The Men who Made the Movies: Interviews with Frank Capra, George Cukor, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Vincente Minnelli, King Vidor, Raoul Walsh, and William A. Wellman"[This book] evolved from the memorable television series that was named by the New York Times as one of the outstanding television programs of 1973. Eight directors were encouraged by Schickel to reminisce about their working lives, which spanned the most intriguing decades of American film. In speaking with them, he found in these men a special quality: 'They felt in their bones the character and quality of a vanished America.' There was something valuable to be learned from them, not merely about the cinema, but about the conduct of life. They would, as Schickel says, be worthy of study even 'if they had been engaged in the manufacture of widgets, let alone something as intrinsically interesting as movies.' Each director created a canon of work that even today sustains critical analysis without sacrificing popular appeal. Moreover, each maintained his artistic integrity while working in an atmosphere generally credited with ruining rather than nurturing talent--Hollywood. The format of these interviews allows the directors to talk about preplanned issues without interruption. And the topics discussed deal with the directors' lives and attitudes rather than with the technical nature of their work; in fact, any questions which seemed too specifically technical were often greeted by them with snorts of contempt. The book is rich in behind-the-scenes stories about such modern classics as 'It Happened One Night', 'Dawn Patrol', 'The Champ', 'Born Yesterday', 'Father of the Bride', 'Shadow of a Doubt', and 'The Roaring Twenties', as well as in anecdotes about the lives of men who not only 'made the movies' but who made Hollywood the glamour capital of the world."-- |
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