Douglas Fairbanks And The American Century

Download or read book Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century written by John C. Tibbetts and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2014-06-02 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century brings to life the most popular movie star of his day, the personification of the Golden Age of Hollywood. At his peak, in the teens and 1920s, the swashbuckling adventurer embodied the new American century of speed, opportunity, and aggressive optimism. The essays and interviews in this volume bring fresh perspectives to his life and work, including analyses of films never before examined. Also published here for the first time in English is a first-hand production account of the making of Fairbanks's last silent film, The Iron Mask. Fairbanks (1883–1939) was the most vivid and strenuous exponent of the American Century, whose dominant mode after 1900 was the mass marketing of a burgeoning democratic optimism, at home and abroad. During those first decades of the twentieth century, his satiric comedy adventures shadow-boxed with the illusions of class and custom. His characters managed to combine the American easterner's experience and pretension and the westerner's promise and expansion. As the masculine personification of the Old World aristocrat and the New World self-made man—tied to tradition yet emancipated from history—he constructed a uniquely American aristocrat striding into a new age and sensibility. This is the most complete account yet written of the film career of Douglas Fairbanks, one of the first great stars of the silent American cinema and one of the original United Artists (comprising Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith). John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh's text is especially rich in its coverage of the early years of the star's career from 1915 to 1920 and covers in detail several films previously considered lost.

Download or read book The American Century written by Donald Wallace White and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a wide range of sources the author identifies major trends in past American foreign policy and describes the decline of American power that has been in abeyance since the end of the Vietnam War.

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of American Cinema written by M. Keith Booker and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most powerful forces in world culture, American cinema has a long and complex history that stretches through more than a century. This history not only includes a legacy of hundreds of important films but also the evolution of the film industry itself, which is in many ways a microcosm of the history of American society. Historical Dictionary of American Cinema, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 600 cross-referenced entries covering people, films, companies, techniques, themes, and subgenres that have made American cinema such a vital part of world culture.

Download or read book Globalization and the American Century written by Alfred E. Eckes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-30 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revolutionary improvements in technology combined with the leadership elite's enthusiasm for de-regulation of markets and free trade to fuel American-style globalization. The nation rose to economic power after the Spanish-American War, and won both world wars and the Cold war, after which America's power and cultural influence soared as business and financial interests pursued the long-term quest for global markets. But, the tragic events of September 2001 and the growing volatility of global finance, raised questions about whether the era of American-led globalization was sustainable, or vulnerable to catastrophic collapse.

Download or read book The First King of Hollywood written by Tracey Goessel and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre Library Association's Wall Award Finalist Silent film superstar Douglas Fairbanks was an absolute charmer. Irrepressibly vivacious, he spent his life leaping over and into things, from his early Broadway successes to his marriage to the great screen actress Mary Pickford to the way he made Hollywood his very own town. The inventor of the swashbuckler, he wasn't only an actor—he all but directed and produced his movies, and in founding United Artists with Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith, he challenged the studio system. But listing his accomplishments is one thing and telling his story another. Tracey Goessel has made the latter her life's work, and with exclusive access to Fairbanks's love letters to Pickford, she brilliantly illuminates how Fairbanks conquered not just the entertainment world but the heart of perhaps the most famous woman in the world at the time. When Mary Pickford died, she was an alcoholic, self-imprisoned in her mansion, nearly alone, and largely forgotten. But she left behind a small box; in it, worn and refolded, were her letters from Douglas Fairbanks. Pickford and Fairbanks had ruled Hollywood as its first king and queen for a glorious decade. But the letters began long before, when they were both married to others, when revealing the affair would have caused a great scandal. Now these letters form the centerpiece of the first truly definitive biography of Hollywood's first king, the man who did his own stunts and built his own studio and formed a company that allowed artists to distribute their own works outside the studio system. But Goessel's research uncovered more: that Fairbanks's first film appearance was two years earlier than had been assumed; that his stories of how he got into theater, and then into films, were fabricated; that the Pickford-Fairbanks Studios had a specially constructed underground trench so that Fairbanks could jog in the nude; that Fairbanks himself insisted racist references be removed from his films' intertitles; and the true cause of Fairbanks's death. Fairbanks was the top male star of his generation, the maker of some of the greatest films of his era: The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, The Mark of Zorro. He was fun, witty, engaging, creative, athletic, and a force to be reckoned with. He shaped our idea of the Hollywood hero, and Hollywood has never been the same since. His story, like his movies, is full of passion, bravado, romance, and desire. Here at last is his definitive biography, based on extensive and brand-new research into every aspect of his career, and written with fine understanding, wit, and verve.

Download or read book The Divo and the Duce written by Giorgio Bertellini and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In the post–World War I American climate of isolationism, nativism, democratic expansion of civic rights, and consumerism, Italian-born star Rodolfo Valentino and Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini became surprising paragons of authoritarian male power and mass appeal. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States and Italy, Giorgio Bertellini’s work shows how their popularity, both political and erotic, largely depended on the efforts of public opinion managers, including publicists, journalists, and even ambassadors. Beyond the democratic celebrations of the Jazz Age, the promotion of their charismatic masculinity through spectacle and press coverage inaugurated the now-familiar convergence of popular celebrity and political authority. This is the first volume in the new Cinema Cultures in Contact series, coedited by Giorgio Bertellini, Richard Abel, and Matthew Solomon. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org.

Download or read book Douglas Fairbanks written by Jeffrey Vance and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Douglas Fairbanks takes the full measure of the star's remarkable life. Jeffrey Vance bases his portrait on a rich array of sources, including Fairbanks's personal and professional papers and scrapbooks, newly available documentation and rediscovered films, and his own extensive interviews with those who knew or worked with Fairbanks. Engagingly written and sumptuously designed, with 237 photographs, the book goes beyond Fairbanks's public persona to thoroughly explore his art and his far-reaching influence."--BOOK JACKET.