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Warren William: Magnificent Scoundrel of Pre-Code Hollywood
On the motion picture screen, Hollywood star Warren William (1894-1948) was a magnificent rogue, often deliciously immoral and utterly callous, yet remarkably likable in his wickedness. Off-screen, the actor was as humble and retiring as his film characters were mean and heartless. This biography examines William's life and career in detail, from his rural Minnesota roots through his service in World War I, his Broadway stage success, and his meteoric rise and gradual fall from Hollywood fame in the 1930s and 1940s. Also analyzed are his film persona and the curious mechanisms by which our culture "selects" certain film personalities to remember and others to forget. Featured is a wealth of biographical material never before available, including rare candid photos of William's early years. Interviews with his surviving nieces provide intimate family details and personal remembrances.
240 pages, Paperback
First published October 28, 2010
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64 people want to read
About the author
John Stangeland
5 books1 followerJohn Stangeland has been a free-lance comic book artist for Marvel, DC, Image, Comico, Malibu and Now Comics. He owns and operates Atlas Comics, a retail comic book store in Norridge, Illinois.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 24, 2011
Full review here: http://outofthepastcfb.blogspot.com/2...
This book is for classic film enthusiasts who are not satisfied with just scratching the surface of old Hollywood but want to dig deep and discover the machinations through the stories of those figures, including Warren William, who really made early film what it was. The author provides us with a thorough examination of the life and career of Warren William starting from his family settlement in Aitkin, Minnesota, following him to his theater days in New York, then his film days in Hollywood and finally to his death in 1948. The book reads both like a thoroughly researched and well-organized biography and as a tribute. It follows in chronological order, starting with the first 100 years before Warren William's birth, through his childhood, school years, WWI, marriage, careers and death. I appreciate the structure and order of the book which made digesting all the information provided a lot easier than if it had jumped back and forth through time. Each performance, both theater and film, is given a thorough description followed by Stangeland's thoughts on the work as well as audience and critic reaction. This allows us to see how many ups and downs William's career really had.
Highly recommended!
This book is for classic film enthusiasts who are not satisfied with just scratching the surface of old Hollywood but want to dig deep and discover the machinations through the stories of those figures, including Warren William, who really made early film what it was. The author provides us with a thorough examination of the life and career of Warren William starting from his family settlement in Aitkin, Minnesota, following him to his theater days in New York, then his film days in Hollywood and finally to his death in 1948. The book reads both like a thoroughly researched and well-organized biography and as a tribute. It follows in chronological order, starting with the first 100 years before Warren William's birth, through his childhood, school years, WWI, marriage, careers and death. I appreciate the structure and order of the book which made digesting all the information provided a lot easier than if it had jumped back and forth through time. Each performance, both theater and film, is given a thorough description followed by Stangeland's thoughts on the work as well as audience and critic reaction. This allows us to see how many ups and downs William's career really had.
Highly recommended!
September 3, 2018
I was glad to see a Warren William biography had come out. But this book suffers from an author who stuffs every single biographical detail into a narrative. I gave up slogging through the early years and moved on to William's career on stage and screen. But still, I'm happy Warren William got some attention.
March 8, 2018
Alas, a big disappointment....
Most people's interest in Warren William - mine included - stems from the dozen or so films he starred in during the 'Pre-Code' era, roughly 1929-1934 when Hollywood movies enjoyed the advent of talkies AND the relative lack of censorship (the Hays Code came into force in 1934 and turned Hollywood's output decidedly prudish for the next 3 decades - more, if one takes its cultural impact into consideration).
As a fan of movies in general and of Warren William's work in particular (nobody could do slimy, sleazy and still remain actually likeable as well as WW) I applaud any attempt at capturing the men and his work in a biography. In fact, one of the (generous) three-star rating I gave is for 'effort' rather than for 'execution'.
Unfortunately, this book is a bore. While the author's heart is in the right place, he spends way too much time (over 40% of the book) on the years before William made any films. Admittedly, with a subject who's been dead for some 75 years and wasn't that well known to begin with, it can't have been easy to unearth interviewees who knew him, or even worked with him. Furthermore, by this account William shunned the limelight and led an uninteresting life whenever he wasn't acting.
However, Stangeland based most of his writing on contemporary news articles, and we all know how trustworthy they can be. Worse, reading write-up of the plays William worked in in the 1920s, one after the other for page after page, is tedious and unenlightening.
And when the 1930s, and the Pre-Codes finally come round - the part of the book that should have provided most of its meat - their discussion of the work is superficial and perfunctory. At 230 pages the text is pretty short. It's hard to believe that it's still too long and full of repetitions and redundancies.
Oh well, 'nuff said. I'm going to stop now....
Most people's interest in Warren William - mine included - stems from the dozen or so films he starred in during the 'Pre-Code' era, roughly 1929-1934 when Hollywood movies enjoyed the advent of talkies AND the relative lack of censorship (the Hays Code came into force in 1934 and turned Hollywood's output decidedly prudish for the next 3 decades - more, if one takes its cultural impact into consideration).
As a fan of movies in general and of Warren William's work in particular (nobody could do slimy, sleazy and still remain actually likeable as well as WW) I applaud any attempt at capturing the men and his work in a biography. In fact, one of the (generous) three-star rating I gave is for 'effort' rather than for 'execution'.
Unfortunately, this book is a bore. While the author's heart is in the right place, he spends way too much time (over 40% of the book) on the years before William made any films. Admittedly, with a subject who's been dead for some 75 years and wasn't that well known to begin with, it can't have been easy to unearth interviewees who knew him, or even worked with him. Furthermore, by this account William shunned the limelight and led an uninteresting life whenever he wasn't acting.
However, Stangeland based most of his writing on contemporary news articles, and we all know how trustworthy they can be. Worse, reading write-up of the plays William worked in in the 1920s, one after the other for page after page, is tedious and unenlightening.
And when the 1930s, and the Pre-Codes finally come round - the part of the book that should have provided most of its meat - their discussion of the work is superficial and perfunctory. At 230 pages the text is pretty short. It's hard to believe that it's still too long and full of repetitions and redundancies.
Oh well, 'nuff said. I'm going to stop now....
February 14, 2015
An interesting read that covers the actor's career on Broadway and in movies. There was no scandal in William's life - he was a happily married man and avoided the spotlight. Still the author keeps it interesting and uses many a colorful turn of phrase. There are good write-ups of his movies that let you know which ones to seek out and which ones to avoid.
June 6, 2017
This biography of the great, underrated Warren William, known for his role as the "magnificent scoundrel" of early, pre-code Hollywood, as well as his later roles in the Lone Wolf series of films, sets the bar for film biography. Untouched by scandal throughout his life, married to the same woman for 30 years (a woman 17 years his senior), an actor who didn't make waves in contrast to the Davises and the de Havillands, there wouldn't seem to be much here to offer the reader who wants to revel in the notoriety or innuendo of typical "tell all" Hollywood stories.
But Stangeland manages to make a life of hard work, industrious pursuits and unflinching loyalty to his own ideals a fascinating read. Warren William was an excellent, but perhaps not a great, actor, but no one played a cad better. No one imbued his cynical, conniving, manipulating characters with just enough humanity to make them human - and interesting - as well as sympathetic enough that even today his early performances are fascinating to watch. Amongst his best films are some which are shown fairly regularly on TCM - Employees Entrance, Skyscraper Souls, and perhaps the quintessential William film The Mouthpiece. Don't miss them if you have the chance. The author points out how human William's villains were, compared to many of the cardboard cutouts which substitute for movie villains today, such as Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko and others.
Exhaustively researched, with many photographs which the author unearthed with help from William's relatives, Stangeland traces William's early years in Minnesota, where he was the son of a newspaper publisher and the nephew of a great industrialist. The author writes as much about William's life before he went to Hollywood, after a long and successful stage career on Broadway, as he does about the time he spent in Tinsel Town. Through the course of the book, Warren William comes to life. This is the difference between a biography which just recounts facts about a person's life to one which makes the reader feel he or she has really come to know the subject, and care about him.
As mentioned above, William was not one to make waves. Like Robert Taylor or Robert Montgomery (though he was a better actor than either) he rarely bucked the studio system, and as a consequence his career did not fulfill its early promise. As well, his physical resemblance and even some of his personal mannerisms were so evocative of the young John Barrymore that his image may have suffered a little from the artificial shadow it was placed in. But William valued relationships over those who could simply help his career, the love of a faithful wife and companion with whom he could never have children because she was much older than him, and, almost as a talisman, he had some incredible good luck along the way which benefited him both personally and professionally.
An extremely well written and entertaining biography which proves a film bio doesn't have to be about Monroe or Taylor or Gable (with their - what is it - 16 or so spouses?) to be interesting. A portrait drawn of a fine actor whose legacy is well worth reexamining. Most notably, a vivid reminder of the kind of life that we all should aspire to lead, that of a consummate professional who, even after 30 years in Hollywood, it seemed about whom no one ever said an unkind word. But most exceptional of all, the fact that the life of Warren William becomes rich and full and interesting because of his faith in himself and his dedication to his work - not in spite of it.
Easily gets five stars!
But Stangeland manages to make a life of hard work, industrious pursuits and unflinching loyalty to his own ideals a fascinating read. Warren William was an excellent, but perhaps not a great, actor, but no one played a cad better. No one imbued his cynical, conniving, manipulating characters with just enough humanity to make them human - and interesting - as well as sympathetic enough that even today his early performances are fascinating to watch. Amongst his best films are some which are shown fairly regularly on TCM - Employees Entrance, Skyscraper Souls, and perhaps the quintessential William film The Mouthpiece. Don't miss them if you have the chance. The author points out how human William's villains were, compared to many of the cardboard cutouts which substitute for movie villains today, such as Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko and others.
Exhaustively researched, with many photographs which the author unearthed with help from William's relatives, Stangeland traces William's early years in Minnesota, where he was the son of a newspaper publisher and the nephew of a great industrialist. The author writes as much about William's life before he went to Hollywood, after a long and successful stage career on Broadway, as he does about the time he spent in Tinsel Town. Through the course of the book, Warren William comes to life. This is the difference between a biography which just recounts facts about a person's life to one which makes the reader feel he or she has really come to know the subject, and care about him.
As mentioned above, William was not one to make waves. Like Robert Taylor or Robert Montgomery (though he was a better actor than either) he rarely bucked the studio system, and as a consequence his career did not fulfill its early promise. As well, his physical resemblance and even some of his personal mannerisms were so evocative of the young John Barrymore that his image may have suffered a little from the artificial shadow it was placed in. But William valued relationships over those who could simply help his career, the love of a faithful wife and companion with whom he could never have children because she was much older than him, and, almost as a talisman, he had some incredible good luck along the way which benefited him both personally and professionally.
An extremely well written and entertaining biography which proves a film bio doesn't have to be about Monroe or Taylor or Gable (with their - what is it - 16 or so spouses?) to be interesting. A portrait drawn of a fine actor whose legacy is well worth reexamining. Most notably, a vivid reminder of the kind of life that we all should aspire to lead, that of a consummate professional who, even after 30 years in Hollywood, it seemed about whom no one ever said an unkind word. But most exceptional of all, the fact that the life of Warren William becomes rich and full and interesting because of his faith in himself and his dedication to his work - not in spite of it.
Easily gets five stars!
May 20, 2011
Well done biography and filmography of the wonderful actor Warren William. Excerpts from some of his letters added depth.
June 18, 2019
First and foremost, I love that this book even exists. Given the obscurity of the subject (the consistently marvelous but woefully under-remembered actor Warren William), it’s difficult to imagine this author had a lot of support in bringing this really incredibly researched biography together. So it’s a delightful labor of love, and all the more meaningful to me because from the first time I saw a movie with Warren William, I was 100% Team Warren William. I LOVE his work. Love, love, love it. His best performances are some of my all-time favorite performances (for those who may encounter this review and aren’t familiar, I recommend “Employees Entrance” as a prime starting point). To learn that he was an inventor, a sailor, a consummate outdoorsman, a relative champion of women’s rights, a lover of solitude, a dedicated craftsman, and was by almost every account just a nice, affable guy who never fully hit the big time simply because he didn’t want to play Hollywood’s games on Hollywood’s terms was a joy, and to get more recommendations for his work via Stangeland’s savvy criticism was icing on the cake. I’m so grateful this author finds William as intriguing as I do, because his fans, few though they may be, deserve his full story.
November 25, 2013
The author, Mr. Stangeland, and the publisher, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers deserve a 5-star rating for chronicling the life of Warren William, an often forgotten star of the golden age of Hollywood. In this biography, Warren’s career and his contribution to the pre-code era of Hollywood is summarized in detail in a classy way befitting a gentleman like Warren William Krech. Unlike many biographies of past stars, Mr. Stangeland does not resort to titillating stories which cannot be documented or defended by those long in their grave. The author presents a factual, well-researched account of Warren’s life that made this fan appreciate the humble, hard-working, devoted husband, and often unappreciated actor even more. My only wish is that additional photos had been included in the book.
January 28, 2015
I loved this biography of Warren William. I became a fan of this actor thanks to Turner Movie Classics. William started out on the stage and then in the 1930's went out to Hollywood and became "the man you loved to hate" in the pre-code films.He slao stared in several movies that were nominated for best picture Oscars. William finally found himself in the B flicks as Perry Mason, Philo Vance, and The Lone Wolf. This well documented story shows what Hollywood was like in the 1930's and 40's,and how the big Hollywood machine could make or break an actor, no matter how talented he or she were. Read this biography, and then search for his films on TCM. You'll be glad you did!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews