{"product_id":"wild-bill-wellman-hollywood-rebel","title":"Wild Bill Wellman: Hollywood Rebel","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe extraordinary lifethe firstof the legendary  undercelebrated Hollywood director known in his day as Wild Bill (and he was!) Wellman  whose eighty-two movies (six of them uncredited)  many of them iconic; many of them sharp  cold  brutal; others poetic  moving; all of them a lesson in close-up art  ranged from adventure and gangster pictures to comedies  aviation  romances  westerns  and searing social dramas.  Among his iconic pictures: the pioneering World War I epic Wings (winner of the first Academy Award for best picture)  Public Enemy (the toughest gangster picture of them all)  Nothing Sacred  the original A Star Is Born  Beggars of Life  The Call of the Wild  The Ox-Bow Incident  Battleground  The High and the Mighty...  David O. Selznick called him one of the motion pictures greatest craftsmen.  Robert Redford described him as feisty  independent  self-taught  and self-made. He stood his ground and fought his battles for artistic integrity  never wavering  always clear in his film sense.  Wellman directed Hollywoods biggest stars for three decades  including Clark Gable  Gary Cooper  Barbara Stanwyck  John Wayne  Lauren Bacall  and Clint Eastwood. It was said he directed like a general trying to break out of a beachhead. He made pictures with such noted producers as Darryl F. Zanuck  Nunnally Johnson  Jesse Lasky  and David O. Selznick.  Here is a revealing  boisterous portrait of the handsome  tough-talking  hard-drinking  uncompromising maverick (he called himself a crazy bastard)juvenile delinquent; professional ice-hockey player as a kid; World War I flying ace at twenty-one in the Lafayette Flying Corps (the Lafayette Escadrille)  crashing more than six planes (We only had four instruments  none of which worked. And no parachutes . . . Greatest goddamn acrobatics you ever saw in your life)whose own life story was more adventurous and more unpredictable than anything in the movies. Wellman was a wing-walking stunt pilot in barnstorming air shows  recipient of the Croix de Guerre with two Gold Palm Leaves and five United States citations; a bad actor but good studio messenger at Goldwyn Pictures who worked his way up from assistant cutter; married to five women  among them Marjorie Crawford  aviatrix and polo player; silent picture star Helene Chadwick; and Dorothy Coonan  Busby Berkeley dancer  actress  and mother of his seven children.  Irene Mayer Selznick  daughter of Louis B. Mayer  called Wellman a terror  a shoot-up-the-town fellow  trying to be a great big masculine I-dont-know-what. David had a real weakness for him. I didnt share it. Yet she believed enough in Wellmans vision and cowritten script about Hollywood to persuade her husband to produce A Star Is Born  which Wellman directed.  After he took over directing Tarzan Escapes at MGM  Wellman went to Louis B. Mayer and asked to make another Tarzan picture on his own.  What are you talking about? Its beneath your dignity  said Mayer.  To hell with that  said Wellman  I havent got any dignity.  Now William Wellman  Jr.  drawing on his fathers unpublished letters  diaries  and unfinished memoir  gives us the first full portrait of the manboy  flyer  husband  father  director  artist. Here is a portrait of a profoundly American spirit and visionary  a mans man who was able to put into cinematic storytelling the most subtle and fulsome of feeling  a man feared  respected  and loved.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44985826410549,"sku":"ByrdShop_0307377709","price":26.02,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780307377708.jpg?v=1770872952","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/wild-bill-wellman-hollywood-rebel","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}