Best remembered for the iconic classics Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939) to the silver screen, Victor Fleming also counted successful films such as Red Dust (1932), Captains Courageous (1937), Test Pilot (1939), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), and the groundbreaking Joan of Arc (1948) among his more than forty directing credits. One of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood's golden age, Fleming (1889--1949) was renowned for his ability to make films across a wide range of genres. In Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master, author Michael Sragow paints a comprehensive portrait of the talented and charismatic man who helped create enduring screen personas for stars such as Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Gary Cooper.

This is an insight into 1930s Hollywood and an epic of laughter. David O. Selznick is determined to rewrite Gone with the Wind. He engages the services of "script doctor" Ben Hecht, who has never read the book, and director Victor Fleming, poached straight from the set of The Wizard of Oz.

Few treatments of the death of Jesus Christ have made a point of accounting for the gruesome, degrading, public manner of his death by crucifixion, a mode of execution so loathsome that the ancient Romans never spoke of it in polite society. Rutledge probes all the various themes and motifs used by the New Testament evangelists and apostolic writers to explain the meaning of the cross of Christ. She shows how each of the biblical themes contributes to the whole, with the Christus Victor motif and the concept of substitution sharing pride of place along with Irenaeus's recapitulation model.

Hollywood's first sex symbol, the ' It ' girl, Clara Bow was born in the slums of Brooklyn in a family plagued with alcoholism and insanity. She catapulted to fame after winning Motion Picture magazine's 1921 " Fame and Fortune" contest. The greatest box-office draw of her day—she once received 45,000 fan letters in a single month, Clara Bow's on screen vitality and allure that beguiled thousands, however, would be her undoing off-camera. David Stenn captures her legendary rise to stardom and fall from grace, her success marred by studio exploitation and sexual scandals.

A film-centric portrait of the extraordinarily gifted movie director whose decades-long influence on American popular culture is unprecedented Everything about me is in my films, Steven Spielberg has said. Taking this as a key to understanding the hugely successful moviemaker, Molly Haskell explores the full range of Spielberg s works for the light they shine upon the man himself. Through such powerhouse hits as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Jurassic Park, and Indiana Jones, to lesser-known masterworks like A.I. and Empire of the Sun, to the haunting Schindler s List, Haskell shows how Spielberg s uniquely evocative filmmaking and story-telling reveal the many ways in which his life, work, and times are entwined. Organizing chapters around specific films, the distinguished critic discusses how Spielberg s childhood in non-Jewish suburbs, his parents traumatic divorce, his return to Judaism upon his son s birth, and other events echo in his work. She offers a brilliant portrait of the extraordinary director a fearful boy living through his imagination who grew into a man whose openness, generosity of spirit, and creativity have enchanted audiences for more than 40 years.