Alistair Cooke at the Movies

by Alistair Cooke (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2011

  $3.29

  Covering seventy-five years of brilliant reporting, Alistair Cooke At the Movies, edited by Geoff Brown, gives us a new insight into the world of film from one of the twentieth century's most beloved writers. Long before Alistair Cooke became known for his Letter from America BBC Broadcasts, he was a film reviewer. He began writing about cinema as a Cambridge undergraduate and continued to report on film when he went to live in New York, never losing his passion for the movies. This vivid and fascinating new collection brings together the very best of Cooke's writing about film. It selects the most sparkling of his little-known flilm reviews, and contains his journalism on everything from the trauma of the Hollywood blacklist to the robbery of Zsa Zsa Gabor's jewels. It also includes his affectionate recollections of various stars he knew and admired, among them Charlie Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart. 'Alistair Cooke was a serious movie fan ... his passion for films is sharply caught in this collection' Philip French, Observer 'Opens windows into the history of a medium ... the highlights of this thorough volume are Cooke's reminiscences of his meetings with the stars' The Times Literary Supplement Alistair Cooke (1908-2004) enjoyed an extraordinary life in print, radio and television. The Guardian's Senior Correspondent in New York for twenty-five years and the host of groundbreaking cultural programmes on American television and of the BBC series America, Cooke was, however, best known both at home and abroad for his weekly BBC broadcast Letter from America, which reported on fifty-eight years of US life, was heard over five continents and totalled 2,869 broadcasts before his retirement in February 2004, far and away the longest-running radio series in broadcasting history.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2009

  $4.25

  On the 8th of October 1934, long before the wider world knew him from his Letter from America broadcasts, his television series America , or his introductions to Masterpiece Theatre, Alistair Cooke sat down at a BBC microphone to give his first radio talk. His subject was cinema. Cooke began film reviewing in the 1920s as a Cambridge undergraduate, and continued to broadcast on cinema from New York. Under his watchful gaze, Hollywood reached its Golden Age, only to be tarnished by television; he clocked every new technological development, from the arrival of talkies to the video cassette. He also observed cinema's personalities, writing tributes to Marilyn Monroe, Gary Cooper, James Cagney and others, always illuminating their special gifts and the way they reflected the American scene. Since the 1930s, Alistair Cooke's lively film reviews have largely slumbered unpublished and unheard. Alistair Cooke at the Movies selects the most sparkling. We meet Cooke the biographer, affectionately recalling various stars he knew and admired, among them Charlie Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart. This is a fascinating new collection for Cooke's devoted readers and listeners, and for anyone interested in the 20th century parade of American and European films.