FROM CHAPLIN TO ERROL FLYNN  August 2024 – Leonard Maltin’s Movie Crazy

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FROM CHAPLIN TO ERROL FLYNN  August 2024 – Leonard Maltin’s Movie Crazy


MISS MAY DOES NOT EXIST: THE LIFE AND WORK OF ELAINE MAY, HOLLY WOOD’S HIDDEN GENIUS  by Carrie Courogen (St. Martin’s Press)

If you got here of age when comedy albums had been all the trend, as I did, it’s possible you had been a fan of Mike Nichols and Elaine May (and fellow Chicagoans Bob Newhart and Shelley Berman). Graduates of Chicago’s Compass Players and Second City, they hit New York in 1958 and took present enterprise by storm. Their improv-based comedy vignettes had been sensible, recent and new. They formally broke up the act a short while later however remained in one another’s lives via Nichols’ passing in 2014. (She scripted two of his greatest films, The Birdcage and Primary Colors.) May directed simply three feature-length comedies however turned notorious for ignoring deadlines and budgets. She co-starred with Walter Matthau in A New Leaf, then remained behind the digicam for The Heartbreak Kid and Ishtar. All three have their champions, and Courogen questions if a male director would have been dismissed as readily by Hollywood, which is a matter for some debate. (After all, she kidnaped the destructive and wouldn’t reply to studio chiefs…)  The writer explains her frustration that May wouldn’t discuss to her for this guide, however she needn’t apologize. She has crafted a first-rate biography of an excellent girl and her distinctive profession, asking the suitable questions and inserting each part of that life into a bigger mosaic.  May provides new which means to the phrase “contradictory” however the writer is correctly empathetic to the perplexing genius she has portrayed so properly.

DANCING ON THE EDGE: A JOURNEY OF LIVING, LOVING AND TUMBLING THROUGH HOLLYWOOD  by Russ Tamblyn with Sarah Tomlinson (Blackstone Publishing)

I noticed tom thumb on the large display screen after I was seven years and I’ve been a Russ Tamblyn fan ever since. But I knew nothing about his life off-camera till now. His mother and father had been in present enterprise, however they only barely bought by and had been lower than ideally suited mother and father.  A pure show-off, Russ was solid in a play that piqued the curiosity of a film studio and that led to work within the films—first as Rusty (in Gun Crazy and Samson and Delilah) after which as Russ. He lived to rejoice the fiftieth anniversary of his most well-known movie, West Side Story, which is exceptional when you think about his sybaritic life-style and the portions of medicine he ingested, alongside lifelong buddies like Dean Stockwell and Dennis Hopper. His long-term contract at MGM insulated him from a lot of life’s mundane realities, as he readily admits. Eventually put his energies into creating nice artwork—collages and canvases that always offered at exhibitions however couldn’t match what he earned as a performer. That’s why he accepted latter-day components in movies like Son of a Gunfighter and Satan’s Sadists. He lastly discovered happiness along with his third spouse, whereas their daughter Amber made a reputation for herself as an actress and revealed poet. Tamblyn doesn’t excuse his trespasses however as an alternative affords a simple, account of his many misadventures. He additionally shares his recollections of working with the likes of administrators Cecil B. DeMille, Joseph H. Lewis, Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins, and David Lynch, amongst others. This is an efficient warts-and-all autobiography that underscores the distinction between an on-camera persona and a real-life particular person.

DAWN ADDAMS: MY LIFE AS CHAPLIN’S LEADING LADY: FILMING CHARLES CHAPLIN’S ‘A KING IN NEW YORK’ By John Francis Lane;  Introduction and Afterword by James Pepper. (Santa Teresa Press) Limited to 500 copies.

Here is a captivating, pocket-sized guide positive to draw any Chaplin completist. After being exiled from the U.S. in 1952, Chaplin wrote and directed  A King In New York, during which he satirized America and its present preoccupations. He solid British actress Dawn Addams as his co-star. Just earlier than the movie’s launch in 1957, author John Francis Lane sat down with Addams and performed a candid interview on what it was wish to work with the Great Man. Rare-book vendor Jim Pepper has produced this slender guide with tender loving care. It contains some beforehand unpublished materials written by Chaplin whereas capturing the image and is Illustrated with rarely-seen images. To order, click on HERE.

ERROL FLYNN; THE ILLUSTRATED LIFE CHRONOLOGY by Robert Florczak (Lyons Press)

If you actually, actually care concerning the life and occasions of Errol Flynn you’ll wish to personal this good-looking, outsized quantity chronicling his life from cradle to grave. When I say “chronicling” I imply offering details about virtually day-after-day of his life on our planet. Copiously illustrated with stills, household images, scrapbook objects and different ephemera, it’s exhaustive and clearly a labor of affection. Some of my favourite entries come proper from the Warner Bros. Archives as varied coworkers report on his often-scandalous conduct whereas his movies had been in manufacturing. It’s a terrific guide for looking and I extremely suggest it.

SHTICK FIGURES: THE COOL, THE COMICAL, THE CRAZY by  Drew Friedman; foreword by Kliph Nesteroff (Fantagraphics)

I’m an unabashed fan of Drew Friedman’s distinctive black-and-white portraits, which embrace obscure show-business figures and atypical folks whose facial expressions (or contortions) encourage him. Here you’ll discover all-but-forgotten comic Milt Kamen, second-banana-turned-cartoon voice actor Arnold Stang, the late stand-up comedian and podcast host Gilbert Gottfried, an elder Buster Keaton and an off-camera Milton Berle, amongst many others. Friedman offers a information or glossary behind this handsomely produced, outsized hardcover to elucidate who among the members of this rogues’ gallery are. Oh, sure—there are additionally new renderings of such Friedman favorites as Shemp Howard and Rondo Hatton. What a terrific assortment!

Time hasn’t permitted me to learn these different books which have come my approach previously few months. They all look good to me:

FROM THE MOMENT THEY MET IT WAS MURDER: DOUBLE INDEMNITY AND THE RISE OF FILM NOIR  by Alain Silver and James Ursini (Running Press/TCM)

 Authors Silver and Ursini wrote one of many foundational books on movie noir and now they’ve given us a complete guide on one of many defining examples of that style. Its jacket blurbs from Eddie Muller and Walter Hill are fairly spectacular proper off the bat.

THE NAUGHTY BITS: WHAT THE CENSORS WOULDN’T LET YIOU SEE IN HOLLYWOOD’S MOST FAMOUS MOVIES by Nat Segaloff (Sticking Place Books)

The frighteningly prolific Segaloff has had enjoyable romping via the information of the Production Code administration and right here is the consequence: precise responses from Joseph L. Breen and his staff to submissions of scripts, starting from Stagecoach to Some Like It Hot. There is even an prolonged chapter regarding the infamous 1933 Warner Bros. movie Convention City.

THE FUTURE IS NOW: MADMEN, MAVERICKS, AND THE EPIC SCI-FI SUMMER OF 1982 by Chris Nashawaty (Flatiron Books)

Experienced leisure journalist Nashawaty posits that the Hollywood business—and moviegoers alike—had been reworked by eight main films that had been launched throughout the summer time of 1982: E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, Tron, Star Trek II: The Warth of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, The Thing, and Mad Max: The Road Warrior. It’s a sound premise, if controversial, however the writer makes his case.

MAKING ‘A BRIDGE TOO FAR’ by Simon Lewis (GoodKnight Books)

The of us who revealed my final two books are picky about what properties they tackle, so I’m intrigued by this current launch. British writer Lewis goes into nice element about director Richard Attenborough’s efforts to re-live Operation Market Garden, a noble failure throughout WW2, as authentically as attainable—in 1977, simply previous to the event of CGI.

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