Synopses & Reviews
Chaplin and Agee charts the friendship between James Agee, author of
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and Pulitzer Prize-winning
A Death in the Family and screenwriter for American classics including
The African Queen, and Charlie Chaplin, who starred in a staggering number of films from 1914 to 1967. This friendship emerged in the midst of the tumult of the 1940s and 1950s, with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, McCarthyism and blacklisting.
In print here for the first time is Agee's first screenplay, The Tramp's New World, lost until recently. The striking screenplay a comedy "so dark it was without precedent" was written for Chaplin's tramp character and set in post-apocalyptic New York. Chaplin and Agee also features many previously unpublished letters and photographs. As the story moves from Hollywood to Greenwich Village, these two figures come to life, revealing the untold story of the great bond between two influential twentieth-century artists.
Review
"Wranovics...has done his research, and in his first book he writes with a breathless enthusiasm that's both winning and suitable to his subjects' frenetic lives." New York Times
Review
"A true page-turner" David Sterritt, The Christian Science Monitor
Review
"A real addition to film culture (and the culture of the Cold War), complete with the treatment for an unmade movie so vivid that it practically sears the mind's eye." J. Hoberman, Village Voice
Review
"Wranovics does an excellent job of bringing Agee, and his times and his politics, to life. Even those not particularly interested in the novelist will find it an absorbing enough read." BookReporter.com
Synopsis
The first book about the unusual friendship between two beloved figures
Synopsis
Chaplin and Agee charts the friendship between James Agee, author of
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and Pulitzer Prize-winning
A Death in the Family and screenwriter for American classics including
The African Queen, and Charlie Chaplin, who starred in a staggering number of films from 1914 to 1967. This friendship emerged in the midst of the tumult of the 1940s and 1950s, with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, McCarthyism and blacklisting. In print here for the first time is Agee's first screenplay,
The Tramp's New World, lost until recently. The striking screenplay--a comedy "so dark it was without precedent"--was written for Chaplin's tramp character and set in post-apocalyptic New York.
Chaplin and Agee also features many previously unpublished letters and photographs. As the story moves from Hollywood to Greenwich Village, these two figures come to life, revealing the untold story of the great bond between two influential twentieth-century artists.
About the Author
John Wranovics is a Director of Marketing for a leading electronics and computing manufacturer who has written for
The Boston Book Review. He lives in Pleasanton, California.