Abbott and Costello on the Home Front

Abbott and Costello on the Home Front
Author: Scott Allen Nollen
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2009-01-09
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780786435210

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As two of the most popular entertainers of the mid-century film industry, comic greats Bud Abbott and Lou Costello offered an essential balm to the American public following the sorrows of the Great Depression and during the trauma of World War II. This is the first book to focus in detail on the immensely popular wartime films of Abbott and Costello, discussing the production, content, and reception of 18 films within the context of wartime events on the home front and abroad. The films covered include the service comedies Buck Privates, In the Navy, and Keep ’Em Flying; more mainstream comic relief films such as Pardon My Sarong and Who Done It?; and post-war experiments such as Little Giant and The Time of Their Lives. More than 120 stills and lobby cards from the author’s personal collection illustrate the text, including many showing outtakes or deleted scenes.

Abbott and Costello on the Home Front

Abbott and Costello on the Home Front
Author: Scott Allen Nollen
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2009-06-08
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0786453257

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As two of the most popular entertainers of the mid-century film industry, comic greats Bud Abbott and Lou Costello offered an essential balm to the American public following the sorrows of the Great Depression and during the trauma of World War II. This is the first book to focus in detail on the immensely popular wartime films of Abbott and Costello, discussing the production, content, and reception of 18 films within the context of wartime events on the home front and abroad. The films covered include the service comedies Buck Privates, In the Navy, and Keep 'Em Flying; more mainstream comic relief films such as Pardon My Sarong and Who Done It?; and post-war experiments such as Little Giant and The Time of Their Lives. More than 120 stills and lobby cards from the author's personal collection illustrate the text, including many showing outtakes or deleted scenes.

World War II for Kids

World War II for Kids
Author: Richard Panchyk
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2005-11-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1613740271

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Now more than ever, kids want to know about our country's great struggles during World War II. This book is packed with information that kids will find fascinating, from Hitler's rise to power in 1933 to the surrender of the Japanese in 1945. Much more than an ordinary history book, it is filled with excerpts from actual wartime letters written to and by American and German troops, personal anecdotes from people who lived through the war in the United States, Germany, Britain, Russia, Hungary, and Japan, and gripping stories from Holocaust survivors—all add a humanizing global perspective to the war. This collection of 21 activities shows kids how it felt to live through this monumental period in history. They will play a rationing game or try the butter extender recipe to understand the everyday sacrifices made by wartime families. They will try their hands at military strategy in coastal defense, break a code, and play a latitude and longitude tracking game. Whether growing a victory garden or staging an adventure radio program, kids will appreciate the hardships and joys experienced on the home front.

Norman Lear

Norman Lear
Author: Tripp Whetsell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2024-11-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1493068415

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An in-depth telling of the Norman Lear's seven-decade career that Publishers Weekly calls a "lovingly detailed portrait" and "a fitting tribute to a consequential figure in television history.” Beginning in the 1970s, writer and producer Norman Lear forever altered the television landscape with such groundbreaking situation comedies as All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, and One Day at a Time. For over half a century his body of work boldly tackled race, class, sexuality, politics, and religion—topics previously considered too taboo to be the subject of comedy on the small screen. Norman Lear: His Life and Times is the unforgettable story of an extraordinary seven-decade career. Veteran author and entertainment journalist Tripp Whetsell offers an intimate portrait of Lear that is the product of years of research and numerous interviews. Whetsell shows how Lear created the gold standard for television comedies, producing shows that were the first to give underrepresented members of society an authentic prime-time voice, while encouraging audiences to confront their own humanity and shortcomings. In the process, he explores one of television’s most transformative periods, detailing Lear’s legacy as one of its chief architects and catalysts. This affectionate and candid tribute combines show-business history with an illuminating consideration of the inner workings of “the man in the white hat”—a figure who singlehandedly redefined an entire medium by reflecting the world around him.

The President’s Ladies

The President’s Ladies
Author: Bernard F. Dick
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2014-03-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1617039802

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A fascinating story of Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan, and Nancy Davis

The Abbott & Costello Story

The Abbott & Costello Story
Author: Stephen Cox
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
Total Pages: 516
Release: 1997-10-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1620452073

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Offers profiles of the popular comedy team, looks at their careers in vaudeville, radio, and film, shares several of their most famous routines, and includes the reminscences of those who worked with them.

Committed to Victory

Committed to Victory
Author: Richard E. Holl
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2015-10-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813165652

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When World War II broke out in Europe in September 1939, Kentucky was still plagued by the Great Depression. Even though the inevitably of war had become increasingly apparent earlier that year, the citizens of the Commonwealth continued to view foreign affairs as a lesser concern compared to issues such as the lingering economic depression, the approaching planting season, and the upcoming gubernatorial race. It was only the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that destroyed any lingering illusions of peace. In Committed to Victory: The Kentucky Home Front During World War II, author Richard Holl offers the first comprehensive examination of the Commonwealth's civilian sector during this pivotal era in the state's history. National mobilization efforts rapidly created centers of war production and activity in Louisville, Paducah, and Richmond, producing new economic prosperity in the struggling region. The war effort also spurred significant societal changes, including the emergence of female and minority workforces in the state. In the Bluegrass, this trend found its face in Pulaski County native Rose Will Monroe, who was discovered as she assembled B-24 and B-29 bombers and was cast as Rosie the Riveter in films supporting the war effort. Revealing the struggles and triumphs of civilians during World War II, Holl illuminates the personal costs of the war, the black market for rationed foods and products, and even the inspiration that coach Adolph Rupp and the University of Kentucky basketball team offered to a struggling state. Committed to Victory is a timely and engaging account that fills a significant gap in the literature on a crucial period of American history.

Into the Jungle!

Into the Jungle!
Author: Jimmy Kugler
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2023-01-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1496842839

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Near the end of World War II and after, a small-town Nebraska youth, Jimmy Kugler, drew more than a hundred double-sided sheets of comic strip stories. Over half of these six-panel tales retold the Pacific War as fought by “Frogs” and “Toads,” humanoid creatures brutally committed to a kill-or-be-killed struggle. The history of American youth depends primarily on adult reminiscences of their own childhoods, adult testimony to the lives of youth around them, or surmises based on at best a few creative artifacts. The survival then of such a large collection of adolescent comic strips from America’s small-town Midwest is remarkable. Michael Kugler reproduces the never-before-published comics of his father’s adolescent imagination as a microhistory of American youth in that formative era. Also included in Into the Jungle! A Boy's Comic Strip History of World War II are the likely comic book models for these stories and inspiration from news coverage in newspapers, radio, movies, and newsreels. Kugler emphasizes how US propaganda intended to inspire patriotic support for the war gave this young artist a license for his imagined violence. In a context of progressive American educational reform, these violent comic stories, often in settings modeled on the artist’s small Nebraska town, suggests a form of adolescent rebellion against moral conventions consistent with comic art’s reputation for “outsider” or countercultural expressions. Kugler also argues that these comics provide evidence for the transition in American taste from war stories to the horror comics of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Kugler’s thorough analysis of his father’s adolescent art explains how a small-town boy from the plains distilled the popular culture of his day for an imagined war he could fight on his audacious, even shocking terms.

Historical Dictionary of American Cinema

Historical Dictionary of American Cinema
Author: M. Keith Booker
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 655
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1538130122

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One of the most powerful forces in world culture, American cinema has a long and complex history that stretches through more than a century. This history not only includes a legacy of hundreds of important films but also the evolution of the film industry itself, which is in many ways a microcosm of the history of American society. Historical Dictionary of American Cinema, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 600 cross-referenced entries covering people, films, companies, techniques, themes, and subgenres that have made American cinema such a vital part of world culture.

MagicImage Filmbooks Presents Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

MagicImage Filmbooks Presents Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Author: Philip J. Riley
Publisher: Magicimage Filmbooks
Total Pages: 172
Release: 1990
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

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From the vaults of the Ackerman Archives. Contains: production background; a press book; biography notes on cast and crew; complete shooting script; rare photos; and behind the scene photos.