Peerless

Rouben Mamoulian, Hollywood, and Broadway

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by Kurt Jensen

Type

Biographies

Subject

Director > Rouben Mamoulian

Keywords

Rouben Mamoulian, director

Publishing date

2024

Publisher

University of Wisconsin Press

Collection

Wisconsin Film Studies

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 376 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-0-299-34820-5

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Book Presentation:
“To date the fullest account of Mamoulian's life and career. The author has assiduously scoured the sources at hand. He has scrutinized the self-serving reminiscences Mamoulian recorded and rerecorded in retirement. He has amassed a trove of anecdotes deftly told and judgments reasonably rendered.”
—Wall Street Journal

The definitive biography of an idiosyncratic genius

A proud Armenian who claimed a distant link to nobility, born in what was then part of czarist Russia, Rouben Mamoulian (1897–1987) was one of the most astonishing and confounding figures in American film and theater, directing the original stage productions of Porgy and Bess, Carousel, and Oklahoma!, as well as films including Love Me Tonight, Queen Christina, City Streets, and Silk Stockings. He was famously fired from the film version of Porgy and Bess in a dispute over publicity and quit Cleopatra after arguments over a single scene. Mamoulian’s mercurial confidence and autocratic tendencies were among the reasons he had a reputation for being uncompromising. This frustrating mix of genius and stubbornness, of critical successes and financial flops, has proven challenging for biographers.

Kurt Jensen’s magisterial volume, extensively researched and filled with trenchant observations, brings to life this charming, flawed, and fascinating man—and demonstrates how the wellspring of his art contained the seeds of his own destruction. Drawing upon Mamoulian’s unfinished memoir and voluminous diaries, as well as interviews with the director’s surviving collaborators, Jensen delivers fresh and informative insider stories from seminal productions. Meanwhile, he explores Mamoulian’s aesthetic principles and strategies as manifested in lighting, choreography, and sound design. A tour de force, Peerless offers readers a multifaceted, in-depth look at an idiosyncratic genius.

About the Author:
Kurt Jensen has been a film reviewer and news writer for several Catholic publications, and his contributions have been published in Studies in Musical Theatre and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

See the publisher website: University of Wisconsin Press

See the complete filmography of Rouben Mamoulian on the website: IMDB ...