Searching for an introduction to the shadowy, intriguing world of early 20th century gay-themed fiction? In Lost Gay Novels, respected pop culture historian Anthony Slide resurrects fifty early 20th century American novels with gay themes or characters and discusses them in carefully researched, engaging prose. Each entry offers you a detailed discussion of plot and characters, a summary of contemporary critical reception, and biographical information on the often-obscure writer. In Lost Gay Novels, another aspect of gay life and society is, in the words the author, uncloseted, providing you with an absorbing glimpse into the world of these nearly forgotten books. Lost Gay Novels gives you an introduction to: authors who aren't usually associated with homosexuality, including John Buchan, James M. Cain, and Rex Stout the history of gay publishing in the US and abroad gay themes in novels published between 1917 and 1950with entries from nearly every year! the ways in which the popular culture of the time shaped the authors' attitudes toward homosexuality the difficulty of finding detailed biographical information on little-known authors If you're interested in gay studies or history, or even if you're just looking for a comprehensive guide to titles you've probably never heard of before, Lost Gay Novels will be a welcome addition to your collection. The introduction from author Slidecalled by the Los Angeles Times a one-man publishing phenomenonprovides you with an overview to the basics of this landmark collection. Themes found in many of the titles include death, secrecy, and living a double life, and in reading the entries you will discover just why these themes are so common. As Slide says in his introduction: The approach of the novelist toward homosexuality may not always be a positive one but the works are important to an understanding of contemporary attitudes toward gay men and gay society. Lost Gay Novels will help you further your own understanding of the dynamic relationship between literature and culture, and you will finish the book with a greater appreciation of modern American gay fiction.

Featuring more than 6,500 articles, including over 350 new entries, this fifth edition of The Encyclopedia of British Film is an invaluable reference guide to the British film industry. It is the most authoritative volume yet, stretching from the inception of the industry to the present day, with detailed listings of the producers, directors, actors and studios behind a century or so of great British cinema. Brian McFarlane's meticulously researched guide is the definitive companion for anyone interested in the world of film. Previous editions have sold many thousands of copies, and this fifth instalment will be an essential work of reference for universities, libraries and enthusiasts of British cinema. -- .

A completely revised and rewritten new edition of the pioneering film book first published in 1970, Early American Cinema, New and Revised Edition provides a concise history of the American motion picture industry before 1920, documenting the work of the early production companies, releasing organizations, filmmakers, and performers, and will serve both as a textbook and a reference source. Chapters cover pre-cinema, the Motion Picture Patents Company, independent filmmaking, the birth of the feature film, Thomas H. Ince, D.W. Griffith, sound and music, the star system, the role of women, new technologies, genres, and the languge, business, and art of the film. The book includes suggestions for further reading, together wiht a general bibliography, and lengthy bibliographies on Ince and Griffith.

To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

Golden Age Hollywood screenwriter Charles Brackett was an extremely observant and perceptive chronicler of the entertainment industry during its most exciting years. He is best remembered as the writing partner of director Billy Wilder, who once referred to the pair as "the happiest couple in Hollywood," collaborating on such classics as "The Lost Weekend" (1945) and "Sunset Blvd" (1950).

In this annotated collection of writings taken from dozens of Brackett's unpublished diaries, leading film historian Anthony Slide clarifies Brackett's critical contribution to Wilder's films and Hollywood history while enriching our knowledge of Wilder's achievements in writing, direction, and style. Brackett's diaries re-create the initial meetings of the talent responsible for "Ninotchka" (1939), "Hold Back the Dawn" (1941), "Ball of Fire" (1941), "The Major and the Minor" (1942), "Five Graves to Cairo" (1943), "The Lost Weekend," and "Sunset Blvd," recounting the breakthrough and breakdowns that ultimately forced these collaborators to part ways. Brackett was also a producer, served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Screen Writers Guild, was a drama critic for the " New Yorker," and became a member of the exclusive literary club, the Algonquin Round Table. Slide gives readers a rare, front row seat to the Golden Age dealings of Paramount, Universal, MGM, and RKO and the innovations of legendary theater and literary figures, such as Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Edna Ferber, and Dorothy Parker. Through Brackett's witty, keen perspective, the political and creative intrigue at the heart of Hollywood's most significant films come alive, and readers will recognize their reach in the Hollywood industry today.

Now in Paperback! The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry is a unique reference work, a 'what's what' of the history of filmmaking not only in Hollywood but throughout the United States. More than 750 entries document the history of studios, production companies and distributors, and provide complete information on technical innovations, genres, industry terms, and organizations. Included are entries on more than 100 film companies active in the 'teens, as well as all major Hollywood studios, and major technical innovations such as CinemaScope and Dolby Sound. General entries range from 'The Cold War' to 'Westerns' and include film series such as 'Andy Hardy' and 'The Thin Man.' Extensive cross referencing and an index help the reader locate information throughout the text. A completely revised and updated edition of The American Film Industry, this new edition furnishes an informed, experienced look behind the scenes of filmmaking and an invaluable reference source. Paperback edition available 2001.

The anti-Communist hysteria that began in the 1930s was further empowered in 1938 when the House of Representatives established the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities. Soon thereafter, the creation of the blacklist in the late 1940s brought the Hollywood film and television community into the fold. Provocatively capturing the controversy and sentiments surrounding this period of political imbalance, Actors on Red Alert explores the repercussions of the blacklist through career interviews with five prominent actors and actresses.

Alexander Knox (1907-1995) was a distinguished stage and screen actor, who is best remembered today for his title performance in the 1944 production of Wilson. He was active both in London's West End and on Broadway, and began his Hollywood career in 1941 with The Sea Wolf. Because of his liberal activities in the film community, including co-founding of the Committee for the First Amendment, Knox was "grey-listed," and forced to settle permanently in the United Kingdom, where he became a familiar figure both in films and on television. On Actors and Acting collects together Knox's writings, published and unpublished, on various performers with whom he worked or was familiar, and on the art and craft of acting. Knox writes on Laurence Olivier, a close personal friend with whom he appeared in the memorable 1940 production of Romeo and Juliet. He discusses his performance as Wilson. Other actors and actresses about whom Knox has many original things to say include Sara Allgood, Dana Andrews, George Arliss, and Walter Huston. Anthony Slide, a film historian and a personal friend of Alexander Knox and his wife, actress Doris Nolan, edited On Actors and Acting. Slide contributes a lengthy career overview and has also compiled a complete filmography, documenting Knox's screen career from his first film, The Gaunt Stranger in 1938, through his last, Joshua Then and Now in 1985.

Impressed by the success of The Birth of a Nation, Robert Goldstein, owner of a well-known Los Angeles costume supply house, produced his own epic film drama, The Spirit of '76 and screened it in Los Angeles shortly after America's entry into World War I. The film was denounced as anti-British and treasonous. Arrested under the Espionage Act, Goldstein became the first and only American jailed for the crime of producing a patriotic film. Film historian Tony Slide includes an introductory essay, reprints contemporary documentation, and publishes a 1927 manuscript by Goldstein, in which he fully documents the background to the film, its making, his arrest and trial, and his later suffering.

This is a completely new, revised, and expanded version of the book first published by Scarecrow in 1976. It documents the work of America's first major film company, Vitagraph, from its beginnings in the 1890s through its sale to Warner Bros. in 1925.

" Thomas Dixon has a notorious reputation as the writer of the source material for D.W. Griffith's groundbreaking and controversial 1915 feature film The Birth of a Nation. Perhaps unfairly, Dixon has been branded an arch-conservative and a racist obsessed with what he viewed as "the Negro problem." As American Racist makes clear, however, Dixon was a complex, multitalented individual who, as well as writing some of the most popular novels of the early twentieth century, was involved in the production of some eighteen films. Dixon used the motion picture as a propaganda tool for his often outrageous opinions on race, communism, socialism, and feminism. His most spectacular production, The Fall of a Nation (1916), argues for American preparedness in the face of war and boasts a musical score by Victor Herbert, making it the first American feature film to have an original score by a major composer. Like the majority of Dixon's films, The Fall of a Nation has been lost, but had it survived, it might well have taken its place alongside The Birth of a Nation as a masterwork of silent film. Anthony Slide examines each of Dixon's films and discusses the novels from which they were adapted. Slide chronicles Dixon's transformation from a major supporter of the original Ku Klux Klan in his early novels to an ardent critic of the modern Klan in his last film, Nation Aflame. American Racist is the first book to discuss Dixon's work outside of literature and provide a wide overview of the life and career of this highly controversial twentieth-century southern populist. Anthony Slide is the author of numerous books, including Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses.

Provides a cross-section of contemporary American film criticism from 1896-1960. The volumes reprint reviews in their entirety from periodicals such as Photoplay, Film Reports, The Moving Picture World, Variety, and The New York Times. Of immense value for gauging contemporary reaction--both popular and serious--to the best-known films of the past.

The fascinating memoir of influential French filmmaker Alice Guy Blache, one of the industry's most significant pioneers and a trailblazer for female directors. Alice Guy Blache (1873-1968) is a unique pioneer of the motion picture, being not only a female filmmaker but also one of the first, if not the first, to make a narrative film. Her career spanned from 1894, when she became secretary to the legendary Leon Gaumont, through 1920, working in both her native France and the United States. In all, she was responsible for approximately 1,000 films, possibly more than any other director or producer. The Memoirs of Alice Guy Blache was first published in 1976, and to a large extent led to her rediscovery after decades of relative obscurity. Guy Blache writes of her beginnings in the motion picture industry, her direction not only of silent films but also some of the earliest synchronized sound motion pictures, her marriage and journey to the United States, the founding of her own studio in New Jersey, her fame, and the sad journey into obscurity in the 1920s. Her story reveals both the opportunities and the ultimate rejection facing a woman director in the early years of the twentieth century. These first-hand and original memoirs are enhanced with a complete filmography, an epilogue by her daughter Simone, a brief biography of her director husband, Herbert Blache, a remembrance by feminist actress/writer Madame Olga Petrova, and a sampling of contemporary articles on the director. Through it all, Alice Guy Blache's personal charm, good humor, and modesty shines.

""Ravished Armenia"" and the Story of Aurora Mardiganian is the real-life tale of a teenage Armenian girl who was caught up in the 1915 Armenian genocide, the first genocide in modern history. Mardiganian (1901-1994) witnessed the murder of her family and the suffering of her people at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. Forced to march over fourteen hundred miles, she was sold into slavery. When she escaped to the United States, Mardiganian was then exploited by the very individuals whom she believed might help. Her story was published in book form and then used as the basis for a 1918 feature film, in which she herself starred. The film Ravished Armenia, also known as Auction of Souls, is a graphic retelling of Aurora Mardiganian's story, with the teenager in the central role, supported by Anna Q. Nilsson and Irving Cummings and directed by Oscar Apfel. Only twenty minutes of the film--the first to deal with the Armenian genocide--is known to survive, but it proves to be a stunning production, presenting its story in newsreel style. This revised edition of Anthony Slide's ""Ravished Armenia"" and the Story of Aurora Mardiganian also contains an annotated reprint of Mardiganian's original narrative and, for the first time, the full screenplay. In his introduction, Slide recounts the making of the film and Mardiganian's life in the United States, involving a cast of characters including Henry Morgenthau, Mrs. George W. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Oliver Harriman, and film pioneer William Selig. The introduction also includes original comments by Aurora Mardiganian, whom Slide interviewed before her death. Acclaimed Armenian Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, who created a video art installation about Mardiganian in 2007, provides a foreword.

"The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville" provides a unique record of what was once America's preeminent form of popular entertainment from the late 1800s through the early 1930s. It includes entries not only on the entertainers themselves, but also on those who worked behind the scenes, the theatres, genres, and historical terms. Entries on individual vaudevillians include biographical information, samplings of routines and, often, commentary by the performers. Many former vaudevillians were interviewed for the book, including Milton Berle, Block and Sully, Kitty Doner, Fifi D'Orsay, Nick Lucas, Ken Murray, Fayard Nicholas, Olga Petrova, Rose Marie, Arthur Tracy, and Rudy Vallee. Where appropriate, entries also include bibliographies. The volume concludes with a guide to vaudeville resources and a general bibliography.Aside from its reference value, with its more than five hundred entries, "The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville" discusses the careers of the famous and the forgotten. Many of the vaudevillians here, including Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jimmy Durante, W. C. Fields, Bert Lahr, and Mae West, are familiar names today, thanks to their continuing careers on screen. At the same time, and given equal coverage, are forgotten acts: legendary female impersonators Bert Savoy and Jay Brennan, the vulgar Eva Tanguay with her billing as "The I Don't Care Girl," male impersonator Kitty Doner, and a host of "freak" acts.

D. W. Griffith (1875-1948) is one of the most influential figures in the history of the motion picture. As director of The Birth of a Nation, he is also one of the most controversial. He raised the cinema to a new level of art, entertainment, and innovation, and at the same time he illustrated, for the first time, its potential to influence an audience and propagandize a cause.

Collected together here are virtually all of the "interviews" given by D. W. Griffith from the first in 1914 to the last in 1948. Some of the interviews concentrate on specific films, including The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and, most substantially, Hearts of the World, while others provide the director with an opportunity to expound on topics of personal interest, including the importance of proper exhibition of his and other's films, and his search for truth and beauty on screen.

The interviews are taken from many sources, including leading newspapers, trade papers, and fan magazines. They are often marked by humor and by a desire to please the interviewer and thus the reader. Griffith may not have been particularly enthusiastic about giving interviews, but he seems always determined to put on a good show.

Ultimately, D. W. Griffith: Interviews provides the reader with a unique insight into the mind and filmmaking techniques of a director whose work and philosophy is as relevant today as it was when he was at the height of his fame in the 1910s and 1920s.

Frank Lloyd: Master of Screen Melodrama is the first book-length study of one of the most prominent of studio directors from Hollywood's "golden age," whose career spanned the years from 1913 through 1955. Among the director's greatest works are Oliver Twist with Jackie Coogan, The Sea Hawk with Milton Sills, The Divine Lady with Corinne Grifffith, and two Academy Award winners for Best Picture, Cavalcade and Mutiny on the Bounty. They are all discussed in detail here, along with other prominent Frank Lloyd productions, including East Lynne, Berkeley Square, Wells Fargo, and The Howards of Virginia. Frank Lloyd himself won two Academy Awards, and yet he has failed up to now to receive the attention he deserves together with recognition of his masterly creation of screen melodrama. With his latest book, which includes a complete filmography and a sampling of writings by Frank Lloyd, award-winning historian Anthony Slide sets the record straight and honors one of Hollywood's best.

Thorne Smith is a unique figure in American literature, one who thrived during prohibition, creating comic novels that ridiculed the morality of the times and involved extensive drinking, nudity, frivolity, and general debauchery. A Man Named Smith: The Novels and Screen Legacy of Thorne Smith is the first book-length study of Thorne Smith's work. It provides background information on his life and early death, discusses all of his novels in detail and also provides extensive new documentation on their screen adaptations, including Topper, Night Life of the Gods and Turnabout. Also discussed is Thorne Smith's brief time in Hollywood at MGM in 1933, and the influence that his books have had on late films and television productions. As an added bonus, reprinted here in its entirety is the 1934 promotional monograph, Thorne Smith: His Life and Times with a Note on His Books & a Complete Bibliography.