O'Rourke has significantly broadened our understanding of the contours of British film culture in the 1920s and '30s, showing how filmmakers, agents, publicists, publishers, novelists and journalists simultaneously encouraged, castigated and cynically exploited a nascent mass yearning for screen stardom.
Jon Burrows, University of Warwick (03/03/2017) With flare and imagination, this book traces the debates about the professionalization of ... Read moreacting, the everyday experiences of both those who aspired to, and those who did make their living as film actors, and the fan cultures that surrounded the industry. It is an object lesson in the rich possibilities of archival research: beautifully written, authoritative and absorbing.
(03/03/2017) A valuable, and highly readable, addition to British cinema scholarship that is infused with real feeling for the period. Through vivid examples, O'Rourke's book evokes in particular the attractions and dangers the British interwar film culture held for 'cinema-struck' society.
(03/03/2017) Show Less