Hal Wallis

Hal Wallis
Author: Bernard F. Dick
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2021-11-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0813187761
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Hal Wallis (1898-1986) might not be as well known as David O. Selznick or Samuel Goldwyn, but the films he produced—Casablanca, Jezebel, Now, Voyager, The Life of Emile Zola, Becket, True Grit, and many other classics (as well as scores of Elvis movies)—have certainly endured. As producer of numerous films, Wallis made an indelible mark on the course of America's film industry, but his contributions are often overlooked. Bernard Dick offers the first comprehensive assessment of the producer's incredible career. A former office boy and salesman, Wallis first engaged with the film business as the manager of a Los Angeles movie theater in 1922. He attracted the notice of the Warner brothers, who hired him as a publicity assistant. Within three months he was director of the department, and appointments to studio manager and production executive quickly followed. Wallis went on to oversee dozens of productions and formed his own production company in 1944. Dick draws on numerous sources such as Wallis's personal production files and exclusive interviews with many of his contemporaries to finally tell the full story of his illustrious career. Dick combines his knowledge of behind-the-scenes Hollywood with fascinating anecdotes to create a portrait of one of Hollywood's early power players.

Hal Wallis

Hal Wallis
Author: Bernard F. Dick
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2015-01-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0813159512
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Hal Wallis might not be as well known as David O. Selznick or Samuel Goldwyn, but the films he produced -- Casablanca, Jezebel, Now Voyager, The Life of Emile Zola, Becket, True Grit, and many other classics (as well as scores of Elvis movies) -- have certainly endured. As producer of numerous films, Wallis made an indelible mark on the course of America's film industry, but his contributions are often overlooked and no full-length study has yet assessed his incredible career. A former office boy and salesman, Wallis first engaged with the business of film as the manager of a Los Angeles movie theater in 1922. He attracted the notice of the Warner brothers, who hired him as a publicity assistant. Within three months he was director of the department, and appointments to studio manager and production executive quickly followed. Wallis went on to oversee dozens of productions and formed his own production company in 1944. Bernard F. Dick draws on numerous sources such as Wallis's personal production files and exclusive interviews with many of his contemporaries to finally tell the full story of his illustrious career. Dick combines his knowledge of behind-the-scenes Hollywood with fascinating anecdotes to create a portrait of one of Hollywood's early power players.

Starmaker

Starmaker
Author: Hal B. Wallis
Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1980
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:
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The legendary Warner Brothers movie producer recounts his days in the hectic movie world and reveals his role in discovering such talents as Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster and in making Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.

Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age at the American Film Institute

Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age at the American Film Institute
Author: George Stevens, Jr.
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 734
Release: 2009-05-27
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0307518124
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ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S 100 GREATEST FILM BOOKS OF ALL TIME • The first book to bring together interviews of master moviemakers from the American Film Institute’s renowned seminars, Conversations with the Great Moviemakers, offers an unmatched history of American cinema in the words of its greatest practitioners. Here are the incomparable directors Frank Capra, Elia Kazan, King Vidor, David Lean, Fritz Lang (“I learned only from bad films”), William Wyler, and George Stevens; renowned producers and cinematographers; celebrated screenwriters Ray Bradbury and Ernest Lehman; as well as the immortal Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini (“Making a movie is a mathematical operation. It’s absolutely impossible to improvise”). Taken together, these conversations offer uniquely intimate access to the thinking, the wisdom, and the genius of cinema’s most talented pioneers.

The Creative Producer

The Creative Producer
Author: David Lewis
Publisher: Scarecrow Filmmakers Series
Total Pages: 290
Release: 1993
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:
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In 1938, Warner Brothers production chief Hal Wallis grudgingly described David Lewis--one of his six "supervisors" and a veteran of 15 feature films--to director Michael Curtiz: "That Lewis is a genius at getting scripts out of people who can't write " Wallis knew that writing ultimately defined the job of the creative producer and that David Lewis had an uncanny talent for coaxing the best filmic material from the screenwriters he supervised. In this memoir, Lewis describes his development as a production executive and how the associate producer helped make the famed studio system work. It was the producer (or "supervisor", at Warners) who saw the script budgeted, cast the film, helped choose the director, and gently influenced the filming itself. Once shooting was complete, it was the producer who stayed with the project through editing and previews. David Lewis (1903-1987) was an associate producer at RKO and later at MGM. He hit his stride at Warner Bros., where, between 1937 and 1942, he produced twelve films with such popular stars as James Cagney (Each Dawn I Die), Humphrey Bogart (It All Came True), Bette Davis (Dark Victory), Ronald Reagan (Kings Row), Errol Flynn (Four's a Crowd), and Charles Boyer (All This and Heaven Too). His films were nominated for a total of 15 Academy Awards, including three for Best Picture. Some of Lewis's films have rightfully become classics; all reflect an unerring instinct for character and structure, part of the filmmaking process he describes in The Creative Producer.

Finding My Way

Finding My Way
Author: Lois Simmie
Publisher: Coteau Books
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2019-09-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1550507958
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Lois Simmie was born in Edam, Saskatchewan in 1932. Filled with awe and wonder at the bountiful and remarkable world unfolding around her Simmie takes us on the journey of her life and the events that shaped her into a writer. She describes her whimsical youth in Saskatchewan in a bygone era of Frank Sinatra on the radio, Amos ‘n’ Andy, the jitterbug, jazz, square dances, and Hollywood movies every Friday night in the town hall. Simmie’s magical delight in all things transports us through the Depression and war years to childhood summer visits to Hopkinsville, Kentucky in her relatives’ Gone With the Wind-style southern mansion, an adventure in the lush beauty of Brazil, and to Scotland while writing her first non-fiction book, The Secret Lives of Sgt. John Wilson, about the murder of a young Scottish woman by her RCMP husband. Simmie fell in love with words at a young age but it isn’t until later in life that she takes up her calling as a writer while living in Saskatoon. She describes the burgeoning Saskatchewan writing scene as “electric” as she enters an exciting community of like-minded writers and poets, a hotbed of creativity and inspiration that is the impetus of her finest writing and the culmination of an astonishing life story.

When Warners Brought Broadway to Hollywood, 1923-1939

When Warners Brought Broadway to Hollywood, 1923-1939
Author: Martin Shingler
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2018-01-23
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1137406585
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This book offers a different take on the early history of Warner Bros., the studio renowned for introducing talking pictures and developing the gangster film and backstage musical comedy. The focus here is on the studio’s sustained commitment to produce films based on stage plays. This led to the creation of a stock company of talented actors, to the introduction of sound cinema, to the recruitment of leading Broadway stars such as John Barrymore and George Arliss and to films as diverse as The Gold Diggers (1923), The Marriage Circle (1924), Beau Brummel (1924), Disraeli (1929), Lilly Turner (1933), The Petrified Forest (1936) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). Even the most crippling effects of the Depression in 1933 did not prevent Warners’ production of films based on stage plays, many being transformed into star vehicles for the likes of Ruth Chatterton, Leslie Howard and Bette Davis.

Hollywood and the O.K. Corral

Hollywood and the O.K. Corral
Author: Michael F. Blake
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2015-01-28
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476606773
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A lot can happen in 30 seconds. In the case of the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral, 30 seconds found three men dead, left two men wounded and ultimately captured the imagination of generations of Americans. Wyatt Earp, an against-all-odds hero who was literally the last man standing; Doc Holliday, Earp's unlikely crony; the tragic tale of the Earp family--all of these elements make the story of the O.K. Corral irresistible to a great many people. Hollywood filmmakers were quick to recognize the legend's attraction--and its potential. As early as 1939 (with the production of Frontier Marshal), moviemakers were recreating the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and its attendant happenings in Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881. The following decades produced various renderings of the story, some more historically accurate than others but all with the American flair for entertainment. This volume examines eight movie renderings of the legendary gunfight. Produced from 1939 to 1994, these movies each use Wyatt Earp and other real-life characters as their sources. The work focuses on the filmmakers' treatment of the history and the skill with which each balances fact with the necessity of entertainment. The ways in which Wyatt Earp is presented in each film and this portrayal's relationship to the period in which the film was made is also examined in detail. Films discussed are Frontier Marshal (1939), Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die (1942), My Darling Clementine (1946), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Hour of the Gun (1967), Doc (1971), Tombstone (1993), and Wyatt Earp (1994). Period photographs are also included.

Inventing Elvis

Inventing Elvis
Author: Mathias Haeussler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2020-12-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350107670
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Elvis Presley stands tall as perhaps the supreme icon of 20th-century U.S. culture. But he was perceived to be deeply un-American in his early years as his controversial adaptation of rhythm and blues music and gyrating on-stage performances sent shockwaves through Eisenhower's conservative America and far beyond. This book explores Elvis Presley's global transformation from a teenage rebel figure into one of the U.S.'s major pop-cultural embodiments from a historical perspective. It shows how Elvis's rise was part of an emerging transnational youth culture whose political impact was heavily conditioned by the Cold War. As well as this, the book analyses Elvis's stint as G.I. soldier in West Germany, where he acted as an informal ambassador for the so-called American way of life and was turned into a deeply patriotic figure almost overnight. Yet, it also suggests that Elvis's increasingly synonymous identity with U.S. culture ultimately proved to be a double-edged sword, as the excesses of his superstardom and personal decline seemingly vindicated long-held stereotypes about the allegedly materialistic nature of U.S. society. Tracing Elvis's story from his unlikely rise in the 1950s right up to his tragic death in August 1977, this book offers a riveting account of changing U.S. identities during the Cold War, shedding fresh light on the powerful role of popular music and consumerism in shaping images of the United States during the cultural struggle between East and West.

Eighty Odd Years in Hollywood

Eighty Odd Years in Hollywood
Author: John Meredyth Lucas
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2014-11-18
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0786481161
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John Meredyth Lucas, son of silent screen star and screenwriter Bess Meredyth (Ben-Hur, The Sea Beast, When a Man Loves, Don Juan) and stepson of renowned Hungarian-born director Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Life with Father), came of age in Hollywood during the 1930s. Lucas went on to an impressive career of his own as a writer-producer-director. He made films with Hal Wallis, Ross Hunter, Walt Disney, and others, and he wrote, produced, and directed such classic television series as Mannix, The Fugitive and Star Trek. Completed shortly before his death in 2002, Lucas' memoir is filled with never-before-told recollections of many Hollywood greats and features previously unpublished photographs. With Lucas, we go behind the scenes, onto the studio lots and into the parties with family friends John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Errol Flynn and Jack Warner, to name just a few. It's a boy's-eye-view of Hollywood in a time of glamour, decadence, and the golden years of filmmaking.