From Pinewood to Hollywood: British Filmmakers in American Cinema 1910-1969

Synopsis

From Pinewood to Hollywood is a thoroughly engaging and critical examination of the emigration and careers of British writers and directors in Hollywood. As well as the likes of Chaplin and Hitchcock, Huxley and Greene, Schlesinger and Bolt, the book unveils a succession of personalities and practitioners who have never had the recognition they deserved but were hugely influential in the way the movie colony emerged and evolved in the first half of the twentieth century. From early moguls like Stuart Blackton, through leading writers such as Joan Harrison, to directors of the quality of Peter Yates, this is a story of how Hollywood came to be, seen through the eyes of British practitioners who have been travelling there for the best part of a century. Riveting and undiscovered, this is the first book to give the British perspective on writing and directing during the most fascinating period in the history of Hollywood movies.