Screenwriter Robert Riskin (1897-1955) was a towering figure even among the giants of Hollywood's Golden Age. Known for his unique blend of humor and romance, wisecracking and idealism, Riskin teamed with director Frank Capra to produce some of his most memorable films. Pat McGilligan has collected six of the best Riskin scripts: Platinum Blonde (1931), American Madness (1932), It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), and Meet John Doe (1941). All of them were directed by Capra, and although Capra's work has been amply chronicled and celebrated, Riskin's share in the collaboration has been overlooked since his death. McGilligan provides the "backstory" for the forgotten half of the team, indispensable counterpoint to the director's self-mythologizing autobiography--and incidentally the missing link in any study of Capra's career. Riskin's own career, although interrupted by patriotic duty and cut short by personal tragedy, produced as consistent, entertaining, thoughtful, and enduring a body of work as any Hollywood writer's. Those who know and love these vintage films will treasure these scripts. McGilligan's introduction offers new information and insights for fans, scholars, and general readers.

Story of cinema -- How movies are made -- Movie genres -- World cinema -- A-Z directors -- Must-see movies.

“Exquisitely imagined, deeply researched . . . brings to the foreground the most enigmatic and fascinating figure in Gone with the Wind. This is a brave work of literary empathy by a writer at the height of his powers, who demonstrates a magisterial understanding of the period, its clashing cultures, and its heartbreaking crises. ” —Geraldine Brooks, author of March The only authorized prequel to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind—the unforgettable story of Mammy. On a Caribbean island consumed by the flames of revolution, an infant girl falls under the care of two French émigrés, Henri and Solange Fournier, who take the beautiful child they call Ruth to the bustling American city of Savannah. What follows is the sweeping tale of Ruth’s life as shaped first by her strong-willed mistress, and then by Solange’s daughter Ellen and Gerald O’Hara, the rough Irishman Ellen chooses to marry; the Butler family of Charleston and their unexpected connection to Mammy Ruth; and finally Scarlett O’Hara—the irrepressible Southern belle Mammy raises from birth. As we witness the lives of three generations of women, gifted storyteller Donald McCaig reveals a nuanced portrait of Mammy, at once a proud woman and a captive, a strict disciplinarian who has never experienced freedom herself. Through it all, Mammy endures, a rock in the river of time. Set against the backdrop of the South from the 1820s until the dawn of the Civil War, here is a remarkable story of fortitude, heartbreak, and indomitable will—and a tale that will forever illuminate your reading of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.

The central thesis of this book is that a genre approach provides the most effective means for understanding, analyzing and appreciating the Hollywood cinema. Taking into account not only the formal and aesthetic aspects of feature filmmaking, but various other cultural aspects as well, the genre approach treats movie production as a dynamic process of exchange between the film industry and its audience. This process, embodied by the Hollywood studio system, has been sustained primarily through genres, those popular narrative formulas like the Western, musical and gangster film, which have dominated the screen arts throughout this century.

The third film in a celebrated trilogy of socio-political dramas directed by Frank Capra in the late 1930s and early 1940s, "Meet John Doe" is arguably his most ambitious and disturbing work. An introductory essay reconstructs and analyzes the history of production, promotion and reception of "Meet John Doe". A complete transcript of the finished film, extensive annotations concerning original script material and previously unpublished alternate endings are included in this volume, as well as a section of recollections about the film's production, personal correspondance, an excerpt from Capra's autobiography, and a sampling of reviews and contemporary commentaries.