Acting Hollywood Style

About This Book

What makes Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity the toughest "dame" in Hollywood movies? Why are Jimmy Cagney, Carole Lombard, and James Dean "live wires," while Lana Turner, Groucho Marx, and Robert Redford are "mannequins"? Without Psycho's pounding musical score, just how scary would Tony Perkins be? Acting Hollywood Style answers these questions and many more in a lively, fresh examination of the art of screen acting as practiced in Hollywood for the past seven decades. In a text imbued with the love of films, author Foster Hirsch discusses actors - from Rudolph Valentino and Lillian Gish to Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep - who embody the Hollywood Style, a unique blend of acting talent, compatibility with the camera, and that mysterious "star" quality.^ Among Hirsch's themes are the special circumstances in which film actors perform, the significance of body language, the supremely important face and voice of the film actor, the relationship between an actor's screen persona and "real life." All are considered within the context of the Hollywood studio system, which made and maintained stars during the Golden Era. Much original photographic research, primarily in the archives of the famed Kobal Collection, has been done for the book. Stunning images caputre memorable moments in film history: Garbo cradling a nosegay in Camille, Brando orating in Julius Caesar, Fred and Ginger dancing their love in The Gay Divorcee. Other pictures illuminate themes in the text: the cardboard West of The Petrified Forest, Katharine Hepburn's somewhat inauthentic Chinese peasant in Dragon Seed, and Cary Grant's amusing, balletic antics in Holiday.^ The 262 photographs, 50 in full color, appear highlighted on full pages or grouped in revealing juxtapositions. The brilliant, groundbreaking text and spectacular images lift Acting Hollywood Style into a rare class of film book. Anyone who has ever thrilled to a great Hollywood performance - or been exasperated by a bad one - will want to have this book to understand the reasons why, and to know what to look for the next time. -- from dust jacket.