Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory: Hollywood's Genius Bad Boy - Hardcover

Kennedy, Matthew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0299197700 ISBN 13: 9780299197704

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004

Synopsis

Edmund Goulding’s Dark Victory: Hollywood’s Genius Bad Boy is the first biography ever written about this eccentric genius of early-twentieth-century filmmaking. Goulding (1891–1959) was by turns a writer, producer, composer, and actor, but it is as a director that he made an indelible impression. He is most remembered today as the director of Grand Hotel, the great Event Movie of the Depression. At the dawn of sound, he wrote the story for the Academy Award–winning musical The Broadway Melody and collaborated memorably with Gloria Swanson and Joseph Kennedy for The Trespasser. He excelled at anti-war drama (White Banners, The Dawn Patrol, We Are Not Alone), fantastic Bette Davis weepies (Dark Victory, The Old Maid, The Great Lie), lilting romantic dramas (The Constant Nymph, Claudia), big-budget literary adaptations (The Razor’s Edge), and even film noir (Nightmare Alley). The London-born Goulding was a complicated and contradictory man whose notorious orgies, bisexuality, drinking, and drug addictions were whispered about in Hollywood for years. Yet his well-crafted plots and compelling characters set a new standard in American cinema and had a profound influence on the future of filmmaking.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Terrace Books

Foreword by Kevin Brownlow

From the Author:

Goulding is one of the most fascinating characters I've encountered in the whole history of Hollywood.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0299197700
• ISBN 13: 9780299197704
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 344