Author Archive for: ‘Eloise Ross’
Music, Sound, and Technology in America: A Documentary History of early Phonograph, Cinema, and Radio
Timothy D. Taylor, Mark Katz, Tony Grajeda (eds.) Music, Sound, and Technology in America: A Documentary History of early Phonograph, Cinema, and Radio Duke University Press, 2013 US$27.95 (pb) 432pp (Review copy supplied by Duke University Press) It was once a cliché to remark on the absence of sound from scholarly discussion. Now it is not only tiresome to keep …
Read MoreThe Miracle Woman
Dan Callahan, The Miracle Woman Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012 ISBN13: 978-1617031830 US$35 (hb) 272pp In one of her more direct moments, Barbara Stanwyck has said, “Acting is as important to me as eating and sleeping” (218).[1] Dan Callahan recounts this line towards the end of an impressively thorough book, a story of her life as it is seen …
Read MoreHyper Material For Our Very Brain
Philip Brophy, Hyper Material For Our Very Brain Brisbane: Institute of Modern Art, 2012 ISBN: 9 781 8757927 57 Aud$25 (pb) 136pp (Review copy supplied by IMA publishers) Sonority does not inhabit language in quite the same way as the other perceptible qualities. (Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening) Philip Brophy states at the beginning of Hyper Material For Our Very Brain that …
Read MoreBarbara Stanwyck (Film Stars series) & The Life and Times of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940
Andrew Klevan, Barbara Stanwyck (Film Stars series) London: British Film Institute, 2013 ISBN: 9781844576487 UK £14.99 (pb) 152pp (Review copy supplied by Palgrave MacMillan) Virginia Wilson, The Life and Times of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940 Simon & Schuster, 2013 ISBN: 978-068431688 US$30 (hb) 1056pp (Review copy supplied by Simon & Schuster) In her review of The Life and Times of …
Read More“…And There We Were Like An Uncensored Movie!”: Sexual Tension and the Pre-Code Body in Hollywood
Introduction Not five minutes into to Baby Face (Alfred E. Green, 1933), the most notorious and scandalous picture produced by Warner Bros in the pre-Code era, Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck) is posed at the window of her father’s speakeasy, the camera capturing her watering the plants through the open window. Soon a man appears – he’s clearly a drunken lout …
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