Forgotten Films to Remember: And a Brief History of Fifty Years of the American Talking Picture

by John Springer

Book Overview

NEW CONDITION, HARD COVER WITH DUST JACKET, TIGHT BINDING, VERY SLIGHT WEAR ON THE DUST JACKET, 1980 COPYRIGHT, COLLECTIBLE AND READY TO SHIP (BXX-611) This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080650692X
• ISBN13: 9780806506920
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Citadel Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 2.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Wonderful Trip Down Memory Lane!!!

I was so suprised that there were no reviews of this book. It is simply a must have book for people interested in movies - and not just big budget ones. The marvellous thing is that nowadays a lot of these movies are readily available and are being rediscovered. When the book was written in 1980 John Springer was urging peole to revisit films like "Scarlet Street", "Blithe Spirit", "D.O.A." and "Out of the Past" - they are now classics. Films that I initially read about in this book and finally had a chance to see after many years - eg "Letter of Introduction" with Adolphe Menjou and Andrea Leed, about a stage struck girl arriving on Broadway with a letter of introduction to a fading matinee idol who just happens to be her father. "Lost Boundaries" with Mel Ferrer and Beatrice Pearson, based on a true story about a black family who live for 20 years in a small New England town passing as white and "Anne of Green Gables" which I found every bit as glowing as the praise heaped on it in 1980. The book starts with the year 1929 and goes through to 1959. There is a small section devoted to films worth noting of the 60s and 70s. Each year has a chapter, with lots of beautiful pictures, a few paragraphs about the films that were very popular for the year and then a small paragraph devoted to each film that Springer feels deserves to be remembered. From the noirish "Angel Face" - "a strange melodrama" to "little" picture "When I Grow Up" starring Bobby Driscoll and Robert Preston, a film "almost thrown away by it's distributor" - the comments are always very readable and sometimes quite witty - "Sylvia Sidney, looking glamorous and without a problem in the world except whether to marry a young man or an old one" - "Accent on Youth". John Springer also has found plenty of films starring his favourites - Nancy Carroll, Sylvia Sidney and Myrna Loy but who's complaining. There are literally hundreds of films written about.