Best Film Books of 2013

[thomas_gladysz]

Here is my selection of the best film books of 2013. More than 25 books are mentioned, many of them from the talkie era, some from the silent era.

"It has been a great big bountiful year for books about the movies. There have been so many worthwhile biographies, critical studies and pictorials it's hard to choose the dozen or even two dozen best books...."

Check it out on the HuffingtonPost at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-gl ... 91272.html

[JLNeibaur]

Thanks so much for the honor of including both books I did that year -- Buster Keaton's Silent Shorts (co-authored with Terri Niemi) and The Charley Chase Talkies. The mention of Ted Okuda's and my book The Jerry Lewis Films was another nice surprise, as that is not a 2013 book. It was published in 1995, but was released in softcover in 2013 after 18 successful years in hardcover.

Great to be in the company of Eve Golden, Michael Hayde, and other friends.

JN

[Phillyrich]

How about: "Showmen, Sell It Hot," by John McElwee, which to me, adds an essential chapter to film history.

[buskeat]

I'm in the middle of reading A Life of Barbara Stanwyck, and while the subject is an excellent one and it's a long-overdue biography, it's easily the worst-edited book I've ever read in my whole life. In fact, it seems like it was never edited at all. Maybe it's because author Victoria Wilson is an editor at Alfred Knopf, and the folks at Simon & Schuster thought, "Hey, we don't have to edit this. She's an editor!" While it's certainly readable, there is an error of some kind on nearly every single page.

Contradictions, misspellings and simple factual errors are littered throughout. It boggles the mind. On Page 597, I reached my favorite error, in which Wilson writes John Arnold, head of MGM's camera department, had "started cranking his camera back in 1903, when he worked for Thomas A. Edison, and had since shot more than a billion feet of film."

Shooting a billion feet of 35mm film non-stop would take over 1,200 years.

Another amazing error is her referring to the Production Code Administration by its correct name, and then later, in the same paragraph, referring to it as the Picture Code Association. There are many, many, many more, in addition to all the information that is repeated needlessly, as if the reader wouldn't remember from the page, or several paragraphs, before.

This reads like a first draft that Simon & Schuster decided to publish without even taking a glance at it. The book has a lot going for it, and it's certainly readable, but this is far from the definitive biography of Barbara Stanwyck.

[Lamar]

I just started reading Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s by Matthew Kennedy and I am really enjoying it. Reading about all those train wreak musicals is fascinating to me. The insanity. Appears to be very well researched and not written in a snarky style, which I appreciate.