Hollywood Frame By Frame

There is a voyeuristic thrill in contact sheets, the direct prints used by photographers of the pre-digital age to edit their work. You look directly through the photographer's eyes as each photo gets closer to that perfect shot. And yet, it's often the photos not chosen that best capture the true spirit of their subjects and the life they lead after the director yells cut. This was never truer than in the classic Hollywood era, where behind-the-scenes photos were carefully vetted for marketing purposes and unapproved shots were never expected to be seen again. Hollywood Frame by Frame presents hundreds of never-before-published photos from the sets of some of the greatest films of the twentieth century. Hollywood's biggest stars are caught with their guard down behind the scenes of movie classics from Some Like It Hot and Breakfast at Tiffany's to Taxi Driver and The Silence of the Lambs. A treasure trove for any fan of Hollywood's Golden Age, this rare glimpse of the unseen silver screen will intrigue even movie buffs who think they've seen everything.

This is your illustrated invitation to the moments when movie history was made. Photographers' contact sheets are the permanent record of every shot that they took - and through Hollywood's golden age, there was often a photographer on set, capturing the scene as actors and directors collaborated to produce classic movies. This book collects the contact sheets from classic movies like The African Queen (1951), Some Like it Hot (1959), Taxi Driver (1976), Grosse Point Blank (1997) and many more. Capturing legends such as Woody Allen, Audrey Hepburn, Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, and Frank Sinatra at work and at repose, these images offer rare glimpses into the art of moviemaking, the science of movie marketing, and the nature of stardom.

The camera’s movement in a film may seem straightforward or merely technical. Yet skillfully deployed pans, tilts, dollies, cranes, and zooms can express the emotions of a character, convey attitude and irony, or even challenge an ideological stance. In The Dynamic Frame, Patrick Keating offers an innovative history of the aesthetics of the camera that examines how camera movement shaped the classical Hollywood style. In careful readings of dozens of films, including Sunrise, The Grapes of Wrath, Rear Window, Sunset Boulevard, and Touch of Evil, Keating explores how major figures such as F. W. Murnau, Orson Welles, and Alfred Hitchcock used camera movement to enrich their stories and deepen their themes. Balancing close analysis with a broader poetics of camera movement, Keating uses archival research to chronicle the technological breakthroughs and the changing division of labor that allowed for new possibilities, as well as the shifting political and cultural contexts that inspired filmmakers to use technology in new ways. An original history of film techniques and aesthetics, The Dynamic Frame shows that the classical Hollywood camera moves not to imitate the actions of an omniscient observer but rather to produce the interplay of concealment and revelation that is an essential part of the exchange between film and viewer.

"A treasure trove for any fan of Hollywood's Golden Age, Frame by Frame: The Story of Hollywood in Contact Sheets, 1951-1997 is packed with images that have never before been published, offering a unique insight into the moments when movie history was made. Focusing on still photographers' contact sheets--a record of every shot they took--from the sets of some of the greatest films of the twentieth century, the book tells the story of Hollywood through images that have never been considered since the original shots were taken. The story of each movie's making--from King Kong to Some Like it Hot, from Taxi Driver to Pulp Fiction--is told in extended captions, providing insight into the art of moviemaking, the science of movie marketing, and the nature of stardom. Showing legends such as Woody Allen, Audrey Hepburn, Alfred Hitchcock, and Frank Sinatra at work and at repose, this book is the perfect gift for any movie enthusiast"--

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In this beautifully written and deeply researched study, Hannah Frank provides an original way to understand American animated cartoons from the Golden Age of animation (1920–1960). In the pre-digital age of the twentieth century, the making of cartoons was mechanized and standardized: thousands of drawings were inked and painted onto individual transparent celluloid sheets (called “cels”) and then photographed in succession, a labor-intensive process that was divided across scores of artists and technicians. In order to see the art, labor, and technology of cel animation, Frank slows cartoons down to look frame by frame, finding hitherto unseen aspects of the animated image. What emerges is both a methodology and a highly original account of an art formed on the assembly line.

Robert B. Ray examines the ideology of the most enduringly popular cinema in the world--the Hollywood movie. Aided by 364 frame enlargements, he describes the development of that historically overdetermined form, giving close readings of five typical instances: Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Godfather, and Taxi Driver. Like the heroes of these movies, American filmmaking has avoided commitment, in both plot and technique. Instead of choosing left or right, avant-garde or tradition, American cinema tries to have it both ways. Although Hollywood's commercial success has led the world audience to equate the American cinema with film itself, Hollywood filmmaking is a particular strategy designed to respond to specific historical situations. As an art restricted in theoretical scope but rich in individual variations, the American cinema poses the most interesting question of popular culture: Do dissident forms have any chance of remaining free of a mass medium seeking to co-opt them?

In this riveting popular history, the creator of You Must Remember This probes the inner workings of Hollywood’s glamorous golden age through the stories of some of the dozens of actresses pursued by Howard Hughes, to reveal how the millionaire mogul’s obsessions with sex, power and publicity trapped, abused, or benefitted women who dreamt of screen stardom. In recent months, the media has reported on scores of entertainment figures who used their power and money in Hollywood to sexually harass and coerce some of the most talented women in cinema and television. But as Karina Longworth reminds us, long before the Harvey Weinsteins there was Howard Hughes—the Texas millionaire, pilot, and filmmaker whose reputation as a cinematic provocateur was matched only by that as a prolific womanizer. His supposed conquests between his first divorce in the late 1920s and his marriage to actress Jean Peters in 1957 included many of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, among them Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. From promoting bombshells like Jean Harlow and Jane Russell to his contentious battles with the censors, Hughes—perhaps more than any other filmmaker of his era—commoditized male desire as he objectified and sexualized women. Yet there were also numerous women pulled into Hughes’s grasp who never made it to the screen, sometimes virtually imprisoned by an increasingly paranoid and disturbed Hughes, who retained multitudes of private investigators, security personnel, and informers to make certain these actresses would not escape his clutches. Vivid, perceptive, timely, and ridiculously entertaining, The Seducer is a landmark work that examines women, sex, and male power in Hollywood during its golden age—a legacy that endures nearly a century later.

A challenge to Hollywood's one-dimensional images of African Americans.

The adult children of Hollywood's most successful make their own rules until journalist Kennedy Chase and detective Michael Scorsinni expose the sordid side of their lives.

Frank Sinatra at a recording session, Marilyn Monroe giggling with Betty Grable, Clark Gable making an entrance at a premiere: showbiz photographer Murray Garrett had a knack for catching movie idols in unguarded moments. He has been a fly on the wall at many private Hollywood parties over the years. The photographs he took of Hollywood's heyday, including shots of Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck and Bogey and Baccall, are intimate and sometimes irreverent. The personal reminiscences that accompany the photographs in this collection offer the reader an insight into the private lives of the stars.