Irving Thalberg: Creating the Hollywood Studio System, 1920–1936
The career of legendary production executive Irving Thalberg – Hollywood’s "Boy Wonder" of the 1920s and early 1930s – will be explored in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ new exhibition, "Irving Thalberg: Creating the Hollywood Studio System, 1920–1936," opening on Thursday, September 17, in the Academy’s Fourth Floor Gallery in Beverly Hills.
"Irving Thalberg: Creating the Hollywood Studio System, 1920–1936" is guest curated by historian and Thalberg biographer Mark Vieira, whose Hollywood Dreams Made Real: Irving Thalberg and the Rise of M-G-M was profiled in the Alternative Film Guide several months ago and whose Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince is due out in early November. Admission is free.
Lon Chaney, [...]
by Andre Soares | September 9, 2009
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Tags: Classic Movies, Hollywood Dreams Made Real, Irving Thalberg, Irving Thalberg: Creating the Hollywood Studio System, Jean Harlow, Los Angeles Screenings, Louis B. Mayer, Mark Vieira, MGM, Norma Shearer
Marie Dressler III: Wallace Beery, Polly Moran Comedies
Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler in Min and Bill
Marie Dressler II: Silent Films, Movie Stardom
How did Marie Dressler react to her newfound stardom?
Marie basked in her success. She had been through enough trials in life — points when she couldn’t get a job — and so she was more than ready for fame and adoration. I think audiences loved that they could give that to her, too. It made them feel good to shower her with love, because she took it so gratefully and graciously. She was the loving grandmother that her fans wanted to protect and comfort, while she comforted, amused, and moved them in return.
Her stardom also points to something missing from modern movies. In the 1930s and into [...]
by Andre Soares | February 23, 2008
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Tags: Classic Movies, Interviews, Louis B. Mayer, Marie Dressler, Matthew Kennedy, Min and Bill, Polly Moran, Wallace Beery
Hedy Lamarr II: Arrival in Hollywood
Hedy Lamarr in Tortilla Flat
Hedy Lamarr – Q&A with Author Patrick Agan: Part I
Do you have a favorite Hedy Lamarr film and/or performance?
As for a favorite Lamarr performance, I would have to say Tortilla Flat is right up there. Her performance as the Mexican girl, Dolores, was amazing in its simplicity and clarity, and Karl Freund’s cinematography brought out an earthiness that she’d never shown before. This was a girl who knew she was beautiful, but she also knew there was much more to life than that and wasn’t ready to settle for anything less than a faithful husband with a job. Hedy had to go to the front office to get that part. The chemistry between her [...]
by Andre Soares | February 13, 2007
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Tags: Books, Classic Movies, Hedy Lamarr, Interviews, Josef von Sternberg, Louis B. Mayer, Patrick Agan, Samson and Delilah, The Female Animal, Tortilla Flat, White Cargo
Hedy Lamarr: Q&A with Author Patrick Agan
Author Patrick Agan, among whose books are Clint Eastwood: The Man Behind the Myth and The Decline and Fall of the Love Goddesses, has been working on a biography of MGM star Hedy Lamarr, at one point considered one of the most beautiful women this side of Orion.
The Austrian-born "exotic" import was brought to the studio in the late 1930s, and would remain at MGM well into the following decade. Though hardly one of the greatest actresses to come out of either Europe or Hollywood, Lamarr possessed an undeniable charisma that made her thoroughly watchable in both biblical and modern tales, whether well cast or totally miscast, whether fully clothed or fully naked (as in Gustav Machatý’s scandalous [...]
by Andre Soares | February 13, 2007
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Tags: Algiers, Books, Classic Movies, Comrade X, Ecstasy, Hedy Lamarr, Interviews, Louis B. Mayer, Patrick Agan, The Heavenly Body
