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Book

Ready for my closeup : the making of Sunset Boulevard and the dark side of the Hollywood dream

Call Number

  • 791.4372 S9587L (CEN, OSH)

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Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2025.

Physical Description

xiii, 317 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Summary

"Great films are born of great collaborations, and Sunset Boulevard represents one of the most extraordinary confluences of cinematic talent in film history, but its production was surprisingly fraught, filled with unexpected twists. Why was William Holden, who had never caught fire as a leading man, hired to play Joe Gillis after the fastest rising star in the business dropped out at the last minute? After Mae West and Mary Pickford turned down the now iconic role of Norma Desmond, how did Billy Wilder convince Gloria Swanson, who had long been absent from Hollywood at this point, to leave her low paying job as a TV talk show host to join the cast? From the writers' room during Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett's final collaboration to the moment when the film won three Academy Awards, scholar and former Rolling Stone staffer David M. Lubin takes readers on a fascinating journey through film history that proves, once and for all, why Sunset Boulevard is one of the most iconic films in cinematic history. By exploring the history of Sunset Boulevard in time for the movie's 75th anniversary, from its inception to its making to its present-day legacy, Ready for My Closeup breathes life into a beloved masterpiece of American cinema, not only marking its influential place in film history, but also proving how prescient it really was in terms of the human costs of relentless technological change and our obsessive quest for fame, youth, and immortality"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents

  • Prologue: The early hours
  • The man in the pool
  • Glorious Gloria
  • Writers in Wonderland
  • 'The happiest couple in Hollywood'
  • Adultery, addiction, and mass murder
  • 'The foolishness of this foolish town'
  • Finding Norma
  • The man you love to hate
  • 'Hello, young fellow'
  • 'Do you know Bill Holden?'
  • Locations: Real and imagined
  • A new monkey for Norma
  • Out with the old, in with the new
  • Getting ready for her close-up
  • Reactions ot Sunset
  • What became of...?
  • Epilogue: The legacy of Sunset Boulevard
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Photo credits
  • Index.

Subjects