The Best Books About Film

[domino harvey]

It is interesting to see which films the studio considered of interest for that WB series. I love Air Force but I would think they’d do Sgt York over it, for instance, and Juarez and Green Pastures have not maintained a level of relevance their inclusion here suggests

[filmyfan]

Looking for best book on very early Hollywood - the origins etc...pre Studio System

I have the History of HW (An Illustrated History) and the Recent HW -The Oral History

Any Ideas?

[Walter Kurtz]

The Parade's Gone By...
Kevin Brownlow

[Walter Kurtz]

The best book on the formation of the "system" is ------

The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era
Thomas Schatz

It covers the 20's and 30's. Might have antecedents. I enjoyed it immensely a long time ago.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

The Parade's Gone By...
Kevin Brownlow

Second the Brownlow.

I’d add William K. Everson’s American Silent Film. It’s more specific on fads and trends for movies, but tracks closely the evolution of the industry from its primacy up to the introduction of sound. It speaks extensively on the studio era, but does detail how all that evolved and grew.

[Dr Amicus]

Second the Everton and the Schatz, the latter being one of the best film books I’ve ever read.

I’d also recommend Tino Balio’s The American Film Industry, the first couple of chapters were our set reading for the period in my uni class. I assume the first two volumes of the History of the American Cinema are definitive, but I haven’t got round to reading those volumes yet.

[filmyfan]

thanks all

[domino harvey]

I would say Mast’s A Short History of the Movies and Sklar’s Movie-Made America, especially for the time period you’re interested in. Gomery’s Shared Pleasures is excellent for early histories of exhibition, if that’s of interest as well

[Walter Kurtz]

I’d also recommend Tino Balio’s The American Film Industry, the first couple of chapters were our set reading for the period in my uni class.

Damn I forgot about that one. First semester of film school was a blur and I was making movies already. I will say this, though. I'm pretty sure I was the only kid in the film history class that actually read that book. So that's definitely a recommendation considering how sleep-deprived I was.

[Maltic]

That's quite a bibliography...

United Artists 1919-1950: The Company Built by the Stars (1976)
The American Film Industry (1985)
United Artists 1951-1978: The Company That Changed the Film Industry (1987)
Hollywood in the Age of Television (1990)
Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939 (1996)
The Foreign Film Renaissance on American Screens, 1946-1973 (2010)
Hollywood in the New Millennium (2013)
MGM (2018)

[Maladroit Aggregator]

Was looking at reading something about the great James Best and noticed there's a bio published by an outfit called BearManor Media. Went to their site and - whew - 118 pages of biographies and film and TV books, with the worst covers and design I've seen since the SwimmingHorses epoch.

My question is, are any of these worth reading? Obviously it depends on the subject, personal interests and so forth, but these all have the look of "fan" projects, which is generally fine for history and statistics, but lacking any real criticism or thematic consideration, etc. Also guessing these are POD quality, which... fuck POD.

[domino harvey]

It’s very helpful that I can browse by the tag “dead actress”

And also a multi volume history of Cracked magazine? How could “We wanted to make a magazine like Mad, but worse” possibly take one whole book, much less several?
EDIT: One of the pull quotes is just a polite email response from someone involved with the magazine. Amazing stuff!

Based on the prices, these are most definitely print on demand. That said, I’m all for hyperspecific niche topics like I’m seeing here on a quick browse, but just know you’re likely getting amateur writing or non-peer vetted material from the professionals (if not fully AI depending on the publication date)

[CantelopeSkiz]

I read Bear Manor's Virginia O'Brien biography last year. Maladroit's considerations are generally correct. The book follows her career closely, but you remain on the outside looking in at O'Brien's life. There are plenty of good anecdotes and photographs from her life. Some of the photographs are muddied by digital artifacting, and there are a couple of formatting issues with the text. Some of the anecdotes are repeated verbatim, one anecdote in particular is repeated many times, as if the author hadn't finalized where to slot it in. Other anecdotes aren't integrated into the narrative, and stand out as trivial non-sequiturs. As much as I wanted to like the book, the lack of acceptable revisions and editing forced me to accept that I had paid to read a working draft.

I suspect that nobody else is going to publish a biography of Virginia O'Brien, so I may as well keep my copy, but I couldn't possibly recommend that anybody else read it. I have nothing against amateur work, but that changes once you start charging people money for it. I suspect that, at best, the quality of their books depends on their author. I was at a charity book sale last weekend, and came across one of their books. Upon seeing who published it, I placed it back on the table.