Great American Film Directors: From the Flickers Through Hollywood's Golden Age

by Dian G. Smith

An account of the lives and accomplishments of ten famous directors, including D.W. Griffith, John Ford, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, and Orson Welles.

166 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Jonathan Hurt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recently, I had the pleasure of learning about the great golden age of film making through reading Great American Film Directors (1987) by Dian G. Smith. The book retells many lives and events of many iconic directors of the old days of filmmaking, back to the days where films with Audio, also known as "speakies", back when black and white was the standard of colors for movies, and back when movies were simple and not as complex as the movies of today. The author talks about 10 different directors of this era. There's D.W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, John Ford, Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, George Cukor, Orson Welles, and John Huston. The author goes through these directors in detail and recounts many significant parts of their personal lives and career in filmmaking. As the author states in the introduction, "Much of this book, however, focuses on films made between 1930 and 1950, during what has been called the Golden Age of Hollywood" (page: vii)

When it comes to Great American Film Directors there isn't much of a theme, it's just a book recalling history of the men who made what movies are today. You could find certain themes within these lives of directors, most of them in the book suffered some sort of trauma either physically or emotionally and managed to get over it by doing the thing they love most, making movies. Another theme is that some of the directors in the book had difficult childhoods and faced hardships along the way to becoming what they always dreamed of becoming. This book will certainly inspire many men and women who wish to make their stories and dreams appear on the silver screen, and to become as respected as the directors in this book. "Most of the directors in this book were popular. Has they not been, the studio system would not have supported them" (page: viii)

This book is a narration of the events and stories of the directors' lives, it tells events in chronological order and the effects of certain actions. This is not only very effective, but most biography books use narration. It is basically essential to the genre.
This was not only a well written book, but it also is a very inspirational for people like myself who want to go into the move business. It's obvious that the person who wrote this is a big movie buff and is passionate about the topic. This is great book for not only going back to the past but inspiring the future.