Menacing Face Worth Millions: A Life of Charles Bronson is the first definitive biography of legendary screen actor Charles Bronson. Charles Bronson was the silver screen legend who forever changed America's - and the world's - idea of the leading man's looks: a poverty-stricken young man who became one of the most popular, highly-paid film stars of his day. No movie that Charles Bronson ever made can equal the reclusive life he led and the contradictions of his own hidden self. In this definitive retelling of Bronson's life - the first fully documented biography of the star - Brian D'Ambrosio looks at the vigilante tough guy's life and legacy and explores the events and issues that made him emblematic of his time.

This work covers Bronson's entire output in film and on television, and includes many film stills and photographs. Alphabetical entries list film or episode, complete cast and credits, and year of release. Accompanying each entry's plot synopsis and discussion is a survey of the critical responses to the work. The great Charles Laughton once said Bronson "has the strongest face in the business, and he is also one of its best actors." Pretty high praise for an actor who, though loved by fans worldwide, has been consistently underestimated by critics. Bronson's career has spanned five decades, from such television appearances in The Fugitive, Rawhide, Bonanza and Have Gun, Will Travel as well as the telemovie A Family of Cops (1995) and its two sequels. He will long be remembered for his role as urban vigilante Paul Kersey in the Death Wish films. Bronson is one of the most enigmatic, and also most recognizable, of all film stars.

*Includes pictures *Includes Bronson's own quotes about his life and career *Includes footnotes, online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "Maybe I'm too masculine. Casting directors cast in their own, or an idealized image. Maybe I don't look like anybody's ideal." - Charles Bronson "I look like the kind of guy who has a bottle of beer in my hand." - Charles Bronson The leading men of the 1940s and '50s ably represented the visual and cultural expectations of those decades in their iconic films. Some were handsome and glib with quasi-classical dialogue, some could sing, and a few could dance, while others brought an imposing athletic presence to thrillers, westerns, and urban crime dramas. However, with the advent of the early 1960s, popular culture entered a heightened age of verismo, a more frank and severe view of societal reality. Motion picture studios on both sides of the Atlantic, aware of the changing times, were quick to reflect it. The harsher light of violent new genres required a different sort of male protagonist, a character type who could put his humanity and uncertainty aside to act as a more ruthless hero than his predecessors. Paralleling real concerns over crime and an increasing disrespect for life and property, the public fell in love with the new "avenging angel" image, and with Charles Bronson, the actor born at the perfect time in which to symbolize it in the grittier new films. By the time Bronson emerged from a series of miniscule, uncredited roles in the mid-1950s, the singing cowboy was two generations gone, save vestiges in television serials, such as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. The dancing romantic lead of the Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire variety would soon exhaust itself as a genre in an age increasingly bent on realism and a more severe form of escape. Bronson possessed none of the gifts common to the heroes of the previous era. Light-heartedness did not become him, and by all accounts, he was neither a singer nor dancer. He could not offer the heft of Gary Cooper or John Wayne, although he shared a reserved quality with the former. He did not possess the pristine good looks of Gregory Peck. In fact, one good-natured description making the rounds in Bronson's heyday likened him to "A Clark Gable who has been left out in the sun too long." To accompany the rough-hewn appearance of Bronson's new class of hero, the typical script gave his remarkably enduring persona, little to say in terms of dialogue that would reveal his inner thoughts. With minimal text, even those he attempts to help are unsure of his intentions, and few clues are offered by which the viewer can come to know his mind. As the grotesqueness of his characters' violent acts increased, so did the heinous deeds of the criminals he fought, upping the ante to an eager public in search of a simple cure for its social ills. In a career of almost eighty films and a total body of work totaling 160 appearances including television, Bronson pushed the envelope of what graphic action the studios were willing to offer, what the censors would accept, and what the sensibilities of movie-goers were able to endure more than anyone in his era. Critics almost uniformly eviscerated most of these films as dramatic eyesores, and invariably equated Bronson's level of talent to their distasteful contents and ill fortunes at the box office. Only in recent years, as the genre has grown even more extreme, has Bronson's work been reviewed in a more kindly light. Critics aside, however, once established in the U.S. after a series of triumphs in Europe, Bronson never lost the adoration of either the international or domestic movie-going public who, he noted, are the ones buying the tickets, and are therefore the only people of importance. American Legends: The Life of Charles Bronson examines the life and career of the iconic actor.

Flash! presents a fascinating cultural history of flash photography, from its mid-nineteenth century beginnings to the present day. All photography requires light, but the light of flash photography is quite distinctive: artificial, sudden, shocking, intrusive, and extraordinarily bright. Associated with revelation and wonder, it has been linked to the sublimity of lightning. Yet it has also been reviled: it's inseparable from anxieties about intrusion and violence, it creates a visual disturbance, and its effects are often harsh and create exaggerated contrasts. Flash! explores flash's power to reveal shocking social conditions, its impact on the representation of race, its illumination of what would otherwise remain hidden in darkness, and its capacity to put on display the most mundane corners of everyday life. It looks at flash's distinct aesthetics, examines how paparazzi chase celebrities, how flash is intimately linked to crime, how flash has been used to light up - and interrupt - countless family gatherings, how flash can 'stop time' allowing one to photograph rapidly moving objects or freeze in a strobe, and it considers the biggest flash of all, the atomic bomb. Examining the work of professionals and amateurs, news hounds and art photographers, photographers of crime and of wildlife, the volume builds a picture of flash's place in popular culture, and its role in literature and film. Generously illustrated throughout, Flash! brings out the central role of this medium to the history of photography and challenges some commonly held ideas about the nature of photography itself.

Both brawls and elaborate martial arts have kept movie audiences on the edges of their seats since cinema began. But the filming of fight scenes has changed significantly through the years--mainly for the safety of the combatants--from improvised scuffles in the Silent Era to exquisitely choreographed and edited sequences involving actors, stuntmen and technical experts. Camera angles prevented many a broken nose. Examining more than 300 films--from The Spoilers (1914) to Road House (1989)--the author provides behind-the-scenes details on memorable melees starring such iconic tough-guys as John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Robert Mitchum, Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan.