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Film biographer William Mann discusses new book Friday
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William Mann, novelist and film biographer, will speak at A Different Light on November 13 at 7:30
By Thomas Gladysz
SF Silent Film Examiner
If you like film history and you like hearing authors talk about their new work, then the event to attend this week is Friday night at A Different Light bookstore in San Francisco.
On November 13th at 7:30 p.m., William J. Mann – the gifted novelist and accomplished biographer and film historian - will speak about his new book, How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
Mann, the author of more than 10 books, has written half a dozen works related to the movies. Spanning the silent era through today, each have consistently earned high praise while offering fresh and sometimes groundbreaking perspectives on their subjects.
How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood is a revealing look at one of the biggest film stars of the post WWII era. Just how big? In 1962, for example, news of John Glenn’s historic orbit of the earth was knocked from the headlines by sensational reports of Taylor’s love affair with Richard Burton during the making of Cleopatra.
Part biography and part meditation on the nature of fame, How to Be a Movie Star is also study of the culture of celebrity. Throughout her life, first by her Mother and then by others including the one-time silent film actress and later gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, Taylor was driven to stardom. How much of her fame was deserved, and how much manufactured, is the big question. The answer is found on the pages of the author’s new book.
A studied consideration of his subject is a hallmark of William Mann’s earlier efforts.
The author’s previous biography, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn (Henry Holt), received widespread acclaim when it was published in 2006. The London Sunday Times called it “definitive.” While San Francisco-based film critic David Thomson, writing for the New York Observer, said the book “set new standards in movie biography.” Gore Vidal considered it “not only an intriguing portrait of Katharine Hepburn, but also an accurate picture of her Hollywood and the difficult business of stardom.” The New York Times named Kate one of the 100 Notable Books of 2006.
Mann’s earlier books include Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger (Hutchinson, 2004), an authorized biography of the Academy Award winning director of Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man, Billy Liar, Day of the Locust, Cold Comfort Farm and other celebrated films.
Also authored by Mann are two works which should appeal to those with an interest in the first half-century of film. The first is Behind The Screen: How Gays & Lesbians Shaped Hollywood (Viking, 2001), a groundbreaking look at the gay experience during the Golden Age of movie making. Thorough and thoughtful – it is based on seven years of research including a look into unpublished memoirs, personal correspondence, oral histories, and scrapbooks. This landmark work is a social history of the gay experience both in front and behind the camera.
Wisecracker: The Life & Times of William Haines (Viking, 1998) examines the life of one of the biggest stars of the late 1920s – as well as Hollywood’s first openly gay star. Though Haines was a top male moneymaker in 1930, he was dropped by the studio in 1933 because he refused to hide his homosexuality. Mann’s vivid biography depicts the rich gay subculture in Hollywood before the Production Code – and before studio intimidation led to retreat into a “Hollywood closet.” Wisecracker won the Lambda Literary Award in 1999.
William J. Mann will speak about How to Be a Movie Star at A Different Light (489 Castro Street) in San Francisco on Friday, November 13th at 7:30 p.m. A booksigning will follow.
More info: William J. Mann’s How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood is available on-line and at better book stores. Individuals interested in sampling the book can read its introduction on-line (PDF format).
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