THEY MAKE MOVIES is Published

May 31, 2021

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The eternal writing and revising and formatting of THEY MAKE MOVIES have been completed. The marketing plans are in place. It’s time to play ball, and I’m feeling a little tense. So let’s throw out the first pitch and see what happens.

Introduction

This fast-moving collection blends fiction with history to illuminate the lives and careers of noted actors, actresses, and directors. Talented but tormented Louise Brooks and Anna May Wong open the show, and major stars Marlene Dietrich, Vivien Leigh, and Bette Davis follow, revealing their experiences or yielding to characters who offer creative comments about them.

The parade continues with Joan Crawford, a gifted actress who’s difficult on and off the set. Olivia de Havilland becomes a star and then challenges a rigid studio system that locks her into inferior parts and bans her from movies while she fights the moguls in court. Marilyn Monroe is glamorous and gifted but seldom escapes emotional agony. Lupe Velez, The Mexican Spitfire, is similarly doomed.

Contemporary actresses Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchette, Halle Berry, and Kate Winslet usually have better creative choices and earn more money than their cinematic predecessors but must also deal with challenging screen roles and, on occasion, outrageous co-stars.

Leading men next step before the cameras. Humphrey Bogart battles his violent third wife while finally moving toward screen immortality. Errol Flynn, a compelling but unstable young man not long removed from sailing the seas around Tasmania and New Guinea, rapidly becomes a star and almost as quickly undermines himself with alcohol, narcotics, and bad decisions. Clark Gable marries two much older women, one teaching him to act and the other showing him how to behave in high society, before he combines polish and charisma to start getting what he wants.

Laurence Olivier and John Wayne differ stylistically but both dominate the screen and delight moviegoers. Kirk Douglas also proves he’s a star and so does his son Michael, and some creative scenes enliven their stories. Ernest Hemingway arrives, trying to help Burt Lancaster survive his debut in The Killers. In other roles the actor swims through backyard pools on estates in suburban Connecticut and studies birds not at Alcatraz but less scenic Leavenworth. Marlon Brando again fascinates in On the Waterfront, this time making alternative efforts to avoid becoming a bum. The youngest star is Chadwick Boseman, portrayer of Jackie Robinson. Character actors appear next and include Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Claude Rains, Edward G. Robinson, Ernest Borgnine and, more recently, Jesse Eisenberg.
The performers above are guided by directors such as John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, and Spike Lee. And where do they get their raw material? It emerges from numerous too-little-appreciated screenwriters like Ben Hecht, Budd Schulberg, and Aaron Sorkin as well as directors who write well. Huston, Allen, and Lee are among the finest.

And these talents coalesce to form fantasy teams about which we confidently state: They Make Movies.

They Make Movies on Amazon.com

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George Thomas Clark

George Thomas Clark is the author of Hitler Here, a biographical novel published in India and the Czech Republic as well as the United States. His commentaries for GeorgeThomasClark.com are read in more than 50 countries a month.

Recent Commentary

Books

HITLER HERE is a well researched and lyrically written biographical novel offering first-person stories by the Fuehrer and a variety of other characters. This intimate approach invites the reader to peer into Hitler’s mind, talk to Eva Braun, joust with Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler, debate with the generals, fight on land and at sea and…
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This fast-moving collection blends fiction and movie history to illuminate the stimulating lives and careers of noted actors, actresses, and directors. Stars of this book include Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, Clint Eastwood, Cate Blanchett, and Spike Lee.
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In this collection of thirty-eight chiseled short stories, George Thomas Clark introduces readers to actors, alcoholics, addicts, writers famous and unknown, a general, a lovelorn farmer, a family besieged by cancer, extraterrestrials threatening the world, a couple time traveling back to a critical battle, a deranged husband chasing his wife, and many more memorable people…
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Anne Frank On Tour and Other Stories
This lively collection offers literary short stories founded on History, Love, Need, Excess, and Final Acts.
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In lucid prose author George Thomas Clark recalls the challenges of growing up in a family beset by divorce, depression, and alcoholism, and battling similar problems as an adult.
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Let’s invite many of the greatest boxers and their contemporaries to tell their own stories, some true, others tales based on history. The result is a fascinating look into the lives and battles of those who thrilled millions but often ruined themselves while so doing.
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Get on board this collection of satirical stories, based on news, about the entertaining but absurd and often quite dangerous events following the election of President Donald J. Trump in November 2016 until January 6, 2021, shortly after his loss to Joe Biden.
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History and literary fiction enliven the Barack Obama phenomenon from the African roots of his father and grandfather to the United States where young Obama struggles to control vices and establish his racial identity. Soon, the young politician is soaring but under fire from a variety of adversaries including Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh.
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These satirical columns allow startlingly candid Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush to explain their need to control the destinies of countries, regions, and, ultimately, the world. Osama bin Laden, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Karl Rove, and other notables, not all famous, also demand part of the stage.
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Where Will We Sleep
Determined to learn more about those who fate did not favor, the author toured tattered, handmade refuges of those without homes and interviewed them on the streets and in homeless shelters, and conversed with the poor in the United States, Mexico, Ecuador, and Spain, and on occasion wrote composite stories to illuminate their difficult lives.
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In search of stimulating stories, the author interviewed prostitutes in Madrid, Mexico City, Havana, and Managua and on many boulevards in the United States, and he talked to detectives and rode the rough roads of social workers who deal with human trafficking, which is contemporary slavery, and sometimes used several lives to create stories, and everywhere he ventured he witnessed struggles of those whose lives are bound In Other Hands.
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In compressed language Clark presents a compilation of short stories and creative columns about relationships between men and women.
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Political Satire for Progressives
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