Peter Valenti presents an objective evaluation of Flynn's impact on both American popular culture and the development of motion pictures. The book begins with a brief biography of the actor, followed by a complete history of his screen, radio, and television career, an annotated guide to popular and scholarly materials on Flynn, and a bibliography of his own writings and the publications in which they appeared. Valenti ends with a series of personal interviews held with Flynn at various points in his often infamous career.

The First Female Stars: Women of the Silent Era rediscovers the fascinating lives and pioneering achievements of 15 women who dared to venture into early motion pictures, an industry dominated by men, and who not only succeeded but became the focal points of the industry. Each star earned a position at the height of her profession, and though many are largely forgotten today, made a lasting and significant contribution to early cinema. In this entertaining and informative volume, author David Menefee reveals these women and their signature roles, drawing on many original sources to show us how such actresses as Theda Bara, Sarah Bernhardt, Dorothy Gish, and Norma Talmadge were received in their time, and the many ways in which their influence remains important today. Each profile contains a biographical treatment, an analysis of key films from her career, a discussion of the actress's influence on the medium, and selected filmography. Each also includes two photographs, most often one of the actress herself and a still from a film.

Believing that transformation is possible and that it must come from within, Clar Doyle illustrates the vital connection between drama and critical pedagogy. Presuming that a practice informed by the theory of critical pedagogy is essential to achieve an emancipatory education, Doyle shows how well drama and aesthetic education can encourage a pedagogy that is critical. He explores the real as well as the perceived values and understandings given to the aesthetic in school settings, how tastes and awareness are produced and how students' backgrounds inform the way in which art and drama are experienced. Furthermore, Doyle shows the ways in which the dominant cultural agencies rob both teachers and students of creativity through their reproductive policies.

The book explores such critical questions as: the nature of culture; the historical place of drama within education; and the debate between drama and theatre as it applies to schooling. With a critical perspective, he reviews the current status of drama education and suggests ways in which educators can redefine their mission and refine their practice. By examining the influence of the culture industry and the issues surrounding style choices, Doyle highlights the challenge that teachers must meet in order to use performance skills to tease out attitudes and understandings. He concludes by showing how drama can help students, not only to bring about change in their own lives, but to effect change in the world around them.

Appearing in about 60 films and dozens of stage and radio productions, John Barrymore (1882-1942) was arguably the most idolized performing arts figure of his generation. Renowned for his ability to make even the flimsiest roles come to life with power and passion, the Great Profile reached his apex with title role performances in stagings of Richard III (1920) and Hamlet (1922-25). This book charts his legendary and sometimes scandalous life and career. A biography discusses his love of roles requiring physical or psychological distortion, his four failed marriages, and his memorable achievements on the stage and screen. Chapters that follow contain entries for his performances in stage, film, and radio productions, with each entry providing cast and credit listings, plot synopses, critical commentary, and excerpts from reviews. Also included are a discography, a chapter on plays and films with characters modeled after Barrymore, an annotated bibliography, and discussions of archives and special collections. The volume closes with a personal essay by Barrymore's Shakespearean vocal coach, Margaret Carrington. This essay, written by a pivotal figure in Barrymore's development as a serious actor, has never before been published.

In 1999 the Maryinsky (formerly Kirov) Ballet and Theater in St. Petersburg re-created its 1890 production of Sleeping Beauty. The revival showed the classic work in its original sets and costumes and restored pantomime and choreography that had been eliminated over the past century. Nevertheless, the work proved unexpectedly controversial, with many Russian dance professionals and historians denouncing it. In order to understand how a historically informed performance could be ridiculed by those responsible for writing the history of Russian and Soviet ballet, Tim School discusses the tradition, ideology, and popular legend that have shaped the development of Sleeping Beauty. In the process he provides a history of Russian and Soviet ballet during the twentieth century. A fascinating slice of cultural history, the book will appeal not only to dance historians but also to those interested in the arts and cultural policies of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods.

The Artef (1925-1940) began as a radical Yiddish workers' theatre and developed into a major American Yiddish theatre company. It was among the acknowledged pillars of the Theatre of Social Consciousness, a movement that redefined the course for the American stage during the half century that followed.

In the 1920s and 1930s, New York was widely recognized as the world capital of the Yiddish theatre. The Artef was a principal theatrical institution during this so-called Golden Era. Established in 1925 as a proletarian theatrical organization affiliated with the Jewish section of the American communist movement, the Artef was hailed by Brooks Atkinson as one of the artistic ornaments in town. In 1934 the Artef moved to Broadway, where it continued to perform until its demise in 1940.

This work examines the history of Artef and analyzes the artistic, ideological, and organizational aspects of its work. The company's major productions are discussed, with a focus on the central issues raised by script, direction, and acting. The book attempts to demonstrate that radical politics often shaped and determined the evolution of the theatre, and that its artistic and organizational life must be seen within the context of the political and cultural movement of which it was a part. The work is divided into three major segments: Chapters I-IV discuss the ideological, social, and cultural forces that gave rise to the Artef, the crystallization of the organization, and the work of its acting studio, which in 1928 became the acting collective of the Artef; Chapters V-VIII cover the period of 1929-1934, the formative years of the Artef and their correspondence to communist Third Period doctrine; Chapters IX-XIII are devoted to the theatre's successful Broadway period, which paralleled the Communist Party's liberal Popular Front era. The last chapter discusses the efforts to revive the Artef, and its inevitable demise following the 1939 German-Russian Nonaggression Pact. This is a major work in Jewish Theatre Studies that will be of great use to scholars and other researchers involved with Jewish and Performance Theatre Studies as well as the history of the American Left.

Theo Angelopoulos is widely regarded as one of the most distinctive contemporary filmmakers and a highly idiosyncratic film stylist. His work, from the early 1970s to The Beekeeper, Landscape in the Mist, The Suspended Step of the Stalk and the recent Cannes prize-winner Ulysses' Gaze, demonstrates a unique sensibility and a preoccupation with form (notably, the long take, space, and time) and with content, particularly Greek politics and history, and notions of the journey, border-crossing, and exile. This new collection of essays surveys his entire cinematic output and presents a discussion of his major films, themes, and concerns. The contributors argue that Angelopoulos' sustained oeuvre has kept alive the tradition of postwar modernism--the cinema of Antonioni, Jancso, and Ozu--in the largely hostile environment of the 1980s and 1990s. A major work for students and researchers on contemporary European film.

"This book aims to help the teacher of Acting and his pupil--the novice who aspires to become proficient in the most elusive of arts. In it no distinction is made between the amateur and professional but only between the good and bad actor."from the author's introduction

This book presents a combined biographical, critical, and bibliographical estimate of Laurel & Hardy's significance in film comedy, the arts in general, and as popular culture icons. Of the two, Laurel decidedly evolves as the central player in this duo biography. The reasons for this are several, but mainly stem from Laurel's role as team spokesman; his late life accessibility; media coverage given to his private life; and the fact that he outlived Hardy by eight years--from 1957 to 1965--a period in which the ever burgeoning public fascination with the team reached new proportions. Hardy's artistic input, however, is currently being given a revisionist upgrading, which Gehring addresses.

The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 is a biography of Laurel & Hardy, exploring the public and private sides of their lives. Chapter 2 is a critique of four broad influences of Laurel & Hardy--as special icons of comic frustrations; as developers of a change in film comedy pacing (which also eased their transition from silent to sound film); as movie pioneers in the innovative early use of comic sound; and, most importantly, as key participants in the evolution of the comic antihero into American mainstream humor. Chapter 3 is composed of two very early reprinted Laurel & Hardy articles and a special Encore collection. Chapter 4 is a very ambitious Laurel & Hardy bibliographical essay, assessing key reference materials and locating research collections open to the student and/or scholar. This involves many obscure, often early and/or untranslated articles drawn from research in Ulverston England--Laurel's birthplace--London and Paris. Chapter 5 is a bibliographical checklist of all sources recommended in Chapter 4. This volume should be of special interest to all Laurel & Hardy aficionados, and students/scholars of comedy.

The only comprehensive guide to the crime films of the forties and fifties, this volume focuses on the major events that shaped and molded the genre: war, alienation, drugs, and organized crime. The body of the work offers over 1,200 entries that feature concise summaries, analyses, and credits. The volume is a continuation of the author's earlier work, A Guide to American Crime Films of the Thirties (Greenwood, 1995). The book includes those stars that the public had already embraced as gangsters in the thirties such as James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and Edward G. Robinson and brings them into a new era in which they are transformed into enforcers of the law. This work will be of interest to scholars, students, and film buffs alike. The work demonstrates the shift from the simpler gangster modes of the 1930s as it takes the reader forward to the more sophisticated films of the late fifties. Although the book is organized alphabetically, the introduction alerts the reader to the major social phenomena that influenced the genre of these decades. Also offered are credits that cover titles, release dates, distributors, directors, screenwriters, and major players. The 1,200 entries include detailed plot summaries and thematic analyses as well as relevant information on sources, remakes, and sequels.

The Arden Research Handbook of Contemporary Shakespeare Criticism is a wide-ranging, authoritative guide to research on critical approaches to Shakespeare by an international team of leading scholars. It contains chapters on 20 specific critical practices, each grounded in analysis of a Shakespeare play. These practices range from foundational approaches including character studies, close reading and genre studies, through those that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s that challenged the preconceptions on which traditional liberal humanism is based, including feminism, cultural materialism and new historicism. Perspectives drawn from postcolonial, queer studies and critical race studies, besides more recent critical practices including presentism, ecofeminism and cognitive ethology all receive detailed treatment. In addition to its coverage of distinct critical approaches, the handbook contains various sections that provide non-specialists with practical help: an A–Z glossary of key terms and concepts, a chronology of major publications and events, an introduction to resources for study of the field and a substantial annotated bibliography.

The movie theater has in many ways served as a barometer of the evolution of urban America over the past century. "The Community of Cinema" explores how the growth and decline of the inner city has been intertwined with the history of the movie theater, how the cinema helped redefine the use of downtowns to include entertainment and socialization, a sense of social place in our society, and the use of spectacle as a part of our daily experience in shopping, eating, and business. This is the first book to examine directly the importance of the movie theater in the creation and growth of the modern American downtown, and its fostering of its own sense of place and community.

"The Community of Cinema" also attempts to bridge the various fields included in the subject of cinema's impact on culture and form, among them film studies, architecture, urban planning, and sociology. In so doing, author James M. Forsher explores in each chapter the ways in which the community of cinema came about, the changes it sparked in the downtown and neighborhood shopping districts, and the sense of community it added to our society as a whole.

In "The Fly," one of Seth Brundle's experiments goes disastrously wrong, and the chimpanzee he was attempting to transport from one telepod to the other ends up in the second device, a quivering mass of flesh; the process of teleportation has turned it inside out and yet it remains in unimaginable agony alive. David Cronenberg is undoubtedly one of the great directors of transgression, violating boundaries between the subjective and the objective and, even more spectacularly, between the human and the non-human.

This collection of seven critical essays explores the multifaceted nature of Cronenberg's achievement and ranges from Jonathan Crane's reassessment of Cronenberg's place within horror cinema, to Parveen Adams' intensely focused discussion of "Crash." Other essays examine the place of the homoerotic body in Cronenberg's films; view "M. Butterfly" in relation to modern notions of literature; place the earlier work in its historical context; address the complexity and ambiguity derived from certain fundamental contrasts underpinning much of his work; and discuss some of the shortcomings of critical writings on Cronenberg. The book also includes a recent interview with the director together with a full filmography and bibliography. An important analysis for students and scholars of contemporary film and popular culture.

In Clint Eastwood's early directorial efforts there was little to suggest that this was the man who would become the guiding force behind such sublime works as Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, and Letters from Iwo Jima. Yet before our eyes, Eastwood has evolved not only as a director, but also as an actor, a screenwriter, a producer, and a score composer, to become one of the most revered figures in Hollywood. Perhaps it is because he started out in Hollywood with such little influence on the final product that he now demonstrates such a strong desire to collaborate with others and provide help wherever he can. In addition to casting off his reputation as a hack and accumulating two Oscar nominations for Best Actor over the past 15 years, he has guided other actors to no less than three Academy Award wins. The executives love him because he has made them money over the years--occasionally even "making one for them" in exchange for financial backing on other projects. Critics love him because of the care he takes in creating his films. Audiences love him because he has never lost his sense of entertainment, even as his artistry has matured. Now a two-time Academy Award winner for best director, twice winner of the Directors Guild of America Award for best director, and recipient of countless other critics prizes and nominations in multiple capacities, Eastwood stands alongside Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg as one of the finest directors working in modern cinema. Here, John Foote examines the long, impressive, and unlikely film career of a man who fought against expectations to forge his own way and become one of this generation's finestfilmmakers. Each chapter examines a different film, beginning with Play Misty for Me (1971) and High Plains Drifter (1973) and extending to his 21st-century films Space Cowboys (2000), Blood Work (2002), Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), and Changeling (2008). This book is, in the author's own words, "a study of how Eastwood managed to quietly get to this level--and a celebration of his gifts as an artist."