Showing posts with label van johnson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label van johnson. Show all posts

Van Johnson: MGM's Golden Boy (Hollywood Legends) Review

Van Johnson: MGM's Golden Boy (Hollywood Legends)
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Van Johnson: MGM's Golden Boy (Hollywood Legends) ReviewAlthough Mr. Davis had to rely on mainly second-hand information to attain all the facts he needed to write this book, he did an excellent job, and he imparts the info in such a way that it is seamless, and cannot be discerned as not having been the result of his own research.
The principles in the book were not, for one reason or another, available for inclusion here, nevertheless, Mr. Davis has done an admirable job and his writing and relating of pertinent facts have done him proud...
Being familiar with his sources and the "players" in the book, I was still able to read through it with pleasure, interest and admiration for his capable relating of the facts at hand. All in all, a very informative and interesting read.
My name is Schuyler Van Johnson, and it is about my father and some of it relates to me, and I can tell you that is an excellent work and came out extremely well. Some of it was hard to get through, being an interested party, but also somewhat cathartic and nice to put away on a shelf as part of my distant past, best left on the shelf, once read...Would that the living of some of it had been that easy!Van Johnson: MGM's Golden Boy (Hollywood Legends) Overview Van Johnson's dazzling smile, shock of red hair, and suntanned freckled cheeks made him a movie-star icon. Among teenaged girls in the 1940s he was popularized as the bobbysoxer's heartthrob. He won the nation's heart, too, by appearing in a series of blockbuster war films--A Guy Named Joe, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Weekend at the Waldorf, and Battleground. Perennially a leading man opposite June Allyson, Esther Williams, Judy Garland, and Janet Leigh, he rose to fame radiating the sunshine image Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer chose for him, that of an affable, wholesome boy-next-door. Legions of adoring moviegoers were captivated by this idealized persona that generated huge box-office profits for the studio. However, Johnson's off-screen life was not so sunny. His mother had rejected him in childhood, and he lived his adult life dealing with sexual ambivalence. A marriage was arranged with the ex-wife of his best friend, the actor Keenan Wynn. During the waning years of Hollywood's Golden Age she and Johnson lived amid the glow of Hollywood's A-crowd. Yet their private life was charged with tension and conflict. Although morose and reclusive by nature, Johnson maintained a happy-go-lucky façade even among co-workers, who knew him as a congenial, dedicated professional. Once free of the golden-boy stereotype, he became a respected actor assigned stellar roles in such acclaimed films as State of the Union, Command Decision, The Last Time I Saw Paris, and The Caine Mutiny. With the demise of the big studios, Johnson returned to the stage, where he had begun his career as a song-and-dance man. After this he appeared frequently in television shows, performed in nightclubs, and became the legendary darling of older audiences on the dinner playhouse circuit. Johnson (1916 - 2008) spent his post-Hollywood years living in solitude in New York City. This solid, thoroughly researched biography traces the career and influence of a favorite star and narrates a fascinating, sometimes troubled life story. Ronald L. Davis is the author of Hollywood Beauty: Linda Darnell and the American Dream, John Ford: Hollywood's Old Master, and Duke: The Life and Image of John Wayne. He is a professor of history at Southern Methodist University and the general editor of University Press of Mississippi's Hollywood Legends Series.

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The Life of Dick Haymes: No More Little White Lies (Hollywood Legends) Review

The Life of Dick Haymes: No More Little White Lies (Hollywood Legends)
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The Life of Dick Haymes: No More Little White Lies (Hollywood Legends) ReviewRuth Prigozy has done an admirable job in bringing Dick Haymes life story to light. He is certainly someone who had been forgotten and whose story deserves to be told. I found this to be a well-researched biography that held my interest and which I enjoyed reading.
This book shows how a person can totally mess up his life by not addressing some basic problems -- for instance, the way he was raised clearly was responsible for his inability to foster healthy relationships. He kept repeating the same mistakes, drinking too much, etc. Certainly this was a man with a lot of troubles -- many self-inflicted. Interestingly enough, this book shows he never really did find stability and peace in his personal life. I agree with a previous reviewer who said high school students should read this book -- how NOT to live your life.
However, at times I think author Prigozy is too quick to excuse some of these faults and too willing to make allowances for Haymes' behavior. Here is an intelligent man who was handsome and talented, who nonetheless "blew it" in both his professional and personal life. He does not seem to be a very nice person -- cheating on his wives, mean or neglectful to his kids, a drunk, selfish, a deadbeat, at times arrogant, etc. He may not have been "Mr. Evil," as he has been dubbed, but he apparently wasn't "Mr. Nice Guy" either.
I think it would have been interesting for the author to explore more of his professional decline and the reasons for it. Why exactly did he fail to become an established movie star? Why did his popularity fade in the late 1940s and early 1950s? What happened to his radio career? His record contract was cancelled several years before the rock revolution -- was it his style of music that was passe, was the public tired of him, or did he exhibit a lack of range or an inability to adjust with changing tastes and times?
This book doesn't delve into that as much as I would have liked, but it's still an excellent read, and very worthwhile in bringing the story of this forgotten star to today's public.The Life of Dick Haymes: No More Little White Lies (Hollywood Legends) Overview
There was a time when no one would have left Dick Haymes (1918-1980) out of the top class of his contemporaries such as Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. But now the Argentine-born baritone is known only to those ardent fans and music historians who still claim him as one of the most talented popular singers of the twentieth century.
He worked with several great bandleaders, including Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey, before beginning a solo career that vaulted him to Hollywood stardom. In 1944, he worked with Twentieth Century-Fox, headlining such hit musicals as Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe and State Fair. Popular recordings such as "Little White Lies," "The More I See You," "How Blue the Night," "For You, For Me, For Evermore," "Speak Low," and "Another Night Like This," made him a top draw at the box office.
In the 1950s, when television took over the media landscape and the appeal of musicals declined, Haymes's career suffered. Despite efforts in the 1970s, he never re-established success. In The Life of Dick Haymes: No More Little White Lies, Ruth Prigozy uses over forty personal interviews with singers, musicians, composers, arrangers, and Haymes's family members. She searches archival recordings of The Dick Haymes Show, films, recordings, music studies, and histories to present a full portrait of this complicated man. Prigozy chronicles Haymes's childhood, his rise in the 1940s, his decline into alcoholism, his multiple marriages—among them to such leading stars as Rita Hayworth and Joanne Dru—and divorces, and the minor resurgence of his career in Europe during the last years of his life.
Ruth Prigozy is professor of English at Hofstra University and the executive director of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society. She is the author of F. Scott Fitzgerald: An Illustrated Life and editor of The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

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