Stage actor turned Hollywood star, William S. Hart (1864 - 1946) was for movie fans a cherished symbol of the romantic Old West. His silent westerns offered excitement, lessons in righteous behavior, and a nostalgic vision of the American frontier. This intriguing biography explores the personal and professional life of Hollywood's prototypical cowboy hero.Born in Newburgh, New York, Hart grew up in a Victorian atmosphere that gave rise to the rigid morality prevalent in many of his films. From 1914 to 1924, he appeared in or produced more than sixty movies, but it was not until he abandoned Shakespearean characters for parts in The Squaw Man and The Virginian that Hart truly assumed his western persona. For the first time, readers are given insights into Hart's somewhat lonely and tragic personal life, his quarrels with exploitive studios, and his association with such latter-day frontier legends as Charles M. Russell, Bat Masterson, and Wyatt Earp, who regarded him as a kindred spirit. Other highlights of this book include excerpts from his previously unpublished letters to starlet Jane Novak, Hart's one-time fiancee, as well as numerous photographs from studio and private collections. Drawing on Hart's papers, primary sources of the Motion Picture Academy, oral histories, and contemporary newspapers, this chronicle of Hart's life is the first since his own starry-eyed autobiography, My Life East and West, appeared in 1929.

Almost two decades after his death, John Wayne is still America's favorite movie star. More than an actor, Wayne is a cultural icon whose stature seems to grow with the passage of time. In this illuminating biography, Ronald L. Davis focuses on Wayne's human side, portraying a complex personality defined by frailty and insecurity as well as by courage and strength.Davis traces Wayne's story from its beginnings in Winterset, Iowa, to his death in 1979. This is not a story of instant fame: only after a decade in budget westerns did Wayne receive serious consideration, for his performance in John Ford's 1939 film Stagecoach. From that point on, his skills and popularity grew as he appeared in such classics as Fort Apache, Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Quiet Man, The Searches, The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, and True Grit. A man's ideal more than a woman's, Wayne earned his popularity without becoming either a great actor or a sex symbol. In all his films, whatever the character, John Wayne portrayed John Wayne, a persona he created for himself: the tough, gritty loner whose mission was to uphold the frontier's--and the nation's--traditional values. To depict the different facets of Wayne's life and career, Davis draws on a range of primary and secondary sources, most notably exclusive interviews with the people who knew Wayne well, including the actor's costar Maureen O'Hara and his widow, Pilar Wayne. The result is a well-balanced, highly engaging portrait of a man whose private identity was eventually overshadowed by his screen persona--until he came to represent America itself.

In its heyday Hollywood's big studio system mirrored the corporate ideology that catapulted the United States into economic prominence. By the mid-1920s power was consolidated into four major studios: Metro-Goldyn-Mayer, Paramount, Fox, and Warner Bros., all appropriating the assembly line approach of the Detroit automobile manufacturers. The Glamour Factory is the story of the motion picture business, told with the help of hundreds of insiders - from stars, directors, and producers to stuntmen, hairstylists, makeup artists, and publicists - who watched and contributed to the industry while magic was being made. Much of this story is drawn from the Southern Methodist University Oral History Collection on the Performing Arts, which the author founded.

This book provides insights to church, association and convention leaders concerned for the future-for the effectiveness of the organizational health to carry out the Great Commission of Jesus Christ. The author desire is to assist leaders of each of these entities in understanding its organizational history in order to diagnose unhealthy issues and bring about renewed vitality. The revitalization of the association can be the starting point for African-American Baptist church and convention sustaining growth numerically, financially and spiritually. Leaders will discover how to restore churches, associations and conventions to a vital and viable level to address the lack of trained leaders, the loss of large segments of age groups, the lack of mission education, discipleship, saving youth from crime, drugs, etc. and strategies for evangelism and mission in action. It is a model of revitalization that calls for personal and organizational change by clarifying the purpose, creating and expanding structures, and examining ways leaders are chosen for service. It examines socio-economic and racial reconciliation issues that undermine the gospel integrity and revitalization of the church as the Kingdom of God on earth.

Vocal Republican, accomplished gardener, lover of large cars, Ernest Haycox was nothing if not three-dimensional. Despite a haphazard childhood that included abandonment by his parents, Haycox (1899-1950) decided early on to be a writer. Once he began he did not stop, approaching writing with both an unparalleled passion and a keen business sense that included normal business hours in a downtown Portland office.

Until now little has been written about Haycox, the famed "Collier's" and "Saturday Evening Post" contributor who wrote twenty-four novels and more than two hundred short stories. Bridging the gap between the formula Western and the literary western novel, Haycox frequently incorporated actual historical events into his works: "Trouble Shooter" documents the building of the Union Pacific railroad, "The Border Trumpet" covers the Apache wars in Arizona, and "Bugles in the Afternoon" draws upon the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Director John Ford adapted Haycox's work for "Stagecoach" (1939, starring John Wayne), as did Cecil De Mille for "Union Pacific" (1939, starring Barbara Stanwyck).

Ernest Haycox Jr. describes his father's life, work, and views on the craft of writing. In a remarkably candid biography, original photographs of Hollywood stars and excerpts from Haycox's correspondence, including letters from the last years of his life, round out this incisive look at a literary giant.

At fifteen, Linda Darnell left her Texas home and normal adolescence to live the Hollywood dream promoted by fan magazine and studio publicity offices. She appeared in dozens of films and won international acclaim for "Blood and Sand" (playing opposite Tyrone Power), "Forever Amber," "A Letter to Three Wives," and the original version of "Unfaithfully Yours."

Driven by a stage mother to become rich and Famous, but unable to cope with the career she had longed for as a child, Darnell soon was caught in a downward spiral of drinking, failed marriages, and exploitive relationships. By her early twenties she was an alcoholic, hardened by a life in which beautiful women were chattel, and by the time of her death at age forty- one, she was struggling for recognition in the industry that once had called her its "glory girl."

"Hollywood Beauty "begins in the Southwest during the Depression, when Pearl Darnell became obsessed by the glitter of the movie world that would dominate her children's lives. We follow Linda's path from her Texas childhood and first public success-during the state centennial, in 1936-through her contract work with Twentieth Century-Fox in the heyday of the big-studio system. Film historian Ronald L. Davis documents Darnell's discovery and marriages, the adoption of her daughter, the marking of many well-known films, and her emotional difficulties, leading up to her tragic death by fire.

This is the story of a native teenager from a dysfunctional middle-class family thrust into the golden age of Hollywood. "Hollywood Beauty" examines America's public worship of movie stars and superficial success-its motives and consequences-and the addiction to escapism that this worship represents.

Throughout the 1940s, Zachary Scott (1914-1965) was the model for sophisticated, debonair villains in American film. His best-known roles include a mysterious criminal in The Mask of Dimitrios and the indolent husband in Mildred Pierce. He garnered further acclaim for his portrayal of villains in Her Kind of Man, Danger Signal, and South of St. Louis. Although he earned critical praise for his performance as a heroic tenant farmer in Jean Renoir's The Southerner, Scott never quite escaped typecasting. In Zachary Scott: Hollywood's Sophisticated Cad, Ronald L. Davis writes an appealing biography of the film star. Scott grew up in privileged circumstances--his father was a distinguished physician; his grandfather was a pioneer cattle baron--and was expected to follow his father into medical practice. Instead, Scott began to pursue a career in theater while studying at the University of Texas and subsequently worked his way on a ship to England to pursue acting. Upon his return to America, he began to look for work in New York. Excelling on stage and screen throughout the 1940s, Scott seemed destined for stardom. By the end of 1950, however, he had suffered through a turbulent divorce. A rafting accident left him badly shaken and clinically depressed. His frustration over his roles mounted, and he began to drink heavily. He remarried and spent the rest of his career concentrating on stage and television work. Although Scott continued to perform occasionally in films, he never reclaimed the level of stardom that he had in the mid-1940s. To reconstruct Scott's life, Davis uses interviews with Scott and colleagues and reviews, articles, and archival correspondence from the Scott papers at the University of Texas and from the Warner Bros. Archives. The result is a portrait of a talented actor who was rarely allowed to show his versatility on the screen.

Van Johnson's dazzling smile, shock of red hair, and suntanned freckled cheeks made him a movie-star icon. Among teenaged girls in the 1940s, he was popularized as the bobbysoxer's heartthrob. He won the nation's heart, too, by appearing in a series of blockbuster war films - A Guy Named Joe, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Weekend at the Waldorf, and Battleground. Perennially a leading man opposite June Allyson, Esther Williams, Judy Garland, and Janet Leigh, he rose to fame radiating the sunshine image Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer chose for him, that of an affable, wholesome boy-next-door. Legions of adoring moviegoers were captivated by this idealized persona that generated huge box-office profits for the studio. However, Johnson's off-screen life was not so sunny. His mother had rejected him in childhood, and he lived his adult life dealing with sexual ambivalence. A marriage was arranged with the ex-wife of his best friend, the actor Keenan Wynn. During the waning years of Hollywood's Golden Age, she and Johnson lived amid the glow of Hollywood's A-crowd. Yet their private life was charged with tension and conflict. Although morose and reclusive by nature, Johnson maintained a happy-go-lucky facade, even among co-workers who knew him as a congenial, dedicated professional. Once free of the golden-boy stereotype, he became a respected actor assigned stellar roles in such acclaimed films as State of the Union, Command Decision, The Last Time I Saw Paris, and The Caine Mutiny. With the demise of the big studios, Johnson returned to the stage, where he had begun his career as a song-and-dance man. After this, he appeared frequently in television shows, performed in nightclubs, and became the legendary darling of older audiences on the dinner playhouse circuit. Johnson (1916-2008) spent his post-Hollywood years living in solitude in New York City. This solid, thoroughly researched biography traces the career and influence of a favorite star and narrates a fascinating, sometimes troubled life story.