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Starmaker
- David O. Selznick and the Production of Stars in the Hollywood Studio System
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
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Starmaker
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Publisher's summary
David O. Selznick (1902–1965) was one of the most prominent film producers of the Hollywood studio era, responsible for such artistic and commercial triumphs as King Kong, David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, A Star Is Born, Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, Spellbound, and The Third Man. However, film production was not his only domain. Starting in the late 1930s, he built an impressive stable of stars within his own independent company, including Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh, Joan Fontaine, Jennifer Jones, and Gregory Peck.
In Starmaker: David O. Selznick and the Production of Stars in the Hollywood Studio System, author Milan Hain reveals the mechanisms by which Selznick and his collaborators discovered and promoted new stars and describes how these personalities were marketed, whether for financial gain or symbolic recognition and prestige. Using a wide range of archival materials, the book significantly complements and reshapes our understanding of Selznick's celebrated career by focusing on heretofore neglected aspects of his creative and business activities. It also sheds light on the US film industry during the Golden Age of Hollywood studios and in the postwar period when the established order began to break down. By structuring the book around Selznick and his role as a starmaker, Hain demonstrates that star production and development in the Hollywood studio system was a highly organized and systematic activity, though the respective strategies and procedures were often hidden from the public eye.
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- Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era
- By: Thomas Schatz, Steven Bach - preface
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 24 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 22
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 22
At a time when the studio is making a stunning comeback, film historian Thomas Schatz provides an indispensable account of Hollywood's traditional blend of business and art. Working from industry documents, Schatz traces the development of house styles, the rise and fall of careers, and the making - and unmaking - of movies, from Frankenstein to Spellbound to Grand Hotel. The Genius of the System gives the definitive view of the workings of the Old Hollywood and the foundations of the New.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Textbook on Old Hollywood
- By Charlie Morton on 05-26-23
By: Thomas Schatz, and others
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Hollywood: The Oral History
- By: Jeanine Basinger, Sam Wasson
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon, Marni Penning
- Length: 28 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 95
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 76
From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly three thousand interviews, involving four hundred voices from the industry, Hollywood: The Oral History, lets a listener “listen in” on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera—Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd—to the biggest behind it—Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele, as well as the lesser known individuals that shaped what was heard and seen on screen.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Picky, Picky!
- By Patrick on 12-22-22
By: Jeanine Basinger, and others
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Running the Show
- Television from the Inside
- By: Jeff Melvoin
- Narrated by: Patrick Loos
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 2
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
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Story5 out of 5 stars 2
Seasoned showrunner Jeffrey Melvoin shares his fascinating insider's perspective on how to call the shots and make the final decisions when choosing and writing scripts, hiring staff, casting, making the budget, and juggling schedules. Along with the managerial responsibilities that keep the show afloat, they are also the visionary for the series and the characters. Melvoin describes how to confidently communicate abstract ideas so they can become the show's reality.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Stop that carrot!!!!!!!
- By Julie Hopkins on 04-03-24
By: Jeff Melvoin
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The Kid Stays in the Picture
- By: Robert Evans
- Narrated by: Robert Evans
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,026
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 917
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 907
Robert Evans' The Kid Stays in the Picture is universally recognized as the greatest, most outrageous, and most unforgettable show business memoir ever written. The basis of an award-winning documentary film, it remains the gold standard of Hollywood storytelling. An extraordinary raconteur, Evans spares no one, least of all himself. The Kid Stays in the Picture is sharp, witty, self-aggrandizing, and self-lacerating in equal measure.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not even close to unabridged
- By Shaun Bossio on 09-08-16
By: Robert Evans
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Cocktails with George and Martha
- Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
- By: Philip Gefter
- Narrated by: Alexa Morden
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 22
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Performance3 out of 5 stars 21
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Story4 out of 5 stars 21
From its debut in 1962, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a wild success and a cultural lightning rod. The play transpires over one long, boozy night, laying bare the lies, compromises, and scalding love that have sustained a middle-aged couple through decades of marriage. It scandalized critics but magnetized audiences. Across 644 sold-out Broadway performances, the drama demolished the wall between what could and couldn’t be said on the American stage and marked a definitive end to the I Love Lucy 1950s.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Another Bad Narration
- By TPH on 02-25-24
By: Philip Gefter
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The Hollywood Studios
- House Style in the Golden Age of the Movies
- By: Ethan Mordden
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 142
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 104
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Story4 out of 5 stars 106
Hollywood in the years between 1929 and 1948 was a town of moviemaking empires. The great studios were estates of talent: sprawling, dense, diverse. It was the Golden Age of the Movies, and each studio made its distinctive contribution. But how did the studios, "growing up" in the same time and place, develop so differently? What combinations of talents and temperaments gave them their signature styles?
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3 out of 5 stars
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The reader falls quite short of the book
- By Eleanor on 07-20-09
By: Ethan Mordden
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Fortune and Folly
- The Weird and Wonderful Life of the South's Most Eccentric Millionaire
- By: Sara A. H. Butler
- Narrated by: Tiffany Morgan
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Briarcliff Mansion and the land it occupies are owned by Emory University, which refers to it as its "Briarcliff Campus." Fortune and Folly, in part, illuminates the largely lost story of how the mansion, and the entire surrounding neighborhood, got its name. But in order to understand the mansion, we have to understand the man who built it. Briarcliff Mansion once belonged to a man named Asa Candler, Jr.—also known as Buddie. The second son and namesake of Coca-Cola founder Asa Griggs Candler, Buddie was a wealthy real estate developer of great successes and greater failures.
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Ferocious Ambition
- Joan Crawford’s March to Stardom
- By: Robert Dance
- Narrated by: Greg D. Barnett
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 2
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
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Story5 out of 5 stars 2
Joan Crawford's remarkable forty-five-year motion picture career is one of the industry's longest. Signing her first contract in 1925, she was crowned an MGM star four years later and by the mid-1930s was the most popular actress in America. In the early 1940s, Crawford's risky decision to move to Warner Bros. was rewarded with an Oscar for Mildred Pierce. This triumph launched a series of film noir classics. She teamed with rival Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, proving that Crawford, whose career had begun by defining big-screen glamor, had matured into a dramatic actress.
By: Robert Dance
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Pictures at a Revolution
- Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
- By: Mark Harris
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 576
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 414
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 415
Here is the epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967 - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Dolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde - and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood and America forever.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Would It Be Too Much To Ask?
- By Casey Keller on 12-31-08
By: Mark Harris
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Possessed
- The Life of Joan Crawford
- By: Donald Spoto
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 53
New York Times best-selling author Donald Spoto has brilliantly explored the lives and careers of numerous Hollywood stars and entertainment icons. In Possessed, his subject is the inimitable Joan Crawford, one of the most electrifying divas of the Golden Age of American film. A more thorough, revealing, and sympathetic portrait of the often maligned movie star - most notably lambasted, perhaps, in the scandalous best seller, Mommie Dearest - Possessed is a fascinating study of the real Joan Crawford, a remarkable actress, businesswoman, mother, and lover.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Waste of money
- By bkw74 on 07-19-21
By: Donald Spoto
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The Big Goodbye
- Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood
- By: Sam Wasson
- Narrated by: Sam Wasson
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 484
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 404
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 399
Chinatown is the Holy Grail of 1970s cinema. Its twist ending is the most notorious in American film and its closing line of dialogue the most haunting. Here for the first time is the incredible true story of its making. In Sam Wasson's telling, it becomes the defining story of the most colorful characters in the most colorful period of Hollywood history. Here is Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers, as compelling a movie star as there has ever been, embarking on his great, doomed love affair with Anjelica Huston.
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4 out of 5 stars
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This book is cursed
- By Dobbs on 04-13-20
By: Sam Wasson
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Camera Man
- Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century
- By: Dana Stevens
- Narrated by: Dana Stevens
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 131
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 112
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Story5 out of 5 stars 112
In Camera Man, film critic Dana Stevens pulls the lens out from Keaton’s life and work to look at concurrent developments in entertainment, journalism, law, technology, the political and social status of women, and the popular understanding of addiction. With erudition and sparkling humor, Stevens hopscotches among disciplines to bring us up to the present day, when Keaton’s breathtaking (and sometimes life-threatening) stunts remain more popular than ever as they circulate on the internet in the form of viral gifs
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4 out of 5 stars
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Worth a listen, but only as a postscript to Curtis
- By Vikon on 05-05-22
By: Dana Stevens
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Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
- How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
- By: Peter Biskind
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 23 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 752
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 567
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 564
Easy Rider, Raging Bulls follows the wild ride that was Hollywood in the 70s - an unabashed celebration of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (both on screen and off) and a climate where innovation and experimentation reigned supreme.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great Dish, Sketchy Analysis
- By Dubi on 12-14-13
By: Peter Biskind
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Down and Dirty Pictures
- Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film
- By: Peter Biskind
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 23 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 382
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 296
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 296
Down and Dirty Pictures chronicles the rise of independent filmmakers and of the twin engines - the Sundance Film Festival and Miramax Films - that have powered them. Peter Biskind profiles the people who took the independent movement from obscurity to the Oscars, most notably Sundance founder Robert Redford and Harvey Weinstein, who with his brother, Bob, made Miramax an indie powerhouse.
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5 out of 5 stars
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For the independent film lover!
- By natalie on 08-26-14
By: Peter Biskind