Collected interviews with the director of such films as The Philadelphia Story, Adam's Rib, A Star Is Born, and My Fair Lady

One of the highest-paid studio contract directors of his time and dubbed the "women's director", George Cukor was five times nominated for an Academy Award as Best Director; and he was a homosexual--a rarity among the top echelon. Patrick McGilligan's biography reveals how Cukor persevered within a system fraught with bigotry while becoming one of Hollywood's consummate filmmakers.

One of the highest-paid studio contract directors of his time, George Cukor was nominated five times for an Academy Award as Best Director. In publicity and mystique he was dubbed the “women’s director” for guiding the most sensitive leading ladies to immortal performances, including Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Judy Garland, and—in ten films, among them The Philadelphia Story and Adam’s Rib—his lifelong friend and collaborator Katharine Hepburn. But behind the “women’s director” label lurked the open secret that set Cukor apart from a generally macho fraternity of directors: he was a homosexual, a rarity among the top echelon. Patrick McGilligan’s biography reveals how Cukor persevered within a system fraught with bigotry while becoming one of Hollywood’s consummate filmmakers.

The various essays in this volume, all written by prominent experts in the field, offer critical discussions of every feature film Cukor directed and include a rich trove of valuable information about their production histories.

The director of classic films such as Sylvia Scarlett, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Adam’s Rib, A Star Is Born, and My Fair Lady, George Cukor is widely admired but often misunderstood. Reductively stereotyped in his time as a “woman’s director”—a thinly veiled, disparaging code for “gay”—he brilliantly directed a wide range of iconic actors and actresses, including Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, and Maggie Smith. As Katharine Hepburn, the star of ten Cukor films, told the director, “All the people in your pictures are as goddamned good as they can possibly be, and that’s your stamp.” In this groundbreaking, lavishly illustrated critical study, Joseph McBride provides insightful and revealing essayistic portraits of Cukor’s actors in their most memorable roles. The queer filmmaker gravitated to socially adventurous, subversively rule-breaking, audacious dreamers who are often sexually transgressive and gender fluid in ways that seem strikingly modern today. McBride shows that Cukor’s seemingly self-effacing body of work is characterized by a discreet way of channeling his feelings through his actors. He expertly cajoled actors, usually gently but sometimes with bracing harshness, to delve deeply into emotional areas they tended to keep safely hidden. Cukor’s wry wit, his keen sense of psychological and social observation, his charm and irony, and his toughness and resilience kept him active for more than five decades in Hollywood. George Cukor’s People gives him the in-depth, multifaceted examination his rich achievement deserves.

George Cukor is one of the studio era's most famous and admired directors, with many of the American cinema's most beloved classics to his credit, including The Women, Gaslight, Adam's Rib, A Star is Born, and My Fair Lady to his credit. Not himself a scriptwriter, he was particularly adept at choosing which properties to adapt and then managing the adaptation process with verve and effectiveness. What makes for a good adapter, for a talented master of ceremonies who knows where to put everything and everybody (including the camera)? Who knows how to make a property his own even while enhancing the value it has as belonging to someone else? The essays in this volume provide a series of complementary answers to those questions. Though many of his films are celebrated, Cukor has hitherto not received appropriate critical attention. Cukor's interest in the various forms of indoor cinema lacked the generic focus of Ford's westerns and Hitchcock's thrillers. His style was theatricality writ large, a successful transference to the screen of what he had learned from his successful Broadway career, including the outsized, often flamboyant handling of emotionality. Yet Cukor was also a man of the cinema, fascinated by the ever-developing potentials of his adopted medium, as shown by the more than fifty films he directed in a career that endured from the early sound era into the 1970s.

With access to Cukor's personal correspondence dating from the 1930s and in-depth interviews with over 100 legendary Hollywood figures--including Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, and Rex Harrison--Levy has compiled the definitive biography of the award-winning director of My Fair Lady, A Star is Born and other acclaimed films. Photos. Filmography.

The irreverent, brilliant memoirs of the legendary filmmaker James Ivory In Solid Ivory, a carefully crafted mosaic of memories, portraits, and reflections, the Academy Award–winning filmmaker James Ivory, a partner in the legendary Merchant Ivory Productions and the director of A Room with a View, Howards End, Maurice, and The Remains of the Day, tells stories from his remarkable life and career as one of the most influential directors of his time. At times, he touches on his love affairs, looking back coolly and with unexpected frankness. From first meeting his collaborator and life partner, Ismail Merchant, at the Indian Consulate in New York to winning an Academy Award at age eighty-nine for Call Me by Your Name; from seeing his first film at age five in Klamath Falls, Oregon, to memories of Satyajit Ray, Jean Renoir, The New Yorker magazine’s film critic Pauline Kael (his longtime enemy), Vanessa Redgrave, J. D. Salinger, George Cukor, Kenneth Clark, Bruce Chatwin, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and Merchant—Ivory writes with invariable fluency, wit, and perception about what made him who he is and how he made the movies for which he is known and loved. Solid Ivory, edited by Peter Cameron, is an utterly winning portrait of an extraordinary life told by an unmatched storyteller.

After marrying a young woman from a wealthy family, Jim Conway acquires his own wealth in early 20th century New Orleans but fails to find happiness in his marriage.