Overview

The director of classic films such as Sylvia Scarlett, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Adam's Rib, A Star Is Born, and My Fair Lady, George Cukor is widely admired but often misunderstood. Reductively stereotyped in his time as a ""woman's director""-a thinly veiled, disparaging code for ""gay""-he brilliantly directed a wide range of iconic actors and actresses, including Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, and Maggie Smith. As Katharine Hepburn, the star of ten Cukor films, told the director, ""All the people in your pictures are as goddamned good as they can possibly be, and that's your stamp."" In this groundbreaking, lavishly illustrated critical study, Joseph McBride provides insightful and revealing essayistic portraits of Cukor's actors in their most memorable roles. The queer filmmaker gravitated to socially adventurous, subversively rule-breaking, audacious dreamers who are often sexually transgressive and gender fluid in ways that seem strikingly modern today. McBride shows that Cukor's seemingly self-effacing body of work is characterized by a discreet way of channeling his feelings through his actors. He expertly cajoled actors, usually gently but sometimes with bracing harshness, to delve deeply into emotional areas they tended to keep safely hidden. Cukor's wry wit, his keen sense of psychological and social observation, his charm and irony, and his toughness and resilience kept him active for more than five decades in Hollywood. George Cukor's People gives him the in-depth, multifaceted examination his rich achievement deserves.

Full Product Details

Author:   Joseph McBride
Publisher:   Columbia University Press
Imprint:   Columbia University Press
ISBN:  

9780231210829

ISBN 10:   0231210825
Pages:   536
Publication Date:   07 January 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: Is George Cukor an Auteur? And Why Does That Matter? 1. Lew Ayres in All Quiet on the Western Front and Holiday 2. Fredric March and Ina Claire in The Royal Family of Broadway 3. Kay Francis in The Virtuous Sin and with Lilyan Tashman in Girls About Town 4. Lowell Sherman in What Price Hollywood? 5. Katharine Hepburn and John Barrymore in A Bill of Divorcement 6. John Barrymore and Jean Harlow in Dinner at Eight 7. Katharine Hepburn in Little Women; the Ensemble of David Copperfield 8. Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Sylvia Scarlett 9. Greta Garbo in Camille 10. Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Holiday 11. Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel, and Butterfly McQueen in Gone with the Wind 12. Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, and Joan Fontaine in The Women 13. Joan Crawford in Susan and God with Rita Quigley and in A Woman’s Face 14. Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story 15. Ingrid Bergman and Angela Lansbury in Gaslight 16. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Adam’s Rib with Judy Holliday and in Pat and Mike 17. Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday, The Marrying Kind with Aldo Ray, and It Should Happen to You with Jack Lemmon 18. Thelma Ritter and Company in The Model and the Marriage Broker 19. Spencer Tracy and Jean Simmons in The Actress 20. Judy Garland and James Mason in A Star Is Born 21. Ava Gardner in Bhowani Junction, Kay Kendall in Les Girls, and Sophia Loren and Anthony Quinn in Heller in Pink Tights 22. Marilyn Monroe in Let’s Make Love and Something’s Got to Give 23. Claire Bloom, Jane Fonda, Glynis Johns, and Shelley Winters in The Chapman Report 24. Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady 25. Anna Karina and Dirk Bogarde in Justine 26. Maggie Smith, Alec McCowen, Lou Gossett, Robert Stephens, and Cindy Williams in Travels with My Aunt 27. Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen in Rich and Famous 28. Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier in Love Among the Ruins Acknowledgments Filmography Notes on Sources Index

Reviews

"For too long, Cukor's reputation has been as a studio-bound “woman’s director."" Au contraire, as McBride shows us in his definitive study, which combines personal reminiscences of Cukor with a masterly analysis of his films, Cukor was an adventurous and modern filmmaker—plumbing depths in stories and performances, always visually resourceful and imaginative. -- Patrick McGilligan, author of <i>George Cukor: A Double Life</i> This is one of the best books in McBride's distinguished career, and a book that Cukor has long deserved. Critics have often described Cukor as an “actor’s director,” but nobody has done so much as McBride to analyze what the term means. He is a first-rate critic—sensitive, forthright, and eloquent. -- James Naremore, author of <i>Some Versions of Cary Grant</i> Joseph McBride is a natural resource, one whose unique approach to film analysis combines first-person witness, deep study into the context and history of the Hollywood production system, an uncanny somatic recall for the details and essence of a director’s mise-en-scène, may be easy by now to take for granted: of course, one thinks, McBride has turned his embracing attention to Cukor, as he has in the past to Welles, Ford, Lubitsch, et al. But we shouldn’t take it for granted. Here, his keen and affectionate ""actors-first"" approach to his subject echoes Cukor's own elusive, sensitive style, forming a portrait made of portraits of others. As ever with McBride, you'll be driven to seek out films you’ve never even wondered about, and to reencounter others which you recall only as passing dreams. -- Jonathan Lethem, author of <i>Brooklyn Crime Novel</i> An enticing idea—examining the work of a pantheon director through the iconic performances that adorn his films—is dazzlingly manifested here by singular film historian Joseph McBride. McBride’s fresh take on George Cukor gifts us with lively looks at his work with actors both celebrated (Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe) and less so (Lew Ayres, Fredric March, Hattie McDaniel). And he reminds us that Cukor—too often dismissed as tasteful, amusing, but lightweight—was in fact an artist of extraordinary depth, virtuosity, and understanding. -- Julie Kirgo, essayist and film historian"

"Joseph McBride is a natural resource, one whose unique approach to film analysis combines first-person witness, deep study into the context and history of the Hollywood production system, and an uncanny somatic recall for the details and essence of a director’s mise-en-scène, may be easy by now to take for granted: of course, one thinks, McBride has turned his embracing attention to Cukor, as he has in the past to Welles, Ford, Lubitsch, et al. But we shouldn’t take it for granted. Here, his keen and affectionate ""actors-first"" approach to his subject echoes Cukor's own elusive, sensitive style, forming a portrait made of portraits of others. As ever with McBride, you'll be driven to seek out films you’ve never even wondered about, and to reencounter others which you recall only as passing dreams. -- Jonathan Lethem, author of <i>Brooklyn Crime Novel</i> An enticing idea—examining the work of a pantheon director through the iconic performances that adorn his films—is dazzlingly manifested here by singular film historian Joseph McBride. McBride’s fresh take on George Cukor gifts us with lively looks at his work with actors both celebrated (Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe) and less so (Lew Ayres, Fredric March, Hattie McDaniel). And he reminds us that Cukor—too often dismissed as tasteful, amusing, but lightweight—was in fact an artist of extraordinary depth, virtuosity, and understanding. -- Julie Kirgo, essayist and film historian This is one of the best books in McBride's distinguished career, and a book that Cukor has long deserved. Critics have often described Cukor as an “actor’s director,” but nobody has done so much as McBride to analyze what the term means. He is a first-rate critic—sensitive, forthright, and eloquent. -- James Naremore, author of <i>Some Versions of Cary Grant</i> For too long, Cukor's reputation has been as a studio-bound “woman’s director."" Au contraire, as McBride shows us in his definitive study, which combines personal reminiscences of Cukor with a masterly analysis of his films, Cukor was an adventurous and modern filmmaker—plumbing depths in stories and performances, always visually resourceful and imaginative. -- Patrick McGilligan, author of <i>George Cukor: A Double Life</i>"

"For too long, Cukor's reputation has been as a studio-bound “woman’s director."" Au contraire, as McBride shows us in his definitive study, which combines personal reminiscences of Cukor with a masterly analysis of his films, Cukor was an adventurous and modern filmmaker—plumbing depths in stories and performances, always visually resourceful and imaginative. -- Patrick McGilligan, author of <i>George Cukor: A Double Life</i> This is one of the best books in McBride's distinguished career, and a book that Cukor has long deserved. Critics have often described Cukor as an “actor’s director,” but nobody has done so much as McBride to analyze what the term means. He is a first-rate critic—sensitive, forthright, and eloquent. -- James Naremore, author of <i>Some Versions of Cary Grant</i> Joseph McBride is a natural resource, one whose unique approach to film analysis combines first-person witness, deep study into the context and history of the Hollywood production system, an uncanny somatic recall for the details and essence of a director’s mis-en-scène, may be easy by now to take for granted: of course, one thinks, McBride has turned his embracing attention to Cukor, as he has in the past to Welles, Ford, Lubitsch, et al. But we shouldn’t take it for granted. Here, his keen and affectionate ""actors-first"" approach to his subject echoes Cukor's own elusive, sensitive style, forming a portrait made of portraits of others. As ever with McBride, you'll be driven to seek out films you’ve never even wondered about, and to reencounter others which you recall only as passing dreams. -- Jonathan Lethem, author of <i>Brooklyn Crime Novel</i>"

Author Information

Joseph McBride is a film historian and a professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University. He is the author of biographies of Frank Capra, John Ford, and Steven Spielberg; three books on Orson Welles; and critical studies of Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, and the Coen Brothers. He acted for Welles in The Other Side of the Wind and has won a Writers Guild of America award.

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