Vanda Krefft – författare
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2 produkter
2 produkter
E-bok
Engelska, 2017251 kr
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This biography of a forgotten film-industry titan with a still-famous name is both “a great American success story and a shudder-provoking cautionary tale” (The Wall Street Journal).A Huffington Post Best Film Book of the YearA major Hollywood studio still bears William Fox’s name—but the man himself has mostly been forgotten by history, even written off as a failure. This vivid biography, drawing on a decade of original research, corrects the record, explaining why Fox’s legacy is central to the history of Hollywood.Growing up in Lower East Side tenements, the eldest son of impoverished Hungarian immigrants, Fox began selling candy on the street. That entrepreneurial ambition eventually grew one small Brooklyn theater into a $300 million empire of deluxe studios and theaters that rivaled those of Adolph Zukor, Marcus Loew, and the Warner brothers, and launched stars such as Theda Bara. Amid the euphoric roaring twenties, the early movie moguls waged a fierce battle for control of their industry. A fearless risk-taker, Fox won and was hailed as a genius—until a confluence of circumstances, culminating with the 1929 stock market crash, led to his ruin.At the heart of Fox’s life was the myth of the American Dream. His story intertwines the fate of the nineteenth-century immigrants who flooded into New York, the city’s vibrant and ruthless Gilded Age history, and the birth of America’s movie industry amid the dawn of the modern era. “[The author’s] attention to detail makes for gripping storytelling.” —Publishers Weekly“Stunningly researched, lucidly told, and consistently illuminating.” —Brenda Wineapple, award–winning author of The Impeachers“Krefft captures both the culture of the origins of cinema as a business and the many fascinating personalities at play within the narrative. No longer Hollywood’s forgotten pioneer, William Fox now has the history he deserves.” —The Washington Post
Inbunden, Engelska, 2025
285 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
A fun and fascinating social history of the famed Katharine Gibbs School, which from the 1910s to the 1960s, trained women for executive secretary positions but surreptitiously was instilling the self-confidence and strategic know-how necessary for them to claim equality, power, and authority in the wider world. It's a safe bet that most of the secretaries on the TV series Mad Men would have attended the Katharine Gibbs School in New York City. The iconic institution was in its heyday synonymous with supplying secretaries-always properly attired in heels, ladylike hats, and white gloves-to male executives. In Expect Great Things! Vanda Krefft turns the notion of a "Gibbs girl" on its head, showing us that while the school was getting women who could type 120 words per minute into the C-suite, its more subversive mission was to get them out of the secretarial pool to assume positions of power on the other side of the desk. And Gibbs graduates did just that, paving the way for 21st-century women to succeed in any profession they choose.Katharine Gibbs was one her own success stories. She started her school when, as a 46-year-old widow, she was left near-broke with two young sons. The school taught typing and stenography but Gibbs also hired accomplished professors from elite colleges to teach academic subjects-it was a well-rounded education that produced early feminists ready to tackle the sexism of their era. "Expect great things!" was her motto and her philosophy. Within a decade she'd opened schools in three elegant locations. With nostalgic period photographs throughout, Expect Great Things! takes us back to Katie Gibbs's life and tells the stories of the women she influenced. We meet Gibbs graduates who worked for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Howard Hughes, Walt Disney, Marilyn Monroe. Others forged pathfinding roles as an Emmy-winning television star, a women's rights advisor to four U.S. presidents, a writer of Wonder Woman comic books, the head of the Women's Marines, a best-selling young adult author, and a U.S. Ambassador.For readers of The Barbizon and Come Fly the World, Expect Great Things! reveals the seismic impact the Katharine Gibbs school had on the American workplace-and on women's opportunities today.