Patrick McGilligan (biographer)

Last updated
Patrick McGilligan at the 2011 Texas Book Festival. Patrick mcgilligan 2011.jpg
Patrick McGilligan at the 2011 Texas Book Festival.

Patrick McGilligan (born April 22, 1951) [1] is an Irish American biographer, film historian and writer. His biography on Sir Alfred Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, was a finalist for the Edgar Award. [2] He is the author of two New York Times Notable Books, and he lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is also noted for his biography on Clint Eastwood, Clint: The Life and Legend, which the author described as "a left-wing book." [3] In addition to Hitchcock and Eastwood, he has written biographies on Robert Altman, James Cagney, George Cukor, Fritz Lang, Oscar Micheaux, Jack Nicholson, Nicholas Ray, Orson Welles and Mel Brooks. He is also an editor of Backstory, which features interviews of Hollywood screenwriters and is published by the University of California Press. [4]

Contents

Notable works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Cukor</span> American film director and producer

George Dewey Cukor was an American film director and producer. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO when David O. Selznick, the studio's Head of Production, assigned Cukor to direct several of RKO's major films, including What Price Hollywood? (1932), A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Our Betters (1933), and Little Women (1933). When Selznick moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1933, Cukor followed and directed Dinner at Eight (1933) and David Copperfield (1935) for Selznick, and Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Camille (1936) for Irving Thalberg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clint Eastwood</span> American actor and director (born 1930)

Clinton Eastwood Jr. is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. Elected in 1986, Eastwood served for two years as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.

<i>The Outlaw Josey Wales</i> 1976 film by Clint Eastwood

The Outlaw Josey Wales is a 1976 American revisionist Western film set during and after the American Civil War. It was directed by and starred Clint Eastwood, with Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney and John Vernon. During the Civil War, Josey Wales is a Missouri farmer turned soldier who seeks to avenge the death of his family and gains a reputation as a feared gunfighter. At the end of the war his group surrenders but is massacred, and Wales becomes an outlaw, pursued by bounty hunters and soldiers.

<i>Unforgiven</i> 1992 film by Clint Eastwood

Unforgiven is a 1992 American Western film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood. It stars Eastwood himself, as William Munny, an aging outlaw and killer who takes on one more job, years after he had turned to farming. The film co-stars Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, and Richard Harris and was written by David Webb Peoples.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Wells</span> American film studio executive (1932–1994)

Franklin G. Wells was an American businessman who served as president of The Walt Disney Company from 1984 until his death in 1994.

<i>Every Which Way but Loose</i> 1978 film by James Fargo

Every Which Way but Loose is a 1978 American action comedy film released by Warner Bros. starring Clint Eastwood in an uncharacteristic and offbeat comedy role. It was produced by Robert Daley and directed by James Fargo. Eastwood plays Philo Beddoe, a trucker and bare-knuckle brawler roaming the American West in search of a lost love while accompanied by his brother/manager Orville and his pet orangutan Clyde. Philo encounters a wide assortment of characters, including a pair of police officers and a motorcycle gang who pursue him for revenge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Schickel</span> American film scholar

Richard Warren Schickel was an American film historian, journalist, author, documentarian, and film and literary critic. He was a film critic for Time from 1965–2010, and also wrote for Life and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. His last writings about film were for Truthdig.

Celebrity biographers are authors who specialize in writing sensationalized books about the lives of celebrities. Historically, biographers have been limited to those who specialized in literary works on important personalities or those officially commissioned by a living person or if deceased, by the estate to provide a biography of that person. In recent years, the term "celebrity biographer" has come into existence. ForeWord Magazine notes that "There is the literary biographer and the celebrity biographer." Designed to be entertainment, books by celebrity biographers are often referred to as "quickie" biographies due to the limited amount of research done vis-à-vis that of a literary biographer. Books about celebrities have existed for many years but the advent of the personal computer (PC) reduced writing and editing costs substantially. Combined with the Internet, that provided massive sources and easy contact, the PC created an explosion of celebrity books beginning in the early 1990s. Because of these technological tools, early writers on celebrities such as Fred Lawrence Guiles who wrote Norma Jean; the life of Marilyn Monroe in 1969 were able to substantially increase their book output while some newer celebrity biographers produce a book almost on an annual basis.

<i>Number 13</i> (1922 film) 1922 film by Alfred Hitchcock

In 1922, Alfred Hitchcock obtained his first shot at directing for Gainsborough Pictures with the film Number 13 but due to financial difficulties, it was never completed.

Donald Spoto was an American biographer and theologian. He was known for his biographies of people in the worlds of film and theater, and for his books on theology and spirituality.

Clint Eastwood was born on May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, California, to Clinton Eastwood Sr. and Margret Ruth.

Irving Glassberg, A.S.C. was a Polish-American cinematographer, who worked on many Universal Pictures during the forties and fifties. Glassberg, along with Arthur Lubin was responsible for getting Clint Eastwood into the movies.

Frank Walter Stanley was an American cinematographer. He is best known for four Clint Eastwood films in a row: Breezy (1973), Magnum Force (1973), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and The Eiger Sanction (1975). During the filming of The Eiger Sanction, shot in Switzerland, which required a great deal of precarious mountain-climbing cinematography, Stanley fell during the shoot but survived. He used a wheelchair for some time and was taken out of action. Stanley, who later managed to complete filming after a delay under pressure from an unsympathetic Clint Eastwood, would later blame Eastwood for the accident due to a lack of preparation, describing him both as a director and an actor as "a very impatient man who doesn't really plan his pictures or do any homework. He figures he can go right in and sail through these things". Stanley was never hired by Eastwood or Malpaso Productions again. Bruce Surtees was Eastwood's regular cinematographer before and after this period, on a total of twelve films.

Clint Eastwood has had numerous casual and serious relationships of varying length and intensity over his life, many of which overlapped. He has eight known children by six women, only half of whom were contemporaneously acknowledged. Eastwood refuses to confirm his exact number of offspring, and there have been wide discrepancies in the media regarding the number. His biographer, Patrick McGilligan, has stated on camera that Eastwood's total number of children is indeterminate and that "one was when he was still in high school."

American actor and filmmaker Clint Eastwood, an audiophile, has had a strong passion for music all his life, particularly jazz and country and western music. He is a pianist and composer in addition to his main career as an actor, director, and film producer. He developed as a ragtime pianist early on, and in late 1959 he produced the album Cowboy Favorites, which was released on the Cameo label. Jazz has played an important role in Eastwood's life from a young age and although he was never successful as a musician, he passed on the influence to his son Kyle Eastwood, a successful jazz bassist and composer. Eastwood has his own Warner Bros. Records-distributed imprint, Malpaso Records, as part of his deal with Warner Brothers, which has released all of the scores of Eastwood's films from The Bridges of Madison County onward. Eastwood co-wrote "Why Should I Care" with Linda Thompson and Carole Bayer Sager, which was recorded by Diana Krall for the film True Crime (1999). "Why Should I Care" was also released on Krall's album When I Look in Your Eyes.

Irving Leonard was an American financial adviser to Hollywood film stars of the 1950s and 1960s and an associate film producer.

The Czar of Black Hollywood is a 2014 documentary film by Bayer Mack that chronicles the early life and career of African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux (1884–1951). Mack conceived of and produced the film about Micheaux using Library of Congress archived footage, photos, illustrations and vintage music. The documentary, which is the first devoted exclusively to Oscar Micheaux's life, is narrated by William Bell, features an original score by Nicholas Jones and art direction by Julie Anderson.

This is a list of books and essays about Clint Eastwood.

Czenzi Ormonde was an American novelist and screenwriter.

References

  1. "Patrick Michael McGilligan" at Encyclopedia.com.
  2. "Patrick McGilligan from HarperCollins Publishers". Harper Collins. Archived from the original on 2006-11-03.
  3. McGavin, Patrick Z. (July 22, 2015). "From Clint to Orson: A Conversation with Biographer Patrick McGilligan". rogerebert.com.
  4. Riskin, Robert; McGilligan, Patrick (1997). Six Screenplays. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN   0-585-33260-6. OCLC   45843349.