West Hollywood to Burbank

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan R. Ellenberger
Keyword(s):  
Academy Awards ◽  
Box Office ◽  
West Hollywood ◽  
Bette Davis ◽  
Anatole Litvak ◽  
The Right ◽  
Old Maid

Samuel Goldwyn loans Hopkins to Warner Bros. for a four-picture deal. Hopkins is slipping at the box office, so Anatole Litvak suggests that they cast her in their new property Dark Victory. But Bette Davis is assigned to the role and Hopkins hires a new agent, Charles Feldman, and battles with Warner Bros. over her parts, even offering to reduce her salary to be given better roles. Hopkins newfound liberal beliefs, a result of her marriage to Litvak, attract the FBI’s attentions. Litvak has a weekend affair with Bette Davis, Hopkins finds out, and threatens to divorce him and name Davis as correspondent. Jack Warner talks her out of it and searches for the right role for her, going back and forth on several projects, until finally they agree on The Old Maid, costarring . . . Bette Davis. Tests on the film continue until Academy Awards night, when Bette Davis receives the Best Actress Oscar for Jezebel; Hopkins reacts by trashing her own home.

“Perfect Little Bitches”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan R. Ellenberger
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Boarding School ◽  
Legal Action ◽  
Bette Davis ◽  
Old Maid

This chapter documents the making of The Old Maid, the problems and difficulties encountered, and the deepening of the infamous Hopkins-Davis feud. When filming is completed, Hopkins flies to New York and has an affair with the German writer Carl Zuckmayer. Jack Warner casts Paul Muni in We Are Not Alone, but Muni refuses to accept Hopkins as his costar. Warner removes her from the film and a new property is brought to her attention, All This, and Heaven Too. Originally bought for Bette Davis, Hopkins wants it and threatens legal action, so Jack Warner assigns it to her. Critics call Hopkins’s performance in The Old Maid “magnetic” and the casting of Hopkins and Davis is compared to “steel striking steel.” Hopkins reads that Litvak and actress Ann Sheridan are having an affair. Despite her relationship with Carl Zuckmayer, she is furious. Hopkins flies to Reno and files for divorce. There, Hopkins reflects on Michael’s education and sends him to boarding school. In addition, her relationship with her mother is strained and her finances are low.

Tola

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan R. Ellenberger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Film ◽  
Gone With The Wind ◽  
Bette Davis ◽  
Anatole Litvak ◽  
Theatre Guild

On her return to the United States, Hopkins meets Russian-born director Anatole Litvak. They become close, and she stars in his first American film, The Woman I Love. Her costar Paul Muni is bothered by Hopkins’s interference, and fights ensue. Hopkins buys the former estate of John Gilbert. Warner Bros. plans to make Jezebel, a part Hopkins wants, however, she is tricked into selling her rights and the role is given to Bette Davis. Discouraged, Hopkins returns to Goldwyn and makes Woman Chases Man. Polls claim that Hopkins is the number one choice to play Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, but David O. Selznick has other plans. Hopkins moves into her new Tower Grove home. She elopes with Anatole Litvak and appears in Wine of Choice for the Theatre Guild, but it fails to meet her standards. She is devastated at the death of her ex-husband “Billy” Parker. After the funeral, she collapses and is admitted to the hospital.

scholarly journals Minority Voices In Power Rangers Movie

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-17
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Ngestirosa EWK
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Research Result ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Team Working ◽  
The Right ◽  
Theory Research

Power Rangers is a 2017 superhero movie that was previously known in Power Rangers film series. Power Rangers attracts consumers of all ages and backgrounds, and it quickly becomes the box office in the world. This movie gets some critics and controversial responds. The urgency of this study is to respond the controversial issues toward the movie considered harmful for children. My aim to have this study is to expose some important issues which relate to minority groups. The study ascertains minority voices perceived as right equality issue despite many negative issues lingering this movie. This issue links to liberties which include freedom of life stated in US Bill of Human Right. This study applies popular literature approach and Hall representation theory. Research result shows the minority voice that reveals the positive image of minority group such as the powerful and independent individual. It also portrays, courage, confidence, humanities, cares and love, friendship and team working, trust and support, justice and anti-bullying. Those issues are gathered in the scenes from the image: the acceptance of color people and the right of LGBT represented by some characters.      

Pre-Code in Synthetic Flesh

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan K. Rode
Keyword(s):  
Monte Carlo ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Production Code ◽  
Bette Davis ◽  
Key Driver

Curtiz’s career is summarized during the pre-Code era of Hollywood films. The evolution of the Production Code from the 1922 appointment of Will Hays as the czar of the MPPDA to the lack of enforcement of the Code is contextually chronicled as a key driver of the nature of Warner Bros. pictures during the early years of the Depression. Zanuck pioneered the “ripped from the headlines” gangster dramas that struck a chord with audiences. After he directed The Mad Genius, with John Barrymore, Curtiz’s pay was cut as Warners lost $8 million in 1931.Following The Woman from Monte Carlo and the visually creative Alias the Doctor, Curtiz was assigned the contemporary Strange Love of Molly Louvain, starring Ann Dvorak.He hit box-office gold with Doctor X (1932), a gruesome pre-Code horror film starring Fay Wray, who recounted Curtiz’s cold, sometimes cruel behavior on the set. Curtiz’s production of The Cabin in the Cotton included his racial faux pas and his alienation of Bette Davis during their first film together.His masterly direction of 20,000 Years in Sing Sing concluded a year of worsening economic conditions for the country.

Reaching Their Majority

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan K. Rode
Keyword(s):  
Financial Management ◽  
Hotel Room ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
Virginia City ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Secondary Role ◽  
Bette Davis ◽  
Sons Of Liberty

Curtiz was assigned to finishBlackwell’s Island.This was followed by his direction of Sons of Liberty, a patriotic short championed by the brothers Warner.The film won an Oscar for Best Short Subject, and Curtiz was given a $3,000 bonus from a grateful Jack Warner. Building on the original success of Four Daughters, he established a successful franchise with Daughters Courageous and Four Wives. Curtiz also beganhis relationship with the renowned cinematographer James Wong Howe, who would shoot four films for him. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essexwas a difficult production because of the dueling egos of Errol Flynn and Bette Davis and the dissatisfaction of Olivia de Havilland, whom Jack Warner deliberately cast in a secondary role to punish her.Curtiz made the picture beautifully, but it was a box-office disappointment. Curtiz also had to cope with a family calamity when his daughter Kitty cut her wrists in a Hollywood hotel room. He was also short of cash owing to his and Bess’s careless financial management. Borrowing money from Jack Warner, he got his mother and two of his brothers out of Hungary and resettled in Hollywood. After directing Virginia City, amid the outbreak of war in Europe, Curtiz prepared for an epic swashbuckler.

The Right Place to Be

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-216
Author(s):  
Steven C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Emile Zola ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Unexpected Death ◽  
Music Department ◽  
Competitive Relationship ◽  
Bette Davis ◽  
Erich Wolfgang Korngold ◽  
The Right ◽  
First Time

Days after leaving Selznick, Steiner became the highest-paid staff composer at Warner Bros. It was a deal he was quietly arranging before leaving Selznick, detailed here for the first time. Steiner would spend most of the next three decades at Warners. This chapter provides a detailed examination of the studio’s music department, and explains why its infrastructure, staff, and varied creative content were ideally suited to Steiner’s talents. The chapter describes his friendly if competitive relationship with Warner Bros.’ favorite freelance composer, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Steiner works discussed include the Best Picture–winning Life of Emile Zola, the start of his long collaboration with Bette Davis, and his iconic Warner Bros. fanfare. The chapter also chronicles the unexpected death of Steiner’s mother in Vienna, and Max’s frantic—and ultimately successful—efforts to bring his father to America, after Hitler’s annexation of Austria.

Representing the Female Pugilist: Narratives of Race, Gender, and Disability in Million Dollar Baby

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellexis Boyle ◽  
Brad Millington ◽  
Patricia Vertinsky
Keyword(s):  
Right To Die ◽  
Academy Awards ◽  
Cultural Myths ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
The Right

Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby won five Academy Awards but also came under attack from female boxers and disability activists. Ostensibly a drama about a tenacious woman’s quest to become a professional fighter and the male coach who assists her, Million Dollar Baby appears to insert a radical portrayal of femininity, female athleticism, and power into the male-dominated genre of boxing films and, more generally, a media that has been largely hostile to female boxing. We explore the extent to which the female lead can be viewed as a transgressive figure along with the discourses of containment that reduce her threat to longstanding cultural myths about boxing as a male preserve. Our analyses of the film’s racial, gender, class, and disability politics contend that its focus is not women’s boxing, disability, or the right to die; rather, like boxing, this film is about the male struggle to protect masculinity in a sporting world deeply shaken by the increasing presence of women.

“Those fine patriotic citizens, the Warner Brothers”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan K. Rode
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Emergency Relief ◽  
White House ◽  
Wing Motion ◽  
Box Office ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Right

During the height of World War II, Curtiz directed Mission to Moscow (1943), the most controversial film of his career. The wartime alliance between the U.S.S.R. and the United States motivated President Roosevelt to personally request the brothers Warner to produce this film. It was based on the best-selling “diary” of a former Soviet ambassador and F.D.R. intimate, Joseph Davies, and the Warners and Curtiz believed that they were supporting the war effort. Davies, however, exercised both script approval and the power of the White House in shaping the film into an absurdly biased tribute to Stalin and the Soviet Union. Although the finished film had minimal influence on public opinion, it fueled the creation of the right-wing Motion Picture Alliance and the postwar HUAC witch hunt.Curtiz pivoted to direct the Irving Berlin musical revue This Is the Army, which became his most financially successful Warner picture; Harry and Jack Warner donated all of the considerable profits to the Army Emergency Relief Fund.He also directed Passage to Marseille, a problem-wracked failure, and Janie, an adolescent drama that was a box-office hit.

Ridley Scott’s Spartacus

Ridley Scott ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 120-128
Author(s):  
Vincent LoBrutto
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Ridley Scott ◽  
Visual Effects ◽  
Academy Awards ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Class Distinction

Ridley Scott ventured into what was once known as the “sand and sandals” genre with a film inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus. This film marked the first of many performances by Russell Crowe in a Ridley Scott film; here he appeared as Maximus, a man who fell from grace as a soldier to become a slave gladiator greatly popular with the crowds. Scott and his production designer Arthur Max diligently re-created ancient Rome utilizing partial sets and state-of-the-art digital technology. Gladiator was a huge box office hit and was heavily nominated at the Academy Awards, winning for Best Picture, Best Actor (Crowe), Best Costumes, and Best Visual Effects. The film embraced many themes, including power and class distinction, and portrayed the brutality of the Coliseum like never before.

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