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George Cukor's people : acting for a master director / Joseph McBride

Author
McBride, Joseph, 1947-
Published
New York : Columbia University Press, [2025]
Copyright Date
©2025
Physical Description
xii, 518 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

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Contents
Is George Cukor an auteur? And why does that matter? -- Lew Ayres in All Quiet on the Western Front and Holiday -- Fredric March and Ina Claire in The Royal Family of Broadway -- Kay Francis in The Virtuous Sin and with Lilyan Tashman in Girls About Town -- Lowell Sherman in What Price Hollywood? -- Katharine Hepburn and John Barrymore in A Bill of Divorcement -- John Barrymore and Jean Harlow in Dinner at Eight -- Katharine Hepburn in Little Women; the ensemble of David Copperfield -- Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Sylvia Scarlett -- Greta Garbo in Camille -- Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Holiday -- Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen in Gone with the Wind -- Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, and Joan Fontaine in The Women -- Joan Crawford in Susan and God with Rita Quigley and in A Woman's Face -- Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story -- Ingrid Bergman and Angela Lansbury in Gaslight -- Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Adam's Rib with Judy Holliday and in Pat and Mike -- Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday, The Marrying Kind with Aldo Ray, and It Should Happen to You with Jack Lemmon -- Thelma Ritter and company in The Model and the Marriage Broker -- Spencer Tracy and Jean Simmons in The Actress -- Judy Garland and James Mason in A Star is Born -- Ava Gardner in Bhowani Junction, Kay Kendall in Les Girls, and Sophia Loren and Anthony Quinn in Heller in Pink Tights -- Marilyn Monroe in Let's Make Love and Something's Got to Give -- Claire Bloom, Jane Fonda, Glynis Johns, and Shelley Winters in The Chapman Report -- Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady -- Anna Karina and Dirk Bogarde in Justine -- Maggie Smith, Alec McCowen, Lou Gossett, Robert Stephens, and Cindy Williams in Travels with My Aunt -- Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen in Rich and Famous -- Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier in Love Among the Ruins.
Summary
"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."--
Subject(s)
ISBN
9780231210829 hardcover
0231210825 hardcover
9780231558617 electronic book
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Endowment Note
Paterno Libraries Endowment
View MARC record | catkey: 47076871