New York City Vaudeville provides a unique pictorial record of America�s preeminent entertainment medium in the late 1800s through the early 1930s. New York�s Palace Theatreserved as the flagship for vaudeville, on which stage everyvaudevillian aspired to perform. New York City Vaudevillefeatures photographs of some of the greatest names fromthe Palace Theatre, including Jack Benny, George Burnsand Gracie Allen, Anna Held, the Marx Brothers, and Eva Tanguay, as well as legendary African Am...

With A Journey Through Film History, film historian Anthony Slide offers a detailed account of his life and career over the last 80 years. In a humorous and entertaining style, he speaks of his memories, both good and bad. Interviewer Matthew Renoir is the great grandson of Jean Renoir (and the great, great grandson of impressionist painter Pierre Auguste Renoir), and a perfect fit as an interviewer for Anthony Slide, who knew Jean Renoir well in the late 1970s, and provides many memories ...

"Brackett's diaries read like a funnier, better-paced version of Barton Fink." — NewsweekScreenwriter Charles Brackett is best remembered as the writing partner of director Billy Wilder, who once referred to the pair as "the happiest couple in Hollywood," collaborating on such classics as The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard. He was also a perceptive chronicler of the entertainment industry, and in this annotated collection of w...

Stanley Unwin was unique among British comedians in that he invented his own language, Unwinese,with which he entertained audiences from the 1940s until his death in 2002. Continuing his book-length studies of the British comedy fraternity, Anthony Slide discusses in detail Stanley Unwin's life and career, including his years as a BBC engineer prior to embarking on a new career as a comedian, at first with the BBC. The text may not be totally in "basic engly twenty fido,"

Just a Regular Bloke: The Ted Ray Story is the third in a trilogy of volumes on legends of British comedy, that began with Jimmy Edwards and continued with Arthur Askey. Ted Ray became a star as British Music Hall came to an end, and continued into radio, television and motion pictures. He never stopped performing on stage as Music Hall morphed into Variety, and could always be relied upon to make audiences laugh with his quick wit and rapid-fire humor. It might be said that it was on radi...

A timely and captivating account of America’s first women directors who, with little recognition, helped pave the way for females in the film industry today.Originally published in 1977 as Early Women Directors, Anthony Slide’s The Silent Feminists was the first volume to recognize and honor the work of female directors in the American silent film industry. With a new foreword by the author, this invaluable resource documents these pioneering women...

The fascinating memoir of influential French filmmaker Alice Guy Blaché, one of the industry’s most significant pioneers and a trailblazer for female directors.Alice Guy Blaché (1873-1968) is a unique pioneer of the motion picture, being not only a female filmmaker but also one of the first, if not the first, to make a narrative film. Her career spanned from 1894, when she became secretary to the legendary Léon Gaumont, through 1920, working in both her native Franc...

Collected together here are Anthony Slide's writings on film and television history from the 1960s through the present. Subjects and individuals discussed are varied, including Lillian Gish, Val Guest, Vivienne Segal, Wendy Richard, Elisabeth Welch, Lawrence Welk, and Betty White. All illustrate the author's scholarship, dedication to the serious study of the history of popular culture, and also his unique sense of humor.The book is a reminder of a career that has included time spe...

" From his unique perspective of friendship with many of the actors and actresses about whom he writes, silent film historian Anthony Slide creates vivid portraits of the careers and often eccentric lives of 100 players from the American silent film industry. He profiles the era's shining stars such as Lillian Gish and Blanche Sweet; leading men including William Bakewell and Robert Harron; gifted leading ladies such as Laura La Plante and Alice Terry; ingénues like Mary Astor and Mary Bri...

" Thomas Dixon has a notorious reputation as the writer of the source material for D.W. Griffith's groundbreaking and controversial 1915 feature film The Birth of a Nation . Perhaps unfairly, Dixon has been branded an arch-conservative and a racist obsessed with what he viewed as "the Negro problem." As American Racist makes clear, however, Dixon was a complex, multitalented individual who, as well as writing some of the most popular novels of the early twentieth century, was involved in t...

A diminutive, frenetic comedian, known for catchphrases that were once part of the English language, Arthur Askey was one of Britain's most popular entertainers throughout much of the 20th Century. Immediately after World War One, Askey made his professional debut in concert parties at British seaside resorts. He began to appear on the stage and on radio, and in 1938, with Richard Murdoch, he introduced Band Wagon to BBC radio listeners. It soon became the most popular program on the air, ...

'' Jimmy Edwards was a Great British Entertainer '' Ken Dodd'' Not merely a peculiarly British comedian but an authentic English character  '' The TimesThe holder of the Distinguished Flying Cross, in recognition of his World War Two career with the RAF, Jimmy Edwards came to fame as an exuberant and bombastic, trombone-playing comedian in the 1940s, with early success at London's Windmill Theatre. He went on to star on radio in Take It from Here and on te...