Allegedly found in the ruins of a bombed-out dog kennel in France during World War I, then brought to Los Angeles by Lee Duncan, the soldier who found and trained him, by 1927 Rin Tin Tin had become Hollywood's number one box-office star. Susan Orlean's book--about the dog and the legend--is a poignant exploration of the enduring bond between humans and animals. It is also a richly textured history of twentieth-century entertainment and entrepreneurship....

Allegedly found in the ruins of a bombed-out dog kennel in France during World War I, then brought to Los Angeles by Lee Duncan, the soldier who found and trained him, by 1927 Rin Tin Tin had become Hollywood's number one box-office star. Susan Orlean's book--about the dog and the legend--is a poignant exploration of the enduring bond between humans and animals. It is also a richly textured history of twentieth-century entertainment and entrepreneurship....

When she arrived in Hollywood Greta Garbo spoke barely a word of English, yet in sixteen short years, she managed to infiltrate the world's subconscious. She appeared in only two dozen Hollywood movies, and ended her film career when she was thirty-six. Gottlieb retells her life, beginning in the slums of Stockholm and proceeding through her years of struggling to elude the attention of the world. He examines the films themselves, the life she led...

"Filled with rare images and untold stories from filmmakers, exhibitors, and moviegoers, Forbidden Hollywood is the ultimate guide to a gloriously entertaining and strikingly progressive era, when a lax code of censorship let sin rule the movies. Forbidden Hollywood is a history of "pre-Code" like none other: you will eavesdrop on production conferences, read nervous telegrams from executives to censors, and hear Americans argue about "immoral" movies....

More than a century after the Lumière brothers made their first movie, the magic of the silver screen refuses to fade. Even silent era classics, such as the futuristic Metropolis, still retain the power to astonish. The talkies introduced new genres-- among them the special-effects blockbuster, first seen in King Kong and reinvented in the 1980s with Steven Spielberg's Jaws-- that continue to inspire and enthrall. In more recent years, technological...