Frank Thompson - Böcker

The first book-length study of the career of the director of such classic films as The Day the Earth Stood Still, West Side Story, and The Sound of Music, this volume combines thorough cast and crew credits, critical responses, awards and nominations, production notes, and comments from the director himself resulting in a unique overview of a remarkable career. In addition, a complete annotated bibliography of all books, articles, and interviews by or about Wise is included. An interesting feature is the examination of many of his unproduced projects.Wise's career began with RKO as an editor for such films as Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), when he then stepped in for director Gunther von Fritsch to complete Curse of the Cat People (1944). At 20th-Century Fox, Wise directed The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), and Run Silent, Run Deep (1958). West Side Story (1961), which Wise codirected with choreographer Jerome Robbins, marked the beginning of the third phase of his career, a period marked by mammoth productions that met with overwhelming approval commercially and critically. West Side Story The Sound of Music (1965), one of the highest grossing films in history, though Wise considers The Haunting (1963) his best film. Though Wise's films since 1965 have rarely been box-office successes, he has done intriguing and varied work such as The Andromeda Strain (1971), The Hindenburg (1975), and Audrey Rose (1977).

The story of the Star Film Ranch and its pioneering crew, who created the first “authentic” Westerns filmed in Texas.In 1910, the MÉliÈs Star Film Company of Manhattan set up a moving-picture studio outside San Antonio, the first in Texas. Determined to make the most authentic Westerns possible, the company filmed there for a little over a year. In that brief time, it created more than seventy single-reel films, leaving a lasting mark on moviemaking. Film historians Kathryn Fuller-Seeley and Frank Thompson return to a moment when on-location filmmaking was emerging as an artform. We meet producer Gaston MÉliÈs, older brother of early-cinema legend Georges MÉliÈs, and his cast and crew of young innovators, old hands, and genuine cowboys—like seventeen-year-old Edith Storey, the tomboy star who helped to ignite modern celebrity culture, and Francis Ford, who learned the art of film directing on the job and mentored his younger brother, Hollywood legend John Ford. The First Movie Studio in Texas traces the company’s trials and accomplishments, its influence on the depiction of race and gender in Western filmmaking, its surviving works, and its crowning achievement: The Immortal Alamo (1911), the earliest cinematic depiction of that famous battle. Finally recovered from the shadows, the forgotten MÉliÈs brother proves to be one of the key founders of the Western myth on screen.

Since the first motion picture studio in Texas was set up in San Antonio in 1910, the city has hosted the filming of more than 250 movies, including the first Academy Award winner for Best Picture — Wings — in 1927. Film historian Frank Thompson includes the first filmography documenting the scope of the activity.