The extraordinary life of Orson Welles (1915-85), an enigma of Hollywood, an irreducible independent creator: a musical prodigy, an excellent painter, a master of theater and radio, a modern Shakespeare, a magician who was always searching for a new trick to surprise his audience, a romantic and legendary figure who lived only for cinema.
From THINGS to BODY SNATCHERS to CREATURES FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, sci-fi monsters dominated 1950s horror. Take a ride to an era of drive-ins, Red Scares, low budgets and big bugs with SPACE INVADERS AND DRIVE INS.
Join foremost experts discussing true Horror Classics - Frankenstein, Dracula, The Black Cat, Wolfman, King Kong, Bride of Frankenstein, and more. Grab the popcorn and take a deep breath as we conjure up the thrills, chills and magic of Monster Madness!
Ekchart Schmidt examines the machinery behind the dream factory; the Hollywood myth is unmasked. How does the studio industry work? What role does marketing and the hype surrounding the stars play?
Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula uncovers the life and career of legendary actor Bela Lugosi, examining his early life in Hungary and Germany through his Hollywood successes and eventual decline. The film features a vast array of never-before-seen footage of the actor, ranging from remains of his 1918 film Struggle for Life to behind-the-scenes home movies on the set of RKO Studios. Lugosi is peppered with dozens of rare films clips and photographs, with the story itself coming to life thanks to the vast array of on-camera interviewees.
Shirley MacLaine was the product of a strict middle-class background from which she and her brother, the future actor Warren Beatty, escaped into the fantasy world of show-biz. Her ballet training and her long-legged pixie charm led to rapid success on Broadway in musical comedy. Inevitably, Hollywood called and by 1955 Shirley was cast in Hitchcock's "The Trouble With Harry." It wasn't too long before the fine dramatic roles also came to her opposite the most popular leading men of the time, like Fred MacMurray, Jack Lemmon, Frank Sinatra, Clint Eastwood and Robert Mitchum.
Documentary about the battle between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst over Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Features interviews with Welles' and Hearst's co-workers also acts as a relatively complete biograph of Hearst's career.
A biography of Darryl F. Zanuck, mogul and the power behind 20th Century Fox throughout the Golden Age.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Robert Earl Wise (September 10, 1914 – September 14, 2005) was an American sound effects editor, film editor, film producer and director. He won Academy Awards as Best Director for The Sound of Music (1965) and West Side Story (1961) as well as nominations as Best Film Editing for Citizen Kane (1941) and Best Picture for The Sand Pebbles (1966). Among his other films are Born to Kill; Destination Gobi; The Hindenburg; Star Trek: The Motion Picture; The Day the Earth Stood Still; Run Silent, Run Deep; The Andromeda Strain; The Set-Up; The Haunting; and The Body Snatcher. Wise's working period spanned the 1930s to the 1990s. Often contrasted with contemporary "auteur" directors such as Stanley Kubrick who tended to bring a distinctive directorial "look" to a particular genre, Wise is famously viewed to have allowed his (sometimes studio assigned) story to dictate style. Later critics such as Martin Scorsese would go on to expand that characterization, insisting that despite Wise's notorious workaday concentration on stylistic perfection within the confines of genre and budget, his choice of subject matter and approach still functioned to identify Wise as an artist and not merely an artisan. Through whatever means, Wise's approach would bring him critical success as a director in many different traditional film genres: from horror to noir to Western to war films to science fiction, to musical and drama, with many repeat hits within each genre. Wise's tendency towards professionalism led to a degree of preparedness which, though nominally motivated by studio budget constraints, nevertheless advanced the moviemaking art, with many Academy Award-winning films the result. Robert Wise received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1998. Description above from the Wikipedia article Robert Wise, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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