"The cinema is Nicholas Ray". (Jean-Luc Godard). The visionary filmmaker Nicholas Ray spent his lifetime creating films that were dark, emotionally charged, and haunted by social misfits and bruised young people consumed by private anguish. Notoriously self-destructive, even in his youth, Ray empathized with the broken and misunderstood - the alcohol, drugs, and rage that ate away at his core translated into characters with unrivaled depth on-screen. Beloved by critics, peers, and audiences alike, Nicholas Ray created a vision of the modern teenage experience with "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) and reinvented the western with "Johnny Guitar" (1954). Yet, in one of the most dramatic Hollywood stories on record, Ray's meteoric rise to fame was rivaled only by his dramatic fall from grace. Now, in time for the celebration of Ray's 100th birthday, preeminent American film biographer Patrick McGilligan offers the first comprehensive, full-length biography of Nicholas Ray - a man whose troubled life was punctuated by moments of creative genius. Meticulously detailed, yet compulsively readable, "Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure" delves into Ray's fascinating life story in and out of the spotlight - from his small-town roots in Galesville, Wisconsin, to his four marriages, drug and alcohol addictions, his sexual relationships with actors (including both James Dean and Natalie Wood), and his ultimate banishment from the Hollywood community that helped foster his growth as a director. Thirty-one years after his death, Nicolas Ray's body of work remains as a celebrated testament to the troubled director's struggle to create meaning from an otherwise shattered existence. In this unparalleled look into the dark moments of Ray's history and secrets of his creative process, Patrick McGilligan tells the full captivating story of an American film great.

Glenn Ford--star of such now-classic films as "Gilda," "Blackboard Jungle," "The Big Heat," "3:10 to Yuma," and "The Rounders"--had rugged good looks, a long and successful career, and a glamorous Hollywood life. Yet the man who could be accessible and charming on screen retreated to a deeply private world he created behind closed doors.
"Glenn Ford: A Life" chronicles the volatile life, relationships, and career of the renowned actor, beginning with his move from Canada to California and his initial discovery of theater. It follows Ford's career in diverse media--from film to television to radio--and shows how Ford shifted effortlessly between genres, playing major roles in dramas, noir, westerns, and romances.
This biography by Glenn Ford's son, Peter Ford, offers an intimate view of a star's private and public life. Included are exclusive interviews with family, friends, and professional associates, and snippets from the Ford family collection of diaries, letters, audiotapes, unpublished interviews, and rare candid photos. This biography tells a cautionary tale of Glenn Ford's relentless infidelities and long, slow fade-out, but it also embraces his talent-driven career. The result is an authentic Hollywood story that isn't afraid to reveal the truth.
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Reviewers

Worms in the Winecup is the extraordinarily hard-hitting autobiography of John Bright, a screenplay writer who gained a major reputation with his first Hollywood script, Public Enemy, the classic gangster drama starring James Cagney. The book provides a vivid, often savage, commentary on Hollywood and the motion picture industry, with uncompromising portraits of Darryl F. Zanuck, Mae West, Errol Flynn, John Barrymore, B. P. Schulberg, Walter Wanger, John Howard Lawson, Elia Kazan, and countless others, including his writing partners, Kubec Glasmon and Robert Tasker. Bright writes of the Communist Party in Hollywood, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, and the House Committee on Un-American activities. At times bitter, at times tragic, this book is refreshingly frank and open, so much so that it could never have been published while John Bright was still alive. Bright is honest as he discusses his wartime experiences and his "exile" in Mexico. Complete with a filmography and an introduction by distinguished film historian Patric McGilligan, Worms in the Winecup is both entertaining and thought-provoking. An emotional and insightful read for students of political history, film scholars, screenwriters, and film enthusiasts.

The 1942 smash musical hit "Yankee Doodle Dandy" has long remained a favorite among audiences and film buffs. Ostensibly the story of "Mr. Broadway"--George M. Cohan-- the movie evolved in its making into one of Warners' trademark "biopics" and a showcase for the singing and dancing talents of James Cagney.

This book includes the complete screenplay.

Continuing Patrick McGilligan's highly acclaimed series on Hollywood screenwriters, these engrossing, informative, provocative interviews give wonderfully detailed and personal stories from veteran screenwriters of the seventies and eighties, focusing on their craft, their lives, and their profession. "Backstory 4" is a riveting insider's look at how movies get made; a rich perspective on many of the great movies, directors, and actors of the seventies and eighties; and an articulate, forthright commentary on the art and the business of screenwriting. The screenwriters interviewed for this volume include well-known Oscar winners as well as cult filmmakers, important writers who were also distinguished directors, and key practitioners of every commercial genre. These writers have worked with Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Peter Bogdanovich, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Clint Eastwood, and other film giants of the so-called New Hollywood. The stories of their collaborations - some divine, some disastrous - provide some of the most fascinating material in this volume. They also discuss topics, including how they got started writing screenplays, their working routines, their professional relationships, their influences, and the work of other major writers and directors. "Backstory 4" features interviews with Robert Benton, Larry Cohen, Blake Edwards, Walter Hill, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Lawrence Kasdan, Elmore Leonard, Paul Mazursky, Nancy Meyers, John Milius, Frederic Raphael, Alvin Sargent, and Donald E. Westlake.

Micheaux's saga is unique among Hollywood backstories. The son of freed slaves, he grew up in the homesteading communities of South Dakota. After working as a Pullman porter, he was inspired by Jack London to write fiction, and soon began an entrepreneurial career successfully publishing a series of his own autobiographical novels. Then, in 1919, he formed his own film production company after Hollywood failed to bid high enough for film rights to his stories. He would go on to produce or direct twenty-two silent and fifteen sound films in his lifetime, becoming the king of the "race cinema" industry at a time before black-produced films could be shown in white-owned theaters.Part visionary, part raffish Barnum-like showman, Micheaux would buck the odds throughout his life. He made a fortune and lost it again, launching repeated con games that were followed by public arrests and bankruptcies. He also eagerly took credit for the work of others - including his unsung-heroine wife; in his desperate later years, as McGilligan reveals here for the first time, he even sunk to plagiarising his final novel. In this searching exploration, McGilligan tracks down long-lost financial records, unpublished letters, and unmarked pauper's graves, pinpointing his birthplace, his tangled personal life, the circumstances of his tragic death. The result is an epic that bridges a fascinating period in American and cultural history.

Patrick McGilligan continues his celebrated interviews with exceptional screenwriters in "Backstory 5," focusing on the 1990s. The thirteen featured writers--Albert Brooks, Jean-Claude Carriere, Nora Ephron, Ronald Harwood, John Hughes, David Koepp, Richard LaGravenese, Barry Levinson, Eric Roth, John Sayles, Tom Stoppard, Barbara Turner, and Rudy Wurlitzer--are not confined to the 1990s, but their engrossing, detailed, and richly personal stories create, in McGilligan's words, "a snapshot of a profession in motion." Emphasizing the craft of writing and the process of collaboration, this new volume looks at how Hollywood is changing to meet new economic and creative challenges. "Backstory 5" explores how these writers come up with their ideas, how they go about adapting a stage play or work of fiction, how they organize and structure their work, and much more.

Among the countless gangster films produced by Hollywood, few are as haunting, complex, or ingeniously crafted as "White Heat" (1948). Students of film history and screen writing will appreciate this treatment--an engaging study of teh various artistic elements that turned what might have been just another gangster film into an innovative classic of the genre and a model of cooperative filmmaking at its best.
Crucial to "White Heat's" success, McGilligan stresses, was the rare manner in which every aspect of production coalesced: studio, script, cast, crew, and director.