sandra Forty
REASON: Egon Schiele is my favourite artist (in a three-way tie with Modigliani and Pissarro).
Frontier Madam The Life of Dell Burke, Lady of Lusk by June Willson Read
REASON: Who could pass up a book with a title like this? Continue reading
A Year in Books/Day 188: Hollywood Royalty
William Randolph Hearst, circa 1910. He threw all of the best parties, thanks to his sweetheart Marion Davies. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
- Title: Hollywood Royalty
- Author: Gregory Speck
- Year Published: 1992 (Birch Lane Press Book/Carol Publishing Group)
- Year Purchased: 1990s
- Source: Library sale
- About: San Simeon, William Randolph Hearst’s estate, was the setting of countless celebrity-gilded parties. An invitation for a weekend stay was not only a passport to bask in temporary opulence so extreme it made members of the movie colony seem like paupers in comparison, it meant that you had truly arrived on the Hollywood scene. Close your eyes. Conjure up a dinner party of seven courses, attended by some of the most fabulous classic movie stars. Your curiosity probably takes the form of many questions, with the big one being: What would they talk about? The setting of Hollywood Royalty is real, the occasion is imaginary and the conversation is composed of snippets from published interviews. Fact and fiction cross borders, on an evening removed from time, to mingle as seductively as the stars in Hearst’s dining room.
- Motivation: I like when lines are blurred. I love classic film.
- Times Read: 1 or 2
- Random Excerpt/Page 160: “I (Olivia de Havilland) learned a lot from Jimmy Cagney, and he was always so sweet to me. On A Midsummer Night’s Dream he was very nice to me, and I was so flattered. He would come into my little canvas dressing room, and we would just talk about everything. I couldn’t believe it, for he was already a great star, and it was my first film, way back in 1935.”
- Happiness Scale: 10
A Year in Books/Day 181: Legends of the Silent Screen
- Title: Legends of the Silent Screen A Collection of U.S. Postage Stamps
- Authors: Charles Champlin and Linda Klinger (for the United States Postal Service)
- Year Published: 1994 (U.S. Postal Service)
- Year Purchased: 1994
- Source: This was a gift from my mom, received after some pleading on my part.
- About: In 1994, the U.S. Postal Service released a set of stamps commemorating ten of the silent screen’s greatest stars (which was, itself, part of a larger series dedicated to entertainers). This book was published as a companion piece, but is good enough to stand on its own merits. The detailed individual biographies are underpinned by amazing photographs and a time-line of the first 100 years of American film history. It’s a handsome volume, and the Al Hirschfeld caricatures commissioned for the stamps render the subjects instantly recognizable. The stars covered in this volume are: Rudolph Valentino; Clara Bow; Charlie Chaplin; Lon Chaney; John Gilbert; ZaSu Pitts; Theda Bara; the Keystone Cops; Harold Lloyd; and Buster Keaton.
- Motivation: I was already totally captivated with silent films, even at a relatively young age.
- Times Read: A few
- Random Excerpt/Page 39: “Film historians note that (Theda) Bara’s producer actually cast her in quite a few sympathetic-not evil-roles, knowing that after her vamp image had been accepted, the public would continue to read treachery into all her characters, regardless of their motivations.”
- Happiness Scale: 10
Bara in the title role as Cleopatra (1917) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A Year in Books/Day 175: Memo from David O. Selznick
- Title: Memo from David O. Selznick
- Selected and Edited by: Rudy Behlmer (With an Introduction by S.N. Behrman)
- Year Published: 1972 (The Viking Press)
- Year Purchased: 1990s
- Source: Antique Barn, Ohio State Fair
- About: Over the years, and quite by accident, I have amassed a nice sub-section to my Cinema Library, what I call The Lives and Times of Ruthless Moguls. This book started it all. The memos, covering the years 1926-1962, provide us with intimate access to the professional dealings and private concerns of one of the most powerful men in Hollywood during the greatest years of the studio system. Continue reading
A Year in Books/Day 171: Walking with Garbo
- Title: Walking with Garbo Conversations and Recollections
- Author: Raymond Daum
- Editor and Annotator: Vance Muse
- Year Published: 1991 (HarperCollinsPublishers)
- Year Purchased: 1993
- Source: Unknown
- About: Greta Garbo. The Swedish Sphinx. She of eternal mystery. One half of the most famous screen (and real-life, but that’s another story) couple of the 1920s. The great actress may have valued her privacy, both before and after retirement, but she was no shut-in. Continue reading
A Year in Books/Day 170: Sophia Style
- Title: Sophia Style
- Author: Deirdre Donohue
- Year Published: 2001 (Barnes & Noble Books)
- Year Purchased: 2004
- Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
- About: In the physical sphere, Sophia Loren is everything I am not: tall, leggy, busty. Sure, we have a tiny waist in common but, on her, because of her height, it is more of a thing. Her style, on camera but especially in life, matches her features: striking, angular, and beautiful. Of course, even if she wore a potato sack (like Marilyn in that famous early cheese-cake photo) she would out-shine us all. Sophia Style examines and connects her characters’ wardrobes with her personal clothing choices, resulting in a book that is a melange of fashion, film, and personal history: it is really more interesting than it probably sounds. Whether you love film or fashion, or are just looking to shade your brain from the reality of an ugly word for a couple of hours, it is a quick and fun read. It’s full of gorgeous photos from her first five decades in the spotlight.
- Motivation: Sometimes I just like to look at pretty people in pretty clothes. It’s a nice break from thinking too much, which is how I usually spend approximately 95% of my waking hours.
- Times Read: 2
- Random Excerpt/Page 81: “(Marc) Bohan’s white slip gown in A Countess from Hong Kong is a unique creation, having an exceptional relationship to both Loren’s body and the character she portrays. This quality was requested by the director, Charlie Chaplin, as well as by Loren. Chaplin was very earnest and exacting about the countess’s look, and Loren, awed by this iconic film figure, uncharacteristically deferred wholly to his authority.”
- Happiness Scale: 10+++
Cropped screenshot of Sophia Loren from the film Five Miles to Midnight (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m Sensing a Trend
I’m lucky enough to share a birthday with one of my favourite actors (John Gilbert), one of my favourite writers (Marcel Proust) and the possessor of one of the most brilliant (recorded) minds in history (Nikola Tesla). What else do they have in common? Hmmm, let’s see.
I’ve found that frivolous observations are best made on serious days. I’m off to celebrate with the husband at the newest contemporary Indian restaurant/bar in town. Toodles.
A Year in Books/Day 128: Fast-Talking Dames
- Title: Fast-Talking Dames
- Author: Maria DiBattista
- Year Published: 2001 (Yale University Press)
- Year Purchased: 2002/2003
- Source: Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company
- About: The best part of screwball comedies is, of course, the dialogue. The plots are usually superfluous and in soft-focus; the snappy writing and whirlwind performances are what make these staples of the 1930s and 1940s so entertaining and timeless. While the male performers were no slouches, the women killed it time and again, routinely giving some of the best comedy turns in film history. The actresses discussed include Claudette Colbert, Rosalind Russell, Ginger Rogers, Carole Lombard, Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, Myrna Loy and Barbara Stanwyck. Whew, what a list! Are you interested yet?
- Motivation: The title alone was allurement enough. Throw in the snazzy cover photo of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell from His Girl Friday (1940) and I was a goner. Oh, and then there is the subject itself.
- Times Read: 1
- Random Excerpt/Page 103: “Like Harlow, Carole Lombard is often impatient or unhappy with the way her life is going, but her comic response to her predicaments is more rambunctious than raffish. Her sexual morals are definitely higher, but she is also the more accomplished liar. Or should we say, in a more generous mood, that where Harlow makes candor her comic calling card, Lombard is the great pretender.”
- Happiness Scale: 8 1/2
Cropped screenshot of Carole Lombard from the trailer for the film Nothing Sacred (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A Year in Books/Day 120: Cannes
- Title: Cannes Fifty Years of Sun, Sex & Celluloid
- By: The Editors of Variety
- Year Published: 1997 (Variety, Inc./Miramax Books/Hyperion)
- Year Purchased: 2000?
- Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
- About: The Cannes Film Festival is as much about the shenanigans of the beautiful movie stars as it is about the actual films vying for the prizes. Or, at least it was. In recent years (decades?) the whole enterprise seems stale and tepid. You have to go back to the 1950s and 1960s to find the truly interesting stories and dazzlingly cheesy stunts. This thin volume, covering the first five decades of the festival, gives readers a light-hearted, conspiratorial look behind the scenes. The photos are exceptional.
- Motivation: Film buff and writer in the house.
- Times Read: 2
- Random Excerpt/Page 19: “Ironically, Cannes was not created for the film buff at all, but to lure attention away from Venice, the granddaddy of all film festivals, as well as to increase tourism, image and the sheer gloire of the host country, ever a fervent combatant for culture. (Not coincidentally, the Cannes festival jury was all-French until 1952, when some carefully screened outsiders were admitted.)
- Happiness Scale: 7 1/2
