FOSTER HIRSCH

The first full-scale life of the controversial, greatly admired yet often underrated director/producer who was known as Otto the Terrible.Nothing about Otto Preminger was small, trivial, or self-denying, from his privileged upbringing in Vienna as the son of an improbably successful Jewish lawyer to his work in film and theater in Europe and, later, in America.His range as a director was remarkable: romantic comedies (The Moon Is Blue); musicals (Carmen Jones; Porgy and Bess); courtroom dramas (The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell; Anatomy of a Murder); adaptations of classic plays (Shaws Saint Joan, screenplay by Graham Greene); political melodrama (Advise and Consent); war films (In Harms Way); film noir (Laura; Angel Face; Bunny Lake Is Missing). He directed sweeping sagas (from The Cardinal and Exodus to Hurry Sundown) and small-scale pictures, adapting Françoise Sagans Bonjour Tristesse with Arthur Laurents and Nelson Algrens The Man with the Golden Arm.Foster Hirsch shows us Preminger battling studio head Darryl F. Zanuck; defying and undermining the Production Code of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Catholic Legion of Decency, first in 1953 by refusing to remove the words "virgin" and "pregnant" from the dialogue of The Moon Is Blue (he released the film without a Production Code Seal of Approval) and then, two yeras later, when he dared to make The Man with the Golden Arm, about the then-taboo subject of drug addiction. When he made Anatomy of a Murder in 1959, the censors objected to the use of the words "rape,""sperm,""sexual climax," and "penetration." Preminger made one concession (substituting "violation" for "penetration"); the picture was released with the seal, and marked the beginning of the end of the Code.Hirsch writes about how Preminger was a master of the "invisible" studio-bred approach to filmmaking, the so-called classical Hollywood style (lengthy takes; deep focus; long shots of groups of characters rather than close-ups and reaction shots).He shows us Preminger, in the 1950s, becoming the industrys leading employer of black performershis all-black Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess remain landmarks in the history of racial representation on the American screenand breaking another barrier by shooting a scene in a gay bar for Advise and Consent, a first in American film.Hirsch tells how Preminger broke the Hollywood blacklist when, in 1960, he credited the screenplay of Exodus to Dalton Trumbo, the most renowed of the Hollywood Ten, and hired more blacklisted talent than anyone else.We see Premingers balanced style and steadfast belief in his actors underacting set against his own hot-tempered personality, and finally we see this European-born director making his magnificent films about the American criminal justice system, Anatomy of a Murder, and about the American political system, Advise and Consent.Foster Hirsch shows us the manenraging and endearingand his brilliant work.

Edna Ferbers classic paean of love to the Mississippi River and the showboats that ran up and down it is once again available in hardcover as a facsimile of the first edition. First published in 1926, this timeless tale of the Cotton Blossom, Capn Andy, his shrewd wife Parthy, and their beautiful daughter Magnolia her remarkable daughter Kim was made famous on Broadway in 1927, when the legendary Jerome S. Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II collaborated on the musical. Since then it has become a beloved favorite, revived repeatedly to entertain generations with haunting and lyrical songs such as Old Man River and Cant Help Lovin That Man of Mine.

From 1905 to the crash of 1929, Sam Shubert (1874-1905) and his brothers Lee (1874-1953) and J. J. (1878-1963), despite poor beginnings and near-illiteracy, created a theater monopoly unrivaled in history. Their ruthless business tactics and showmanship made 42nd Street the heart of American popular theater and won them the most sought-after stars of the day, including Al Jolson, Carmen Miranda, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, Mae West, and Fred Astaire.

A fascinating look at Hollywoods most turbulent decade and the demise of the studio systemset against the boom of the postWorld War II years, the Cold War, and the atomic ageand the movies that reflected the seismic shiftsThe definitive book on 1950s Hollywood. BooklistLavish. . . insightful, rich, expansive, penetrating. KirkusHollywood in the 1950s was a period when the film industry both set conventions and broke norms and traditionsfrom Cinerama, CinemaScope, and VistaVision to the epic film and lavish musical. It was a decade that saw the rise of the anti-hero; the smoldering, the hidden, and the unspoken; teenagers gone wild in the streets; the sacred and the profane; the revolution of the Method; the socially conscious; the implosion of the studios; the end of the production code; and the invasion of the ultimate body snatcher: the small screen television.Here is Eisenhowers Americaseemingly complacent, conformity-ridden revealed in Vincente Minnellis Father of the Bride, Walt Disneys Cinderella, and Brigadoon, among others.And here is its darkening, resonant landscape, beset by conflict, discontent, and anxiety (The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Asphalt Jungle, A Place in the Sun, Touch of Evil, It Came From Outer Space) . . . an America on the verge of cultural, political and sexual revolt, busting up and breaking out (East of Eden, From Here to Eternity, On the Waterfront, Sweet Smell of Success, The Wild One, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Jailhouse Rock).An important, riveting look at our nation at its peak as a world power and at the political, cultural, sexual upheavals it endured, reflected and explored in the quintessential American art form.