“She could look demure while behaving like an empress. Blonde, with eyes like pearls too big for her head, she was very striking, but marginally pretty and certainly not beautiful . . . But it was her edge that made her memorable—her upstart superiority, her reluctance to pretend deference to others.”Bette Davis was the commanding figure of the great era of Hollywood stardom, with a drive and energy that put her contemporaries in the shade. She played queens, jezebels, and bitches; she could out-talk any male costar; she warred with her studio, Warner Bros., worked like a demon, got through four husbands, was nominated for seven Oscars, and—no matter what—never gave up fighting.
“David Thomson is, without doubt, the greatest living film historian.” —Allen Barra, Los Angeles Times"What Thomson does not know or feel about films is not worth knowing or feeling."—Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian (UK)"The stars shine bright in this series of brief biographies of four of classic Hollywood's most enduring icons. Eminent film critic Thomson (The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder, 2009, etc.) brings a historian's acumen and poet's sensibility to his portraits of Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper. The author seeks to identify the mythic essence of each of the star's cinematic personae, and the ways in which key films and carefully managed public perceptions shaped those ideas. Davis enjoyed a long reign as Hollywood's top star in the era of great stars, despite and because of her variable looks, peppery temperament and air of starchy New England superiority . . . In clean, allusive prose, Thomson assesses the filmographies of these titans, offering surprising judgments and insights—he despises Cooper's beloved Sergeant York (1941) and the Davis classic The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)—and defining the magic of a vanished kind of stardom,an orchestrated mystique that made these men and women dream figures for a mass audience. The books are full of fascinating tidbits of gossip regarding his subjects' sexual peccadilloes, financial maneuverings and studio politicking, and Thomson is wickedly funny and startlingly poetic in his observations. On Davis: 'Blonde, with eyes like pearls too big for her head, she was very striking, but marginally pretty and certainly not beautiful.' Indispensable additions to any American film library."—Kirkus Reviews"The author of the standard reference The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (4th ed., 2004) begins the Guest Star series with fact-packed critical briefs on four American movie icons, managing to give each slim volume its own distinctive tone. Thomson’s account of Bette Davis is the most loving of the four. He is truly impressed with how Davis shaped her career in opposition to the desires of the studios to which she was contracted and to prevailing ideas of how women and starlets were supposed to act on- and offscreen. Chronicling Davis’ life and evolution in Hollywood, Thomson illustrates how changes in her often-disappointing private life (she had a habit of marrying the wrong men) influenced and often deepened her onscreen persona. Reading of how Davis bounced from one bad movie to the next in the early years of her career, it’s hard not to share Thomson’s enthusiasm for her talent, drive, and will."—Jack Helbig, Booklist (starred review)"In the initial volumes of this new series, noted film critic/historian Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film) brings his opinions to bear on the lives and careers of four stars of the golden age of American cinema, all of whom remained active until their deaths. With classic films such as Jezebel, Dark Victory, and Now, Voyager, Bette Davis was the premiere leading lady at Warner Brothers for some 17 years. Gary Cooper (High Noon) became a star with the introduction of talking pictures and remained one, albeit somewhat diminished, to the end of his life. After being frequently cast as the snarling petty crook, Humphrey Bogart played a series of distinguished roles, climaxing with his Oscar-winning triumph in The African Queen. Ingrid Bergman's roles in Casablanca, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Gaslight seemed to presage a lengthy stardom, but the scandal concerning her affair with director Roberto Rossellini stalled her in the late 1940s. Thomson presents little more than a brief overview of each star's career but discusses what he considers their best films in somewhat more detail. His look at the actors' personal lives includes his quirky suppositions about their sex lives, and he often writes as if speaking, sometimes quite disconcertingly, directly to the reader . . . These books seem intended primarily for film buffs with limited knowledge of these particular stars as well as curious general readers."—Roy Liebman, formerly with California State Univ., Los Angeles, Library Journal
David Thomson is the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, now in its fourth edition. His recent books include a biography of Nicole Kidman, Fan Tan (a novel written in collaboration with Marlon Brando), and The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood. His latest work is the acclaimed Have You Seen . . . ?: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films. Born in London, he now lives in San Francisco.
Bette Davis was twenty-three and too smart for her own good. But there she was lying on a couch at Universal in a fixed camera set-up so that any man the studio could round up came in and made movie love to her. ‘You gorgeous, divine darling,’ they said – they had to say something, so they had lines written for them. ‘I adore you. I worship you. I must possess you.’ There were fifteen of them – ‘The most compulsively dedicated harlot never had a morning like mine,’ she would write – and there you see how smart she was.
David Thomson - called "without doubt, the greatest living film historian" by the LA Times - discusses his latest "Great Stars" series that looks at the Hollywood backstories of Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, and Gary Cooper.
Visit our UK site
