Prolific American film producer Amedee J. Van Beuren (1879-1938) did not start out in the film industry. After a decade spent in business and advertising, Van Beuren turned his intellect and creativity towards acquiring a foothold in film and began building his empire. He is best known to animation fans for his bizarre cartoons of the 1920s and 1930s, featuring such zanies as Molly Moo Cow, Cubby Bear and Tom and Jerry (not the cat-and-mouse duo). But the majority of the ...

Most film buffs know that Citizen Kane was based on the life of publisher William Randolph Hearst. But few are aware that key characters in films like Double Indemnity, Cool Hand Luke, Jaws, Rain Man, A Few Good Men and Zero Dark Thirty were inspired by actual persons. This survey of a clef characters covers a selection of fictionalized personalities, beginning with the Silent Era. The landmark lawsuit surrounding Rasputin and the Empress (1932)...

H.R. Pufnstuf, Lidsville, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Land of the Lost: For a generation of children growing up in the late sixties and early seventies, these were some of the most memorable shows on Saturday morning television. At a time when television cartoons had lost some of their luster, two puppeteers named Sid and Marty Krofft put together a series of shows that captivated children.Using colorful sets and mysterious lands full of characters that had boundless ene...

There was a time when "American popular entertainment" referred only to radio and motion pictures. With the coming of talking pictures, Hollywood cashed in on the success of big-time network radio by bringing several of the public's favorite broadcast personalities and programs to the screen. The results, though occasionally successful, often proved conclusively that some things are better heard than seen. Concentrating primarily on radio's Golden Age (1926-1962), this lively history discu...

Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In was one of the most unusual programs on television, defying definition as simply comedy, variety, or burlesque. The show had audiences laughing for six seasons and continues to make appearances in revivals, reunions, and salutes.This critical history of Laugh-In includes background details on the creation and creators, as well as information on lookalike shows. An appendix contains a complete program history with principal production cr...

The life and work of American director John G. Avildsen is thoroughly examined in this detailed filmography and critical study. Each of the most significant films made by the Oscar-winning Avildsen is given a separate chapter, including such critical successes as Joe and Save the Tiger, and box-office blockbusters Rocky and its sequels and the Karate Kid series. The authors' observations on these and other titles--some well known, others less familiar--a...

Is The Wire better than Breaking Bad? Is Cheers better than Seinfeld? What's the best high school show ever made? Why did Moonlighting really fall apart? Was the Arrested Development Netflix season brilliant or terrible?For twenty years-since they shared a TV column at Tony Soprano's hometown newspaper-critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz have been debating these questions and many more, but it all ultimately boils down ...

From a sleepy little small town in the middle of Long Island to a place at the table in the exciting world of network television, I lived the impossible dream. I am 35 years old, happily married, scraping along well enough, but obsessed with the reality that I am not living the life I had always dreamt of. And then in a set of circumstances that would be unbelievable in a nickel and dime B movie, my world suddenly changes and I find myself writing scripts for and rubbing elbows with some o...

Perfect for the Bill Murray fan in all of us, this epic collection of “Bill Murray stories”—many reported for the first time here—distills a set of guiding principles out of his extraordinary ability to infuse the everyday with surprise, absurdity, and wonder.No one will ever believe you.New York Times bestselling author Gavin Edwards, like the rest of us, has always been fascinated with Bill Murray—in particular the beloved actor’s advent...

For everybody "raised on radio"—and that's everybody brought up in the thirties, forties, and early fifties—this is the ultimate book, combining nostalgia, history, judgment, and fun, as it reminds us of just how wonderful (and sometimes just how silly) this vanished medium was. Of course, radio still exists—but not the radio of The Lone Ranger and One Man's Family, of Our Gal Sunday and Life Can Be Beautiful, of The Goldbergs and Amos 'n' A...

Television today is better than ever. From The Sopranos to Breaking Bad, Sex and the City to Girls, and Modern Family to Louie, never has so much quality programming dominated our screens. Exploring how we got here, acclaimed TV critic David Bianculli traces the evolution of the classic TV genres, among them the sitcom, the crime show, the miniseries, the soap opera, the Western, the animated series, the medical drama, and the variety s...

From the most popular routines and the most ingenious physical shtick to the snappiest wisecracks and the most biting satire of the last century, Make 'Em Laugh illuminates who we are as a nation by exploring what makes us laugh, and why. Authors Laurence Maslon and Michael Kantor draw on countless sources to chronicle the past century of American comedy and the geniuses who created and performed it-melding biography, American history, and a lotta laughs into an exuberant, importa...