Here are 100 books that The Academy and the Award fans have personally recommended if you like
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I fell in love with Hollywood’s Golden Age when I first watched Psycho. From there, every new film and book from or about the era has been a journey into Hollywood’s history. I got into higher education and writing because I enjoy sharing what I’ve learned with others as much as I enjoy the learning process itself. What interests me most about Hollywood history is how the industry has interacted with American and global history. Hollywood has always had either a front-row seat or a seat at the table of history in the making. Not always on the right side of history, but always fascinating.
No list of important books on Hollywood is complete without a reference to Kevin Brownlow.
Kevin was there in the 1960s and 1970s, when many of the silent-era Hollywood stars were still alive. He met and interviewed them all. His book brings that era to life in a way that no other book or film has been able to accomplish. Kevin is also a major supporter of other authors.
He was kind enough to blurb two of my books. He also read drafts of my Warner Brothers book – twice! Each time with increasingly helpful, thoughtful, and supportive feedback. Kevin is the one historian that every film historian is in debt to. I don’t think Kevin knows how important he is, but he certainly deserves a spot on my list.
I fell in love with Hollywood’s Golden Age when I first watched Psycho. From there, every new film and book from or about the era has been a journey into Hollywood’s history. I got into higher education and writing because I enjoy sharing what I’ve learned with others as much as I enjoy the learning process itself. What interests me most about Hollywood history is how the industry has interacted with American and global history. Hollywood has always had either a front-row seat or a seat at the table of history in the making. Not always on the right side of history, but always fascinating.
This book was my first foray into social and political history of Hollywood.
Sklar covers early film industry battles with Thomas Edison, the impact of censorship in Hollywood, the monopoly-like integration of the studios, and the overarching mythology that Hollywood sold through their movies.
I read it as an undergraduate when I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. Looking back as an author and professor, I can see this book as planting seeds that continue to blossom through my own work in the classroom as well as in books and articles that I publish.
Hailed as the definitive work upon its original publication in 1975 and now extensively revised and updated by the author, this vastly absorbing and richly illustrated book examines film as an art form, technological innovation, big business, and shaper of American values. Ever since Edison's peep shows first captivated urban audiences, film has had a revolutionary impact on American society, transforming culture from the bottom up, radically revising attitudes toward pleasure and sexuality, and at the same time, cementing the myth of the American dream. No book has measured film's impact more clearly or comprehensively than Movie-Made America. This vastly…
We write mysteries set during the Golden Age of Hollywood that feature costume designer Edith Head, so naturally, we love books about film history. We’ve found that some of the best books to tackle the subject aren’t biographies of individuals or profiles of film studios but case studies of single films. Concentrating on one movie and all of the personnel and creative decisions behind it allows an author to explore every aspect of filmmaking and explain how it really works…even when the film in question doesn’t.
We’ll be honest. We don’t really remember the romantic drama Up Close & Personal (1996), starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. But we won’t forget this book by Dunne, who wrote the film with his wife, Joan Didion. This is a forthright look at the writer’s lot in Hollywood. It’s a manual for massaging egos and dealing with conflicting notes, told with bracing honesty.
Sometimes, you take a job because you need health insurance. Sometimes, a movie that starts out based on the tragic true story of newscaster Jessica Savitch becomes a glossy sudser in which she lives. Sometimes, a troubled project becomes a hit despite itself. That’s always show business.
Monster is John Gregory Dunne's mordant account of the eight years it took to get the 1996 Robert Redford/Michelle Pfeiffer film Up Close & Personal made. A bestselling novelist, Dunne has a cold eye, perfect pitch for the absurdities of Hollywood, and sharp elbows for the film industry's savage infighting. 192 pp. Author tour & national ads. 25,000 print.
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.
I have loved classic Hollywood movies since childhood, especially the legendary actresses of the era. My grandmother nurtured this love, taking me to the video stores to rent movies and the library to read biographies and books about actresses and Old Hollywood. Now, I am a professor of film history at Chapman University, where I teach classes on American cinema and women in film. Still, my passion for female-centered classic Hollywood movies remains strong. I have compiled a list showing the multi-faceted ways that women have participated in Hollywood cinema during its first century.
In my teen years, I was a voracious reader of star biographies. I still love them, and the late Cari Beauchamp’s book is a page-turning, spellbinding biography that details the life of pioneering screenwriter Frances Marion, the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood for nearly three decades.
Beauchamp also introduces readers to the early Hollywood sisterhood network that furnished Marion and other powerful women in American film at the time (Mary Pickford, Adela Rogers St. John, Hedda Hopper). I recommend this book as a historical backdrop for understanding the current gender parity issues plaguing Hollywood.
Cari Beauchamp masterfully combines biography with social and cultural history to examine the lives of Frances Marion and her many female colleagues who shaped filmmaking from 1912 through the 1940s. Frances Marion was Hollywood's highest paid screenwriter--male or female--or almost three decades, wrote almost 200 produced films and won Academy Awards for writing "The Big House" and "The Champ."
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.
Katharine Hepburn, who worked with George Cukor in a whopping ten films, was known for her strength. She was a strong actor with strong opinions and a strong presence. She went through phases from atypical ingénue to box office poison to megastar.
Learning about her life through Hepburn’s own perspectives in her own words is riveting. She is prickly and poignant, biting and benevolent.
Photographs from Hepburn's personal collection highlight the candid memoirs of the life, long career, friendships, and loves of the legendary Hollywood actress
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 love film noir and have written and published on it. I’ve also read numerous academic books on noir. But for those who want all the information and less of the jargon, no one does it better than Eddie Muller, author and host of Turner Movie Classics’ Noir Alley and president of the Film Noir Foundation, which hosts annual noir screening events in multiple US cities and publishes a wonderful magazine for members.
Dark City is full of amazing, restored photos alongside informative texts, great for reading and rereading. I keep mine on a coffee table.
TCM host Eddie Muller's Dark City is a film noir lover's bible, taking readers on a tour of the urban landscape of the grim and gritty genre in an authoritative, highly illustrated volume.
This narrative history is packed with stories about the stars and makers of both long-recognized classics like The Maltese Falcon and under-the-radar "lost" greats such as Cry Danger. The book highlights more than one hundred films, breaking down plots and offering insider accounts behind-the-scenes of their making.
". . . a righteous, rip-snorting riff on the ultimate cinematic genre-film noir. This book displays a salutary knowledge of…
I’ve always loved movies. In my 20s, I went to film school – perhaps you can still find a couple of the short films I wrote with animator Matthew Hood on Vimeo (Hourglass and Metalstasis) – and I worked a little in the UK film industry reading scripts for Film4, among others. I’ve also interviewed filmmakers, including Nicolas Winding Refn, Christopher Hampton, Life of Brian producer John Goldstone and editor Anne V. Coates. And I’ve always found a romance, despite the seedy aspects, of Tinseltown being developed out in Hollywoodland, a place of orange groves and pepper trees where people from the Midwest went to retire in the sun.
Sidney Lumet directed Twelve Angry Men and The Verdict, among many others, and the beauty of this short book is just how practical he is about his craft. In the magazine interviews and hagiographies about directors, we seldom get a true sense of the working day on a movie set, or what happens long before shooting begins and months after it finishes. But here Lumet reveals why he always tried to schedule a very simple shot for the first set-up on day 1 of production, the value of a rehearsal period (if he was granted one) and that he took a lunchtime nap. From first being offered a script to the final sound mix, this is what a movie director really does.
“Invaluable.... I am sometimes asked if there is one book a filmgoer could read to learn more about how movies are made and what to look for while watching them. This is the book.” —Roger Ebert, The New York Times Book Review
Why does a director choose a particular script? What must they do in order to keep actors fresh and truthful through take after take of a single scene? How do you stage a shootout—involving more than one hundred extras and three colliding taxis—in the heart of New York’s diamond district? What does it take to keep the studio…
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.
Yes, of course, just about everyone has heard of Roger Ebert (d. 2013), the great film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and co-host, with Gene Siskel of the PBS program Sneak Previews. But have you ever read any of his reviews? They’re delightful–smart, funny, touching, and thoroughly readable.
Ebert must have seen every film ever made (his reviews are arranged in these collections alphabetically by film title). In each short review he offered, not just his opinion of the film in question, but striking insights into the film’s themes, meanings, symbols, and underlying philosophy.
Any film lover should immediately obtain all four collections.
America’s most trusted and best-known film critic Roger Ebert presents one hundred brilliant essays on some of the best movies ever made.
Roger Ebert, the famed film writer and critic, wrote biweekly essays for a feature called "The Great Movies," in which he offered a fresh and fervent appreciation of a great film. The Great Movies collects one hundred of these essays, each one of them a gem of critical appreciation and an amalgam of love, analysis, and history that will send readers back to that film with a fresh set of eyes and renewed enthusiasm–or perhaps to an avid…
