(250 Classic Movies brings to the attention of movie fans,...)
250 Classic Movies brings to the attention of movie fans, and hopefully new fans of older films, motion pictures that are well worth seeing, time and again. Actually, the really good movies never get old. The fist time you see a classic film you might watch it for pure entertainment value. The second time might engross you more in the story. The acting might enthrall you more in the third viewing. And the fourth time? The cinematography, the costumes, the make-up, the sets, or the character players, some in the background (and in musicals, the individual dances), all may suddenly capture your imagination. That's the good thing about the classics-they don't get old because there is so much to behold it's almost impossible to truly see it all the first time around. For this book, the author has selected 250 films that have been acclaimed by critics and/or have been box-office winners or chosen as award-winners by various organizations. Are they the greatest movies ever made? Not necessarily, but they certainly are among the best. To add to the full enjoyment of each film, there are data, awards, trivia, a review, back-stories, posters and photographs-including stills and candids. The book covers twenty categories of filmmaking including foreign films. Represented are famous films from England, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Australia, and Russia. While this book is intended as an overview of the great movies of the first century of filmmaking, we hope it serves as an inspiration to readers to look at other movies of the first hundred years because, after all, in the Golden Age of Hollywood studios were making 700 films a year! So we have a lot to look forward to in our research into the great Classic Movies. George McManus spent 40 years as a broadcast journalist, most of it in California, where he covered the Academy Awards backstage. His time in radio/TV also provided him the opportunity to interview, at length, dozens of filmmakers, often while they were on a book or movie promotion tour. These experiences not only inspired this book, but also enhanced the author's knowledge/appreciation of the films that grace these pages. Mr. McManus lives with his wife and their children in Northern California. He hosts The Midnight Movie on the local community access channel.
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2015 NOMINEE FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION
New York...)
2015 NOMINEE FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION
New York Times-bestselling author James McManus offers up a collection of seven linked stories narrated by Vincent Killeen, an Irish Catholic altar boy, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Persuaded at age eight by his grandmother that entering the priesthood will guarantee salvation for every member of his family, Vince eagerly commits to attending a Jesuit seminary for high school. As the meaning of a vow of celibacy becomes clearer to him, however, and he is exposed to the irresistible temptations of poker and girls, life as a seminarian begins to seem less appealing. These autobiographical stories are enlightening and evocative, providing keen, often humorous insight into Catholicism, faith, celibacy and its opposite, as well as America'sand increasingly the world'sfavorite card game.
James McManus has been called poker’s Shakespeare.” He is the New York Times-bestselling author of Positively Fifth Street and Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, among others. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s, The Believer, Paris Review, Esquire, and in Best American anthologies for poetry, sports writing, science and nature, and magazine writing. He is the recipient of the Peter Lisagor Award for Sports Journalism, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations. He teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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• Jiggs is a millionaire who yearns to hang out with hi...)
• Jiggs is a millionaire who yearns to hang out with his friends in the old blue-collar neighborhood. Wife Maggie is determined to drag Jiggs into the world of high society. When this mismatched couple treats their daughter and her new husband to a trip across North America, the resulting hijinx stretch From Sea to Shining Sea!
• "From Sea to Shining Sea" is the most famous and beloved story in the long history of this classic strip. Creator George McManus's funny gags, outlandish costumes, eye-catching artwork, and lush, Art Deco designs are all on display in this deluxe, Library of American Comics edition, which features every daily and full-color Sunday from January 2, 1939 to July 7, 1940.
-The Library of American Comics is the world's #1 publisher of classic newspaper comic strips, with 14 Eisner Award nominations and three wins for best book. LOAC has become "the gold standard for archival comic strip reprints...The research and articles provide insight and context, and most importantly the glorious reproduction of the material has preserved these strips for those who knew them and offers a new gateway to adventure for those discovering them for the first time.” - Scoop
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Bringing Up Father Volume 2: Of Cabbages And Kings
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• Maggie and Jiggs are back in "Of Cabbages and Kings,"...)
• Maggie and Jiggs are back in "Of Cabbages and Kings," an extravanga that contains all dailies and Sundays from February 22, 1937 — December 31, 1938. The hilarious battling couple go to London for the King's coronation. Upon their return, Jiggs decides the only way he'll convince Maggie to move back to the old neighborhood is to lose his fortune. He makes one outlandish investment after another, but each time he only becomes richer. Until he hits on the right formula. For Maggie, the unthinkable happens: it's back to eating boiled cabbage when the wealthy Jiggs goes broke!
George McManus was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He was the son of George and Katherine Kenrick McManus. His father, the son of a captain in the British army, was from Mullingar, County Westmeath, his mother from County Limerick. In St. Louis his father managed the Grand Opera House. There the young McManus watched performers who gave him ideas for later comic strips.
Education
George McManus studied at St. Louis' Central High School.
Career
In his second year at St. Louis' Central High School, McManus was sent home with a teacher's note of censure for having spent school time sketching a classmate. Instead of reproving him, McManus's father showed the picture to the editor of the St. Louis Republic, who promptly engaged the offender as a $5-a-week errand boy in the art department. Thus, in 1899, McManus began his career. The teenager's artistic talent was soon put to work. Newspaper illustrations of the time were largely artists' drawings, and McManus became a busy sketcher of scenes at "hangings, murders and suicides, " as well as other local news events. He also had an opportunity to begin to draw women's fashions, a fascination that continued throughout his life. In 1900 he produced his first comic strip, "Alma and Oliver, " "the details of which are mercifully forgotten". He delighted in telling how, in 1904, when he was about twenty he said there were no family records to establish whether his birth year was 1882, 1883, or 1884 he came into an instant fortune. Following a friendly bootblack's tip, he put $100 on the winning nose of a 30-to-1 shot, Hamburg Belle, an undistinguished racehorse. With the $3, 000 McManus went at once to New York, where weeks of job hunting used up his bounty. When he was "going down for the third time, " he was taken on in the New York World's art department. He did some illustrating but sought primarily to produce a comic strip. One idea after another failed to catch on. "Panhandle Pete", "Snoozer", "The Merry Marcelene", "Ready Money Ladies", and "Let George Do It" had relatively short lives, although the title of the last of these entered the speech of the day. "The Newlyweds and Their Baby" did so much better, however, that rival newspapers took notice. In 1912 William Randolph Hearst, who gave close attention to the "funny papers, " enticed McManus away from the World to the New York American and the Hearst King Features syndicate. Leaving "The Newlyweds" behind, he produced a similar strip that he christened "Their Only Child. " In the back of his mind, however, was a play, The Rising Generation, that he had seen on the stage of the St. Louis Grand Opera House. The leading actor, Billy Barry, portrayed a short, red-haired, no-frills Irishman, lately become well-to-do, who was never happier than when he escaped from his socially ambitious family to play poker with his former cronies. In 1913 the strip, entitled "Bringing Up Father, " became a daily feature. The basic theme was a sure prescription for success. Jiggs a name made up by McManus is elevated into society by newly acquired riches, the source of which is never quite explained.
McManus entertained vaudeville crowds by sketching Jiggs and Maggie on the stage. He appeared on radio and television and in the movies. For a decade Jiggs and Maggie theatrical companies toured the United States and Canada. The first "Bringing Up Father" book went into twenty-four printings, and others came out almost annually. The characters gave rise to promotional dishes, ashtrays, fans, playing cards, perfume bottles, jewelry, buttons, and clothing. Royalties added to generous contracts brought McManus more than $100, 000 a year. Over a forty-year span his gross income ran well into the millions of dollars. Of this he lost $1, 500, 000 in the 1929 crash. In both World Wars Jiggs was the identifying sign of the 11th Bomber Squadron and Maggie, Rosie, and Snookums also turned up on military planes. Jiggs marched in countless parades and received votes for president. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia celebrated Jiggs and Maggie's twenty-fifth anniversary in a "growler" and corned beef and cabbage party at the New York City Hall, and in 1945 more than a thousand admirers joined in a tribute banquet at the Waldorf Astoria. Friends on Capitol Hill arranged a congressional dinner, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed McManus "a national institution" who "has made the world a more genial place to live in". McManus was ill in later life, his work being done partly by his assistant of many years, Zeke Zekley. He died in Santa Monica, Calif. Vernon Greene, a veteran comic artist, carried on "Bringing Up Father" until his death in 1965, when others took over.
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• Jiggs is a millionaire who yearns to hang out with hi...)
Religion
Reared a Catholic, he became a Mason.
Personality
McManus was stout and short. A chain smoker, McManus worked with a cigar in one hand and a pen in the other. Jovial and lively in conversation, he shunned exercise, dressed in high style, doted on circuses, and enjoyed touring by automobile.
Connections
McManus's wife, Florence Bergère, of St. Louis, a concert singerwhom he married December 24, 1910, was the model for Nora. They had no children.