Here are 28 books that Not Quite a Gentleman fans have personally recommended if you like
Not Quite a Gentleman.
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I’ve always had a passion for cinema, especially gritty British
productions of the 1940s and 50s. The voices of Kathleen Harrison,
Robert Beatty, Kenneth More, Dirk Bogarde, Jack Warner, and Susan Shaw
can be heard nightly radiating from my TV. I’m also a huge fan of radio,
in particular classic BBC shows. As a biographer, I’m known for shining
a light on personalities of yesteryear – those we might recognize by
name and face but know little about. My recent books include
biographies on Erich Honecker (OK, he wasn’t a movie star), Jack Hawkins,
and David Tomlinson (they were).
I’ll never forget finding this biography at a secondhand bookstore just off the Kurfurstendamm in Berlin a few years ago. I took it to a small café near the zoo and read it–cover to cover–that very same day!
There is little doubt Samuel Goldwyn was Hollywood’s last tycoon. In this outstanding book, Berg beautifully tells the rags-to-riches tale of a poor Jewish glovemaker who became the most important producer in American cinema. Many great stars make appearances, including Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. A meticulously researched and compelling tome.
Provides a definitive portrait of Schmuel Gelbfisz, a young Pole who faced staggering obstacles to come to New York, and his rise to fame and power as Samuel Goldwyn--one of the most famous Hollywood studio figures of our time
I’ve always had a passion for cinema, especially gritty British
productions of the 1940s and 50s. The voices of Kathleen Harrison,
Robert Beatty, Kenneth More, Dirk Bogarde, Jack Warner, and Susan Shaw
can be heard nightly radiating from my TV. I’m also a huge fan of radio,
in particular classic BBC shows. As a biographer, I’m known for shining
a light on personalities of yesteryear – those we might recognize by
name and face but know little about. My recent books include
biographies on Erich Honecker (OK, he wasn’t a movie star), Jack Hawkins,
and David Tomlinson (they were).
I adored Fred Astaire so much that during a trip to Los Angeles, I made a special little pilgrimage to the RKO studios on the corner of Melrose Ave and Gower Street to see where he shot those famous 1930s movies, Top Hat, Follow the Fleet, and Flying Down to Rio.
From his debut in vaudeville as a kid to his remarkable career as the star of many of the most popular Hollywood musicals ever captured on celluloid, Fred tells his own compelling story.
One of the foremost entertainers of the twentieth century—singer, actor, choreographer, and, of course, the most dazzling "hoofer" in the history of motion pictures—Fred Astaire was the epitome of charm, grace, and suave sophistication, with a style all his own and a complete disregard for the laws of gravity. Steps in Time is Astaire's story in his own words, a memoir as beguiling, exuberant, and enthralling as the great artist himself, the man ballet legends George Balanchine and Rudolf Nureyev cited as, hands down, the century's greatest dancer.
From his debut in vaudeville at age six through his remarkable career…
I’ve always had a passion for cinema, especially gritty British
productions of the 1940s and 50s. The voices of Kathleen Harrison,
Robert Beatty, Kenneth More, Dirk Bogarde, Jack Warner, and Susan Shaw
can be heard nightly radiating from my TV. I’m also a huge fan of radio,
in particular classic BBC shows. As a biographer, I’m known for shining
a light on personalities of yesteryear – those we might recognize by
name and face but know little about. My recent books include
biographies on Erich Honecker (OK, he wasn’t a movie star), Jack Hawkins,
and David Tomlinson (they were).
Mills was the last of the generation of great British actors from the 1940s who personified the stiff-upper-lip gent.
In this autobiography, he tells the story of his part in, In Which We Serve, Ice Cold in Alex, Scott of the Antarctic, and his Oscar-winning performance in Ryan's Daughter. He was a true icon of British cinema. Great stuff.
Sir John Mills is one of Britain's best-known, and best-loved, actors. This autobiography charts his life from the early beginnings in music hall song-and-dance routines, to the days of Cavalcade and Jill Darling to the film epics, "In Which We Serve", "Ice Cold in Alex", "Scott of the Antarctic" and his Oscar-winning performance in "Ryan's Daughter". A new chapter brings the book fully up-to-date, revealing the drama, farce and tragedy - not to mention some spectacular falls - which have been a part of a life that is as varied as it is successful.
I’ve always had a passion for cinema, especially gritty British
productions of the 1940s and 50s. The voices of Kathleen Harrison,
Robert Beatty, Kenneth More, Dirk Bogarde, Jack Warner, and Susan Shaw
can be heard nightly radiating from my TV. I’m also a huge fan of radio,
in particular classic BBC shows. As a biographer, I’m known for shining
a light on personalities of yesteryear – those we might recognize by
name and face but know little about. My recent books include
biographies on Erich Honecker (OK, he wasn’t a movie star), Jack Hawkins,
and David Tomlinson (they were).
Recently, during a visit to Filmstaden studios near Stockholm (yes, where Ingrid and Ingmar Bergman worked) I was given a copy of this book. It is, without a doubt, the definitive biography of Hitchcock, with a thrilling opening on his life in Britain and formative years.
A fresh and definitive portrait of the Master of Suspense by acclaimed biographer Patrick McGilligan Full of fresh revelations, dark humour and cliff hanging suspense, this new biography of Alfred Hitchcock follows his life from its humble beginnings, as the son of an East End greengrocer, through an extraordinary career in which his films set new standards for cinematic invention, to his death as a Hollywood legend in Beverley Hills. * Gives a uniquely comprehensive and balanced view of Hitchcock's life, uncovering details not just of his work but also his personal life, and with an insight into how they…
I am a film fan and scholar who has a joyful yet complex relationship with Hollywood. I have basked in the classics of Hollywood’s Golden Age (1930s-1950s) from my teen years on, including the musical delights of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the screwball comedies of Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, the magnificent Universal monsters, and the deliciously dark creativity of film noir. Reading about the history of Hollywood has helped me enjoy this pastime even more, learning everything from economics and politics to method and form. The more I know, the richer grows my interest in both the past and present of that unique institution we call Hollywood.
I once played Henry Higgins' mother in a local theatrical production of My Fair Lady. I delighted in the music and in portraying (in a white wig and wrinkled make-up) the stern, wise Mrs. Higgins, even as I also wondered whether Higgins and Pickering were perhaps secretly a couple and if Eliza was asexual.
This made me want to read the play on which My Fair Lady is based, George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. I did not get answers to my somewhat whimsical questions about sexuality, but I did see in even greater relief the turning of women into objects that ambitious, selfish men may do.
I’m a historian, with a special interest in the 20th century. I’ve written about Freud’s Vienna, the aftermath of the First World War, strikes in the 1920s and 1930s in America’s cotton South, the plot to assassinate Hitler, and the notorious 1940s gangsters nicknamed “Murder, Inc.”. What intrigues me about the 20th century are the era’s underlying values and the shocking and violent collisions among them. In Casablanca’s Conscience, I use the great film as a lens with which to take another look at the tumultuous times just a generation ago.
Isenberg has explored all the Hollywood archives and has produced a delightful and fascinating story of the actors, the director and producer, the writers, and all the technicians who created the film. A splendid guide to Casablanca and a great example of an in-depth, how-it-was-made history of a single film.
Casablanca is "not one movie," Umberto Eco once quipped; "it is 'movies.'" Film historian Noah Isenberg's We'll Always Have Casablanca offers a rich account of the film's origins, the myths and realities behind its production, and the reasons it remains so revered today, over seventy-five years after its premiere.
Not only am I fascinated by old Hollywood history, I’m also interested in the creative processes that produce great art. Everyone approaches their craft a little differently, and it’s always illuminating to discover how different people do what they do. In my own work, I like to explore how creative people come to their Eureka! moments, and hope that I’ll be able to learn something from their experiences.
Sam Wasson is simply a good writer, crafting tight narratives that help this book read like a novel. The best part of this book is its examination of the creative process: in order for Chinatown to get made the way it did, a million (maybe two million) things needed to align in just the right way. The movie easily could have failed, but Wasson shows how the contributions of its many collaborators saved it.
Chinatown is the Holy Grail of 1970s cinema. Its ending is the most notorious in American film and its closing line of dialogue the most haunting. Here for the first time is the incredible true story of its making. In Sam Wasson's telling, it becomes the defining story of its most colorful characters. Here is Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers, embarking on his great, doomed love affair with Anjelica Huston. Here is director Roman Polanski, both predator and prey, haunted by the savage murder of his wife, returning to…
I'm a London-based critic, author, and host whose love affair with film began after seeing The Lion King in the cinema as a kid. I trained as a journalist because I wanted to talk about the world. Since then I’ve been covering film and culture for the likes of Empire Magazine, Time Out, and IGN. I co-host MTV Movies and the weekly film reviews podcast Fade to Black; co-founder of The First Film Club event series and podcast, and am a member of London's Critics' Circle. I'm a voice for gender equality, diversity, and inclusion in the entertainment industry and an advocate for MENA representation as a writer of Tunisian heritage.
Carrie Fisher is a phenomenal writer whose Hollywood upbringing and career makes her insightful voice when it comes to the experience of women in film.
Turning the diaries she kept while shooting Star Wars – playing the iconic Strong Female Character, Princess Leila – into a memoir offers and eye-opening perspective about life as an actress working in a male-dominated world.
It’s full of humour, self-deprecation, and real vulnerability, as well as juicy tidbits about the production.
When Carrie Fisher discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved - plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naivete, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Now her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon is indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a teenager with an all-consuming crush on her co-star, Harrison Ford. With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher's intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of…
I have been a champion of the essay form for some time, starting with my popular anthology Art of the Personal Essay and extending to my more recent trio of anthologies of the American essay. At the same time I have written four personal essay collections of my own, and I know I am really cooking when I can still laugh or at least smile at my jokes after the fifth or tenth reading of a piece I wrote. I have to admit that I can only appreciate writing (by myself or others) that is amusing or at least ironic, never solemn: to me the truth of existence is comic, like it or not.
No one who reads Nora on her breasts or her neck will ever forget her hilarious takes on her own insecurities. Her style seems effortlessly casual, but the closer you look, the more you see how cunningly put together these essays are. A superb combination of vignette and rumination, these pieces rescue the detritus of everyday life and show how absurd our American reality is.
I’m a professional screenwriter with a passion for story structure. I’ve worked on film & TV projects for more than 25 years – not only as a writer for independent producers and studios such as Warner and Universal – but also as a development exec and creative consultant. Over time, I was shocked to see how many talented storytellers felt stuck between prescriptive paradigms and a “seat-of-the-pants” approach. So I set out to fill that void and defined a more flexible yet powerful method in my first book, Screenwriting Unchained, which I’ve now enthusiastically applied to TV series. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
Navigating the TV industry can be intimidating. Bob Levy does an amazing job of providing an overview of the U.S. TV development process, from a producer’s point of view.
He gives a very clear and detailed explanation of the industry, the processes, and the culture. I love how he explains the terminology, the timelines, the people involved, yet never makes it boring. Levy has worked in the TV industry for more than 30 years, and it shows.
Development is a large and central part of the American TV industry, and yet the details of how it works - who makes development decisions and why, where ideas for new shows come from, even basics like the differences between what TV studios and TV networks do - remain elusive to many.
In this book, lecturer and acclaimed television producer Bob Levy offers a detailed introduction to television development, the process by which the Hollywood TV industry creates new scripted series. Written both for students and industry professionals, Television Development serves as a comprehensive introduction to all facets of the…
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