The 50 MGM Films That Transformed Hollywood by Steven Bingen

The 50 MGM Films That Transformed Hollywood by Steven Bingen

Movies don’t exist in a vacuum. Each MGM movie is a tiny piece of a large, colorful (although often black & white) quilt, with threads tying it into all of the rest of that studio’s product, going forward, yes, but also backwards, and horizontally and three dimensionally across its entire landscape. Not necessarily a “best of” compilation, this book discusses the films that for one reason or another (and not all of them good ones) changed the trajectory of MGM and the film industry in general, from the revolutionary use of “Cinerama” in 1962’s How the West Was Won to Director Alfred Hitchcock’s near extortion of the profits from the 1959 hit thriller North by Northwest. And there aere the studio’s on-screen self-shoutouts to its own past, or stars, in films like Party Girl (1958), the That’s Entertainment series, Garbo Talks (1984) Rain Man (1955) and De-Lovely (2004), or the studio’s acquisition of other successful franchises such as James Bond. But fear not, what we consider MGM’s classic films all get their due here, often with a touch of irony or fascinating anecdote. Singin in the Rain (1952), for example, was in its day neither a financial blockbuster nor crtitically acclaimed but rather an excuse the studio to reuse some old songs which the studio already owned. TheWizard of Oz (1939) cost almost as much to make as Gone With the Wind (also 1939) took ten years to recoup its costs. But still, the MGM mystique endures. Like the popular Netflix series “The Movies that Made Us,” this is a fascinating look behind the scenes of the greatest—and at times notorious—films ever made.

Steven Bingen is an author, archivist, lecturer and Hollywood insider who has written or contributed to dozens of books, articles, and documentaries regarding popular culture, film history, and in particular, Hollywood's physical past, including MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot, Warner Bros.: Hollywood's Ultimate Backlot, Paramount: City of Dreams, and recently, Hollywood’s Lost Backlot: 40 Acres of Glamor and Mystery. He lives in Los Angeles

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781493067008
ISBN 10	1493067001
Title	The 50 MGM Films That Transformed Hollywood
Author	Steven Bingen
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Rowman & Littlefield
Year published	2022-11-01
Number of pages	344
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.