It could be said that the career of Canadian-born film director Allan Dwan (1885-1981) began at the dawn of the American motion picture industry. Originally a scriptwriter, Dwan became a director purely by accident. Even so, his creativity and problem-solving skills propelled him to the top of his profession. He achieved success with numerous silent film performers, most spectacularly with Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Gloria Swanson, and later with such legendary stars as Shirley Temple and John Wayne. Though his star waned in the sound era, Dwan managed to survive through pluck and ingenuity. Considering himself better off without the fame he enjoyed during the silent era, he went on to do some of his best work for second-echelon studios (notably Republic Pictures' Sands of Iwo Jima) and such independent producers as Edward Small. Along the way, Dwan also found personal happiness in an unconventional manner. Rich in detail with two columns of text in each of its nearly 400 pages, and with more than 150 photographs, this book presents a thorough examination of Allan Dwan and separates myth from truth in his life and films.

Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century brings to life the most popular movie star of his day, the personification of the Golden Age of Hollywood. At his peak, in the teens and 1920s, the swashbuckling adventurer embodied the new American century of speed, opportunity, and aggressive optimism. The essays and interviews in this volume bring fresh perspectives to his life and work, including analyses of films never before examined. Also published here for the first time in English is a first-hand production account of the making of Fairbanks's last silent film, The Iron Mask. Fairbanks (1883–1939) was the most vivid and strenuous exponent of the American Century, whose dominant mode after 1900 was the mass marketing of a burgeoning democratic optimism, at home and abroad. During those first decades of the twentieth century, his satiric comedy adventures shadow-boxed with the illusions of class and custom. His characters managed to combine the American easterner's experience and pretension and the westerner's promise and expansion. As the masculine personification of the Old World aristocrat and the New World self-made man—tied to tradition yet emancipated from history—he constructed a uniquely American aristocrat striding into a new age and sensibility. This is the most complete account yet written of the film career of Douglas Fairbanks, one of the first great stars of the silent American cinema and one of the original United Artists (comprising Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith). John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh's text is especially rich in its coverage of the early years of the star's career from 1915 to 1920 and covers in detail several films previously considered lost.

What was it like to work behind the scenes, away from the spotlight's glare, in Hollywood's so-called Golden Age? The interviews in this book provide eye-witness accounts from the likes of Steven Spielberg and Terry Gilliam, to explore the creative decisions that have shaped some of Classical Hollywood's most-loved films.

 In a prolific career spanning six decades, actor Burt Reynolds was one of the world's most famous stars of film and television. As much a folk hero as a Hollywood celebrity, he began as a stuntman and bit player in B Westerns and TV shows before landing a starring role on NBC's Riverboat (1959-1961). His breakthrough role in Deliverance (1972) made him famous and the sleeper hit Smokey and the Bandit (1977) made his name a household word. This first critical overview of Reynolds' work examines his complete filmography, featuring candid discussions with costars and collaborators, exclusive behind-the-scenes photos and a wealth of film stills.

Claire Trevor (1910-2000) is best remembered as the alluring blonde femme fatale in such iconic noir films as Murder, My Sweet (1944) and Raw Deal (1948). Yet she was a versatile performer who brought rare emotional depth to her art. She was effective in a range of diverse roles, from an outcast prostitute in John Ford's classic Stagecoach (1939) to the ambitious tennis mother in Hard, Fast and Beautiful (1951) to the embittered wife of a landowner in William Wellman's overlooked gem My Man and I (1952). Nominated for three Oscars, she deservedly won Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Gaye Dawn, a gangster's broken-down moll in Key Largo (1948). The author covers her life and career in detail, recognizing her as one of the finest actresses of her generation.

With no formal training as an actor, Welsh-born Ray Milland (1907-1986), a former trooper in the British Army's Household Cavalry, enjoyed a half-century career working alongside some of the great directors and stars from the Golden Age of cinema. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as the alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend (1945), a defining moment that enabled him to break free from romantic leads and explore darker shades of his debonair demeanor, such as the veiled menace of his scheming husband in Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder (1954). A consummate professional with wide range, Milland took the directorial reins in several of his starring vehicles in the 1950s, most notably in the intelligent Western A Man Alone (1955). He comfortably slipped into most genres, from romantic comedy to adventure to film noir. Later he turned to science fiction and horror movies, including two with cult filmmaker Roger Corman. This first complete filmography covers the actor's screen career, with a concise introductory biography and an appendix listing his extensive radio and television credits.

The first intimate look at the cracked fairytale life of Hollywood's first family, the Farrows. John Farrow was Hollywood royalty. An Academy Award-winning director and screenwriter, he was married to the talented and beautiful actress Maureen O'Sullivan, best known for playing Jane in Tarzan films with Johnny Weissmuller. Together they had seven children, including esteemed actress Mia Farrow, mother of journalist Ronan Farrow. From the outside, they were a fairytale Hollywood family. But all was not as it seemed. The Farrows of Hollywood: Their Dark Side of Paradise reveals that Mia Farrow's allegations of sexual molestation by Woody Allen of their seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan, has roots in Farrow’s childhood relationship with her father, John Farrow. John was often an abusive father to his children, his wife, and to his co-workers in Hollywood. Called the most disliked man in Hollywood, John Farrow was a tortured, tragic artist and father. He left his children a legacy of trauma and pain that the family kept hidden. It erupted only years later when Mia Farrow unknowingly revealed her pain through her words and behavior in her allegations aimed at Allen. The book includes new research, never-before-revealed interviews with actors who worked with John Farrow, and an original theory from author, biographer, and documentarian Marilyn Ann Moss.

"Douglas Fairbanks takes the full measure of the star's remarkable life. Jeffrey Vance bases his portrait on a rich array of sources, including Fairbanks's personal and professional papers and scrapbooks, newly available documentation and rediscovered films, and his own extensive interviews with those who knew or worked with Fairbanks. Engagingly written and sumptuously designed, with 237 photographs, the book goes beyond Fairbanks's public persona to thoroughly explore his art and his far-reaching influence."--BOOK JACKET.

For a decade Wallace Reid was the most recognized face in Hollywood, the most universally beloved actor in silent film. Today all that is widely remembered of "Wally" Reid is that he died in a padded sanitarium cell, the victim of a fatal morphine addiction. Of all the actors who have enjoyed great fame only to vanish from the public eye, Reid perhaps fell the fastest and the hardest. This first full biography recounts Reid's complicated childhood, his disrupted family history and his rise to film stardom despite these restricting factors. It documents his myriad talents and accomplishments, most notably his gift for brilliant onscreen acting. The text explores in depth how the modern studio, however unconsciously, turned the popular star, a well-adjusted man with a loving family, into a drug-dependent mental patient within three years. His death rocked the foundations of Hollywood, and the huge new industry that he helped build nearly died with "Dashing Wally Reid."

Between 1910 and 1921, the American Film Company was one of the fledgling movie industry’s most successful studios, with production facilities in Santa Barbara and business offices in Chicago. Nicknamed for its distinctive winged “A” logo, the “Flying A” produced nearly 1,200 films, starring such favorites of the day as Mary Miles Minter, J. Warren Kerrigan, Wallace Reid, and King Baggot. The company’s rather patriotic motto invited patrons to “See Americans first.” The studio’s films also documented the picturesque and developing Pacific seaside community of Santa Barbara and served as a training ground for some of Hollywood’s greatest directors, including Allan Dwan, Henry King, Victor Fleming, Frank Borzage, George Marshall, William Desmond Taylor, and Marshall Neilan.