UNITED STATES AUTHOR · DRAMA · HISTORY
Kenneth Macgowan
Kenneth Macgowan (November 30, 1888 – April 27, 1963) was an American film producer. He won an Academy Award for Best Color Short Film for La Cucaracha (1934), the first live-action short film made in the three-color Technicolor process.Born on November 30, 1888 in Winthrop, Massachusetts, Macgowan began his career as a drama critic. He wrote many books on the modern theater including The Theatre of Tomorrow (1921), Continental Stagecraft (1922) with Robert Edmond Jones, Masks and Demons (1923) with Herman Rosse, and Footlights Across America (1929). In 1922, he ran the Provincetown Playhouse as its producer, with Eugene O'Neill and Robert Edmond Jones as business partners. His close relationship with O'Neill lasted their lifetimes.In 1928 he moved to Hollywood, California to become a story editor for the newly-formed RKO Radio Pictures and quickly became an assistant producer. By 1932, Macgowan had become a film producer for RKO, including Little Women (1933), starring Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Frances Dee and Jean Parker as the March sisters. Macgowan produced many films between 1932 and 1947, not only at RKO, but also for 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. He produced the first feature film made in the three color Technicolor process, Becky Sharp (1935). He also produced Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) with Henry Fonda, Fritz Lang's Man Hunt (1941) and Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944). Other films produced by Macgowan include The Penguin Pool Murder (1932), Double Harness (1933), Rafter Romance (1933), Murder on the Blackboard (1934), Murder on a Honeymoon (1935), Lloyd's of London (1936), Stanley and Livingstone (1939), The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939), and Jane Eyre (1944). In 1947, he left the movie industry to become the first chair of the Department of Theater Arts at UCLA. The theater building on the school's campus is named in his honor. Throughout his life, he wrote books on a number of subjects including drama and film, most notably Behind the Screen, a history of cinema published in 1965 after his death. He died on April 27, 1963, in West Los Angeles, California, aged 74.
e handsome hero couldn't breathe: there was water up his nose. The villain held him by the back of his neck, keeping him facedown in the flume.
— from Behind the screen, 1923
Most acclaimed
Behind the screen
1923
From Goodreads: William Mann's Behind the Screen is a thoughtful and eye-opening look at the totality of the gay experience in studio-era Hollywood. Much has been written about how gays have been portrayed in the movies but no book -- until now -- has looked at their influence behind the screen. Whether out of or in the closet, gays and lesbians have from the very beginning played a significant role in shaping Hollywood. Gay actors were among the earliest matinee idols and gay directors have long been among the most popular and commercially successful filmmakers. In fact, gay set and costume designers created the very look of Hollywood.With this landmark book, Mann fills a void in the Hollywood history archives. Written in the tradition of Neal Gabler's An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood and based on hundreds of hours of interviews with survivors of this golden age, Behind the Screen is destined to become a classic of film literature.
Golden ages of the theater
From the Back Cover: Why do golden ages produce golden theater? What made theater great in the age of Pericles, the centuries of the Renaissance in Italy, Spain, and Elizabethan England, the Baroque of France, the era of the industrial revolution in Europe? Golden Ages of the Theater traces 2,500 years of play going, play acting, and play reading. It follows theater history from earliest beginnings to the present to show how the physical theater and its plays serve as a reflection of the culture of the time. In these pages you will encounter the most significant personages in theater history-the actors, directors, authors, designers, and technicians who have made contributions of lasting importance to the theater. A special series of "time charts"--Locating the chief playwrights chronologically-lends continuity and clarity to this lively history of drama and the stage.