
Created by Matt Zoller Seitz
Directed by Judith Carter
NEW TO STORE:
Mad Men, Sopranos AND
Biography Collections
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Haruki Murakami
.\\FROM THE DUST JACKET FLAP:
In the "B" Westerns of the 1930s and 1940s, the character's physical movements often revealed whether he was the hero or the villain. Dialogue was held to a minimum. The excitement came from the action, many times through stock situations. The plots were straightforward in their pursuit of action fare. Psychology was usually uncomplicated to the point of being nonexistent. The scenes were also stock situations, and were about the same for each western. It did not really matter to audiences because the things that held their attention were the personalities of the players themselves. While the Roy Rogers's, Johnny Mack Browns, Gene Autrys and John Waynes were grinding out pictures at a prodigious rate, the character actors (the Gabby Hayes's, Walter Brennans, and Andy Devines) and bit players were involved in dozens of films each year.
The lives of the various players represent a study in contrasts. Some embody the rags-to-riches-to-lost-fame them so often observed in the lives of Hollywood residents. Some were semi-literate, while others earned academic degrees. Some retained their wealth and popularity, while still others retained neither.
A representative group of actors who played heroes, heavies, sidekicks, Indians, and assorted types are included in the investigation. Actors who specialized in portraying everything from ranchers, bankers, ministers, newspaper editors, and gamblers to the idolized heroes appear in the book. For some, the brief biography or still photography (and there are approximately 500) is all that remains as a remembrance of their often lengthy careers.
The life story of many former "B" western players is quite indicative of the "shoot-ride-fight" genre they worked in. They enjoyed their work tremendously, did not take themselves too seriously, and nearly always felt that they were a part of a unique and entertaining contribution to the history of the American film.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Arthur F. McClure is the author of The Truman Administration and the Problems of Postwar Labor and The Versatile, with Alfred E. Twomey, He is also the editor of the anthology The Movies: An American Idiom. Ken Jones together with McClure and Twomey are the authors of The Films of James Stewart.
Intact dust jacket with some shelf wear and minor tearing. Intact interior with no markings. ISBN not available as the book predates the system.
Publication date: 1972
Publisher: Barns (UK)
Dimensions: 9x11x1 inches
Weight: 3 lbs
MZS.Press is the online arts bookstore founded by author, critic, and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz and directed by Judith Carter. It offers new, used, signed, collectible, and rare books on film, TV, music, photography, and the visual arts. The store was launched in 2019 on a different platform and has expanded to incorporate arts books published by MZSPress's private imprint: titles currently include Seitz's The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon and Dreams of Deadwood, about the HBO Western, and Walter Chaw's A Walter Hill Film.
Our deepest wish is to promote, encourage, and distribute work by small presses, academic presses, and individuals. Extraordinary work tends to get swallowed up on giant platforms like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The store's inventory of nearly 1000 volumes is currently in the process of being reconstructed after its relocation from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Dallas, Texas. The titles featured here are personally selected by a group of curators and advisors, including Seitz, Carter, and an array of critics, artists, journalists, educators, publishers, and arts mavens who are known for their ability to suss out what Seitz's jazz musician dad liked to call "the good sh*t."
“Please. Have mercy. I’ve been wearing the same underwear since Tuesday.”
Matt Zoller Seitz
Critic, Author, Filmmaker, MZS Press Creator
Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large and film critic of RogerEbert.com; a staff writer for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. His writing on film and TV has appeared in Sight and Sound, The New York Times, Salon.com, The New Republic and Rolling Stone. Seitz is the founder and original editor of the influential film blog The House Next Door, now a part of Slant Magazine.
Seitz has written, narrated, edited or produced over a hundred hours’ worth of video essays about cinema history and style for The Museum of the Moving Image, Salon.com and Vulture, among other outlets. His five-part 2009 video essay Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style was spun off into the hardcover book The Wes Anderson Collection. This book and its follow-up, The Wes Anderson Collection: Grand Budapest Hotel were New York Times bestsellers.
Other Seitz books include the New York Times bestellers The Sopranos Sessions and Mad Men Carousel; TV (The Book), The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon, and the forthcoming The Wes Anderson Collection: The French Dispatch. He is also an interviewer, moderator, and film programmer who has curated and hosted film and TV presentations for the Museum of the Moving Image, IFC Center, San Francisco's Roxie Cinema, and other venues. He is currently working on a memoir about his marriages and a feature-length documentary about his father, jazz musician and composer Dave Zoller.
His hobbies include exotic dancing, moonwalking, and affixing masking tape labels to every food item in the refrigerator, including eggs. He has the attention span of a gnat.