Synopses & Reviews
The producer behind such celebrated films as
The Four Feathers and
The Third Man is one of the most colorful and important figures in the history of the British cinema. This gripping biography tells how with extraordinary ambition, enterprise, and showmanship, Alexander Korda established in Britain a film industry that rivalled Hollywood, built Europes biggest studio, and created world-class stars, including Charles Laughton and Vivien Leigh. The biography traces Kordas path from his rural childhood in a remote part of Hungary to a British knighthood. Kordas legacy, it argues, was a film industry that dared to dream on the largest possible scale. But he also exemplified the pattern of boom and bust that dogged the British cinema ever since he first came into the limelight in 1933 with the international success of
The Private Life of Henry VIII. To understand his often turbulent career is to gain a profound insight into the nature of the British cinema both then and now.
Review
"In this thorough and jaunty biography, Drazin gives us a masterly portrait." --
Sunday Times"An engrossing exegesis of film-making in inter- war Britain and a rounded portrait of what wed now call an economic migrant who lived profligately, left others poorer and occasionally and enduringly enriched the screen." -- Evening Standard
"Wry, ruthless and expertly researched." -- Financial Times
"[Drazin] tells his story well. He has enough weapons in his armoury to destroy a few myths. The result is an intriguing narrative." -- Observer
"Film history rarely has such a deft touch. As with so much, Korda got lucky." -- Times Literary Supplement
"Thorough and readable." -- Mail on Sunday
"An engrossing memoir with a scoop story about the film producer's espionage activities" -- Books of the Year, Independent
About the Author
Charles Drazin is a lecturer on cinema at Queen Mary, University of London. His previous books include The Finest Years: British Cinema of the 1940s and In Search of The Third Man.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements * List of illustrations * New Preface * The Puszta * Sandor of the River * Westward Bound * The Gilded Cage * ‘Somewhere on the Mediterranean * ‘The London Venture * Success * Alexander the Great * The Foxy Whiskered Gentleman * The Player * The Bubble Bursts * Twenty-Four Hours a Day * Falling with Style * Hanging On * Free! * The Service * For King and Country * A Knight in Hollywood * Perfect Strangers * Forward into the Future * Never Pay Cash * Auld Lang Syne * Elsewhere * A Home At Last * Notes * Select Bibliography * The Films of Alexander Korda * Index