Fast Talking Dames

Author : Maria DiBattista
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 381 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2008-10-01
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780300133882

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Fast-Talking Dames by Maria DiBattista Pdf

"There is nothing like a dame", proclaims the song from South Pacific. Certainly there is nothing like the fast-talking dame of screen comedies in the 1930s and '40s. In this engaging book, film scholar and movie buff Maria DiBattista celebrates the fast-talking dame as an American original. Coming of age during the Depression, the dame -- a woman of lively wit and brash speech -- epitomized a new style of self-reliant, articulate womanhood. Dames were quick on the uptake and hardly ever downbeat. They seemed to know what to say and when to say it. In their fast and breezy talk seemed to lie the secret of happiness, but also the key to reality. DiBattista offers vivid portraits of the grandest dames of the era, including Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, Rosalind Russell, Barbara Stanwyck, and others, and discusses the great films that showcased their compelling way with words -- and with men. With their snappy repartee and vivid colloquialisms, these fast-talkers were verbal muses at a time when Americans were reinventing both language and the political institutions of democratic culture. As they taught their laconic male counterparts (most notably those appealing but tongue-tied American icons, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, and James Stewart) the power and pleasures of speech, they also reimagined the relationship between the sexes. In such films as Bringing Up Baby, The Awful Truth, and The Lady Eve, the fast-talking dame captivated moviegoers of her time. For audiences today, DiBattista observes, the sassy heroine still has much to say.

Author : Philippa Gates
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 419 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2011-04-22
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781438434063

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Detecting Women by Philippa Gates Pdf

Finalist for the 2012 Edgar Award in the Best Critical/Biographical Category presented by the Mystery Writers of America In this extensive and authoritative study of over 300 films, Philippa Gates explores the "woman detective" figure from her pre-cinematic origins in nineteenth century detective fiction through her many incarnations throughout the history of Hollywood cinema. Through the lens of theories of gender, genre, and stardom and engaging with the critical concepts of performativity, masquerade, and feminism, Detecting Women analyzes constructions of the female investigator in the detective genre and focuses on the evolution of her representation from 1929 to today. While a popular assumption is that images of women have become increasingly positive over this period, Gates argues that the most progressive and feminist models of the female detective exist in mainstream film's more peripheral products such as 1930's B-picture and 1970's Blaxploitation films. Offering revisions and new insights into peripheral forms of mainstream film, Gates explores this space that allows a fantasy of resolution of social anxieties about crime and, more interestingly, gender, in the 20th and early 21st centuries. The author's innovative, engaging, and capacious approach to this important figure within feminist film history breaks new ground in the field of gender and film studies.

Author : Clive James
Publisher : Pan Macmillan
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2012-12-13
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780330527170

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The Meaning of Recognition by Clive James Pdf

Literary critic, cultural commentator, TV personality, journalist, poet, political analyst, satirist and Formula One fan: Clive James is a man (and master) of many talents, and the essays collected in The Meaning of Recognition are testament to that fact. Whether discussing Bing Crosby, Bruno Schulz or Shakespeare, he manages to prioritize style and substance simultaneously, his tone never less than pitch-perfect, his argument always considered. With each phrase carefully crafted and each piece offering cause for thought, the resulting volume – which takes the reader from London to Bali, theatre to library, from pre-election campaigning to sitting in front of the TV at home, watching The Sopranos and The West Wing – is remarkable not only for its range and insight, but also its intimacy and honesty. A contemporary everyman, James is also unmistakably himself, and The Meaning of Recognition shows him at his witty, learned – and heartfelt – best. His other essay collections include The Crystal Bucket, The Dreaming Swimmer, Snakecharmers in Texas and Even as We Speak.

Author : Robert Gottlieb
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 444 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2011-04-26
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9781429961066

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Lives and Letters by Robert Gottlieb Pdf

The product of a lifetime immersed in the literary, performing arts, and entertainment worlds, Lives and Letters spotlights the work, careers, intimate lives, and lasting achievements of a vast array of celebrated writers and performers in film, theater, and dance, and some of the more curious iconic public figures of our times. From the world of literature, Charles Dickens, James Thurber, Judith Krantz, John Steinbeck, and Rudyard Kipling; the controversies surrounding Bruno Bettelheim and Elia Kazan; and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and her editor, Maxwell Perkins. From dance and theater, Isadora Duncan and Margot Fonteyn, Serge Diaghilev and George Balanchine, Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse. In Hollywood, Bing Crosby and Judy Garland, Douglas Fairbanks and Lillian Gish, Tallulah Bankhead and Katharine Hepburn, Mae West and Anna May Wong. In New York, Diana Vreeland, the Trumps, and Gottlieb's own take on the contretemps that followed his replacing William Shawn at The New Yorker. And so much more . . .

Author : Sloan De Forest
Publisher : Running Press Adult
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2019-07-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780762465507

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Dynamic Dames by Sloan De Forest Pdf

Celebrate 50 of the most empowering and unforgettable female characters ever to grace the screen, as well as the artists who brought them to vibrant life! From Scarlett O'Hara to Thelma and Louise to Wonder Woman, strong women have not only lit up the screen, they've inspired and fired our imaginations. Some dynamic women are naughty and some are nice, but all of them buck the narrow confines of their expected gender role -- whether by taking small steps or revolutionary strides. Through engaging profiles and more than 100 photographs, Dynamic Dames looks at fifty of the most inspiring female roles in film from the 1920s to today. The characters are discussed along with the exciting off-screen personalities and achievements of the actresses and, on occasion, female writers and directors, who brought them to life. Among the stars profiled in their most revolutionary roles are Bette Davis, Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck, Josephine Baker, Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood, Barbra Streisand, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Joan Crawford, Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor, Dorothy Dandridge, Katharine Hepburn, Pam Grier, Jane Fonda, Gal Gadot, Emma Watson, Zhang Ziyi, Uma Thurman, Jennifer Lawrence, and many more.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2024-02-29
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9780198875376

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Wilde in the Dream Factory by Anonim Pdf

Wilde in the Dream Factory studies the influence of Oscar Wilde's work on American cinema and culture, with close readings of Wilde's works alongside screwball comedies and film noir of the 1930s and 40s.

Author : Michael Newton
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 445 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2019-09-15
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781789141849

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Show People by Michael Newton Pdf

Show People offers a comprehensive history of the idea of the film star from Mary Pickford to Andy Serkis, traversing more than one hundred years and drawing on examples from America, Britain, Europe, and Asia. Renowned film writer Michael Newton explores our enduring love affair with fame, glamour, and the cinematic image. Newton builds up an expansive picture of movie stardom through explorations of striking and diverse figures such as Ingrid Bergman and John Wayne, Anna Karina and Sidney Poitier, Maggie Cheung, and Raj Kapoor. He celebrates the great performers of the past, and he looks forward to developments in the future, while also illuminating the inner workings of the movie industry and what moves us in a film and in an actor’s performance. An encyclopedic, illustrated history of film idols ready for their close-ups, Show People is ultimately a book about cinephilia, the love of cinema, and our complex connection to that celebrated and beleaguered figure, the movie star.

Author : Tom Whittaker,Sarah Wright
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Art
ISBN : 9780190261139

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Locating the Voice in Film by Tom Whittaker,Sarah Wright Pdf

This book locates the voice in cinema in different national and transnational contexts, to explore how the critical approaches to the voice as well as the practices of sound design, technologies and even reception are often grounded in cultural specificity, to present readings which challenge traditional theories of the voice in film.

Author : Andrew Stott
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2014-06-27
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781134453979

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Comedy by Andrew Stott Pdf

This new edition of Andrew Stott’s Comedy builds on themes presented in the first edition such as focusing on the significance of comic 'events' through study of various theoretical methodologies, including deconstruction, psychoanalysis and gender theory, and provides case studies of a number of themes, ranging from the drag act to the simplicity of slipping on a banana skin. This new edition features: updates to reflect new research the field new chapters on Women in Comedy and Race and Ethnicity a broader range of literary and cultural examples. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book is ideal introduction to comedy for students studying literature and culture.

Author : Peter Swaab
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 96 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2019-07-25
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781838714727

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Bringing Up Baby by Peter Swaab Pdf

Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks in 1938, is one of the greatest screwball comedies and a treasure from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Cary Grant plays a naive and repressed palaeosaurologist who becomes entangled with (and ensnared by) a wilful heiress (Katharine Hepburn). Chaos ensues as romance blossoms and not one but two leopards are set loose in verdant Connecticut. All of Hawks's signature skills are to the fore: there is the wonderful ensemble cast, the characteristically refined but unselfconscious visual style, an endless succession of pratfalls, innuendo and jokes (written by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde) and, underneath the chaos and good cheer, a serious dream of escaping life's troubles by dint of nothing more or less than nerve and luck. There are no human babies in Bringing Up Baby, but there are those leopards and the relentless terrier George – and, as Peter Swaab explores in his witty and original study, Hawks's film wonders profoundly why we want animals in our lives and why we sometimes need to behave as animals ourselves. Many screwball films have been seen as comedies of remarriage, but Peter Swaab argues that this one is not much interested in marriage and is instead more captivated by instinct, irresponsibility and the wild abnormalities of romance. The film is in its way an American dream of independence, and believes the real way to get on in life – for film-makers as well as scientists – isn't by deference and respectability but by having sexy fun with the right people. A thoroughly American fiction of the 1930s, Bringing Up Baby is also a timelessly classical comic narrative, exploring conflicts between civilisation and nature, rationality and insanity, middle-class inhibitions and aristocratic blitheness. And it is the epitome of film comedy, an anthology of comic types and devices, and one of the most seductively funny films ever made.

Author : Lawrence F. Rhu
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
Page : 284 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0823225968

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Stanley Cavell's American Dream by Lawrence F. Rhu Pdf

This book states that, after Cavell's celebrated reading of 'King Lear' turned into a nightmarish meditation on Vietnam, he found a more audible voice. Here, the poetry of ideas and presence of mind that animate Cavell's writing receive readings attuned to the spirit of their composition and its enlivening powers.

Author : Thomas Fahy
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 231 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2014-11-01
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780786451654

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Considering Aaron Sorkin by Thomas Fahy Pdf

Aaron Sorkin is one of the most notable voices in Hollywood, attracting millions of weekly viewers with his television series The West Wing and scoring box office success with films like A Few Good Men and The American President. With a musician's sense of rhythm and writing skills honed in the theater, Sorkin crafts dialogue that brings characters to life. His crisp, tight language is both exciting to listen to and poetic in its beauty and power--but what lies behind the slick, sophisticated exchanges between Sorkin's characters? Does Sorkin's ability to captivate viewers with rapid-fire, humorous dialogue lull them into overlooking an inherent political agenda, a sense of elitism, and gender bias prominent throughout his work? Aaron Sorkin's skill as a writer garners him accolades, even from his critics: complex, nuanced, sometimes subtle but often forceful, Sorkin's work is best understood when viewed from a variety of perspectives. This collection of essays on the work of Aaron Sorkin affords greater insight into the complexities of his writing, drawing connections between the film and television output of today's most prominent and influential screenwriter. Scholars from various fields--film, literature, art history, political science, and more--examine the thematic content and rhetorical strategy of Sorkin's writing. Eleven essayists explore the subtle, pervasive and often contradictory messages woven throughout Sorkin's work, from politics to portrayals of women, and consider his impact on film, television and culture. An interview with Aaron Sorkin precedes the essays, each of which has notes and a bibliography. An appendix covering film and television credits is included. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Author : Author
Publisher : princeton alumni weekly
Page : 544 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Electronic
ISBN : PRNC:32101045129580

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Princeton Alumni Weekly by Author Pdf

Author : Ellen Tremper
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0813925215

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I'm No Angel by Ellen Tremper Pdf

Have you ever wondered why there are so many "dumb blonde" jokes--always about women? Or how Ivanhoe's childhood love, the"flaxen Saxon" Rowena, morphed into Marilyn Monroe? Between that season in 1847 when readers encountered Becky Sharp playing the vengeful Clytemnestra--about to plunge a dagger into Agamemnon--and the sunny moment in 1932 when moviegoers watched Clark Gable plunge Jean Harlow's platinum-tressed head into a rain barrel, the playing field for women and men had leveled considerably. But how did the fairy-tale blonde, that placid, pliant girl, become the "tomato upstair," as Monroe styled herself in The Seven Year Itch? In I'm No Angel: The Blonde in Fiction and Film, Ellen Tremper shows how, at its roots, the image of the blonde was remodeled by women writers in the nineteenth century and actors in the twentieth to keep pace with the changes in real women's lives. As she demonstrates, through these novels and performances, fair hair and its traditional attributes--patience, pliancy, endurance, and innocence--suffered a deliberate alienation, which both reflected and enhanced women's personal and social freedoms essential to the evolution of modernity. From fiction to film, the active, desiring, and sometimes difficult women who disobeyed, manipulated, and thwarted their fellow characters mimicked and furthered women's growing power in the world. The author concludes with an overview of the various roles of the blonde in film from the 1960s to the present and speculates about the possible end of blond dominance. An engaging and lively read, I'm No Angel will appeal to a general audience interested in literary and cinematic representations of the blonde, as well as to scholars in Victorian, women's, and film studies.

Author : Lois Banner
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 663 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2012-07-17
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781608197606

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Marilyn by Lois Banner Pdf

Like her art, Marilyn Monroe was rooted in paradox: She was a powerful star and a childlike waif; a joyful, irreverent party girl with a deeply spiritual side; a superb friend and a narcissist; a dumb blonde and an intellectual. No previous biographer has recognized-much less attempted to analyze-most of these aspects of her personality. Lois Banner has. With new details about Marilyn's childhood foster homes, her sexual abuse, her multiple marriages, her affairs, and her untimely death at the age of thirty-six, Marilyn is, at last, the nuanced biography Monroe fans have been waiting for.