A portrait of the trailblazing film producer whose career spanned five decades."Bernstein packs an astonishing amount of solid film history into his lucid chronicle of Wangers whirlwind corporate liaisons. ... A fully realized, A-line biopic of a fascinating life in the movies."Tom Doherty, Film Quarterly.

Cleopatra faced countless problems during its filming and production: passionate casting disputes, broken contracts, a costly re-location from London to Rome, an emergency tracheotomy for its star, Elizabeth Taylor, scandal-ridden gossip surrounding relationships on set, and a budget of $2 million that ballooned to final costs of $44 million. Legendary producer Walter Wanger recalls the drama that occurred both on and off the set, including the incredible obstacles he had to overcome and the exhilaration of producing a cinematic triumph. A revealing story about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s tempestuous romance and an insightful filmmaker’s journal, now back in print for the 50th anniversary of Cleopatra’s release, My Life with Cleopatra shares the true story of the relationship and film that enthralled the world. “I have been told by responsible journalists that there was more world interest in Cleopatra, which I produced, and in its stars—Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Rex Harrison—than in any event of 1962.” —Walter Wanger

Award-winning author Walter Wangerin Jr. gracefully explores the dynamics of prayer. With luminous prose, he surveys the landscape of communication and communion with God--what whole prayer feels like, looks like, and sounds like. If you long for a deeper relationship with God, Whole Prayer is a trustworthy guide.

Walt Disney, David O. Selznick, Mary Pickford, Orson Welles, and an elite group of movie producers secretly formed their own society in an effort to break up the old studio monopolies. The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers initiated profound changes in Hollywood but today has been forgotten Using original SlMPP documents, this book reveals the story that has waited over 40 years to be told.

In Preparing for Jesus, best-selling author and master storyteller Walter Wangerin Jr. recreates verbal images of the events surrounding the Advent of Christ, offering a devotional journey into the heart of the Christmas season. Through rich detail and vivid images, these moving meditations make Christ's birth both intimate and immediate, allowing us to see Christmas from its original happening to its perennial recurrence in our hearts. Preparing for Jesus is sure to be a seasonal classic, treasured year after year.

Rare correspondence from Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, Jane Fonda, and other Hollywood luminaries from the silent film era to the 1970s. Letters from Hollywood reproduces in full color scores of entertaining and insightful pieces of correspondence from some of the most notable and talented film industry names of all time—from the silent era to the golden age, and up through the pre-email days of the 1970s. Culled from libraries, archives, and personal collections, the 135 letters, memos, and telegrams are organized chronologically and are annotated by the authors to provide backstories and further context. While each piece reveals a specific moment in time, taken together, the letters convey a bigger picture of Hollywood history. Contributors include celebrities like Greta Garbo, Alfred Hitchcock, Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Katharine Hepburn, Marlon Brando, Elia Kazan, Cary Grant, Francis Ford Coppola, Tom Hanks, and Jane Fonda. This is the gift book of the season for fans of classic Hollywood. With a foreword by Peter Bogdanovitch. “This is, quite simply, one of the finest books I’ve ever read about Hollywood.” —Leonard Maltin

This volume brings together historians of imperialism and race, travel and modernity, Islam and India, the Pacific and the Atlantic to show how a 'transnational' approach to history offers fresh insights into the past. Transnational history is a form of scholarship that has been revolutionising our understanding of history in the last decade. With a focus on interconnectedness across national borders of ideas, events, technologies and individual lives, it moves beyond the national frames of analysis that so often blinker and restrict our understanding of the past. Many of the essays also show how expertise in 'Australian history' can contribute to and benefit from new transnational approaches to history. Through an examination of such diverse subjects as film, modernity, immigration, politics and romance, Connected Worlds weaves an historical matrix which transports the reader beyond the local into a realm which re-defines the meaning of humanity in all its complexity. Contributors include Tony Ballantyne, Desley Deacon, John Fitzgerald, Patrick Wolfe and Angela Woollacott.

'Hollywood' as a concept applies variously to a particular film style, a factory-based mode of film production, a cartel of powerful media institutions and a national (and increasingly global) 'way of seeing'. It is a complex social, cultural and industrial phenomenon and is arguably the single most important site of cultural production over the past century.This collection brings together journal articles, published essays, book chapters and excerpts which explore Hollywood as a social, economic, industrial, aesthetic and political force, and as a complex historical entity.