Movie Characters of Leading Performers of the Sound Era


Book Description

An overview of the film careers of more than 400 leading performers. For each actor or actress featured, there is a brief biographical sketch followed by a set of key roles with descriptions of the characters played by the performer. These key roles represent the film milestones of the artist, typical performances, award-winning roles, critically acclaimed appearances, disastrous performances - in short a sampling of the actor or actress' career in films.




ARBA Guide to Biographical Resources, 1986-1997


Book Description

This single-source guide to selected biographical dictionaries and directories covers the entire spectrum of biographical sources (serial and nonserial) that have been published in the last ten years. In each entry the book gives complete bibliographic information along with price and a critical evaluation. Most entries have been selected from American Reference Books Annual (ARBA), between 1986 and 1997. Organized in two broad categories-International and National Biographies and Biographies in Professional Fields-listings are also easily accessed through detailed author/title and subject indexes. This work will be valuable to reference librarians, researchers, and others who require information on the lives of individuals from all fields of study and all time periods, and of particular use to those involved in the library acquisition process.







Walford's Guide to Reference Material


Book Description

**** The British counterpart to Sheehy (in which it is recommended--and vice versa), distributed in the US by Unipub. Volume 3 completes the 5th edition with 8,833 entries (vol. 1:Science and technology, 1989, 5,995 entries; vol.2: Social and historical sciences, philosophy and religion, 1990, 7,166 entries). While the majority of items are reference books, Walford is a guide to reference material and therefore includes periodical articles, microforms, online, and CD-ROM sources. A special effort has been made to make sure the output of small and specialist presses is not neglected. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




American Popular Culture


Book Description

Organized by types of information sources, the book selectively covers guides to the literature of popular culture, including general and subject encyclopedias; subject dictionaries; handbooks and manuals; biographical compilations; directories, indexes, and abstracts; bibliographies, discographies, and videographies; and supplemental sources (e.g., periodicals, research centers, associations). Each section is arranged by subject: general; popular arts (e.g., music, fine arts); mass media (e.g., radio, computers); folkways/oral tradition; and fads, events, trends, and other social phenomena. Selective rather than comprehensive, the book offers entries with descriptive and sometimes evaluative annotations. Essential as a research tool in academic and public libraries, this guide will also be useful in collection development.




Stealing the Show


Book Description

Stealing the Show is a study of African American actors in Hollywood during the 1930s, a decade that saw the consolidation of stardom as a potent cultural and industrial force. Petty focuses on five performers whose Hollywood film careers flourished during this periodÑLouise Beavers, Fredi Washington, Lincoln ÒStepin FetchitÓ Perry, Bill ÒBojanglesÓ Robinson, and Hattie McDanielÑto reveal the Òproblematic stardomÓ and the enduring, interdependent patterns of performance and spectatorship for performers and audiences of color. She maps howÊthese actorsÑthough regularly cast in stereotyped and marginalized rolesÑemployed various strategies of cinematic and extracinematic performance to negotiate their complex positions in Hollywood and to ultimately Òsteal the show.Ó Drawing on a variety of source materials, Petty explores these starsÕ reception among Black audiences and theorizes African American viewership in the early twentieth century. Her book is an important and welcome contribution to the literature on the movies.




Hollywood War Films, 1937-1945


Book Description

From 1937 through 1945, Hollywood produced over 1,000 films relating to the war. This enormous and exhaustive reference work first analyzes the war films as sociopolitical documents. Part one, entitled "The Crisis Abroad, 1937-1941," focuses on movies that reflected America's increasing uneasiness. Part two, "Waging War, 1942-1945," reveals that many movies made from 1942 through 1945 included at least some allusion to World War II.




Star Struck


Book Description

This balanced examination looks at America's pervasive celebrity culture, concentrating on the period from 1950 to the present day. Star Struck: An Encyclopedia of Celebrity Culture is neither a stern critic nor an apologist for celebrity infatuation, a phenomenon that sometimes supplants more weighty matters yet constitutes one of our nation's biggest exports. This encyclopedia covers American celebrity culture from 1950 to 2008, examining its various aspects—and its impact—through 86 entries by 30 expert contributors. Demonstrating that all celebrities are famous, but not all famous people are celebrities, the book cuts across the various entertainment medias and their legions of individual "stars." It looks at sports celebrities and examines the role of celebrity in more serious pursuits and institutions such as the news media, corporations, politics, the arts, medicine, and the law. Also included are entries devoted to such topics as paranoia and celebrity, one-name celebrities, celebrity nicknames, family unit celebrity, sidekick celebrities, and even criminal celebrities.




The Routledge Companion to British Cinema History


Book Description

This book offers a comprehensive and revisionist overview of British cinema as, on the one hand, a commercial entertainment industry and, on the other, a series of institutions centred on economics, funding and relations to government.




The French Cinema Book


Book Description

This thoroughly revised and expanded edition of a key textbook offers an innovative and accessible account of the richness and diversity of French film history and culture from the 1890s to the present day. The contributors, who include leading historians and film scholars, provide an indispensable introduction to key topics and debates in French film history. Each chronological section addresses seven key themes – people, business, technology, forms, representations, spectators and debates, providing an essential overview of the cinema industry, the people who worked in it, including technicians and actors as well as directors, and the culture of cinema going in France from the beginnings of cinema to the contemporary period.