John C. Tibbetts

This book brings together the author's interviews with many prominent figures in fantasy, horror, and science fiction to examine the traditions and extensions of the gothic mode of storytelling over the last 200 years and its contemporary influence on film and media.

Conversations on Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction in the Media

The Gothic Imagination

James Michael Welsh

Alphabetically arranged entries for film adaptations provide the date of release, the production company, and the director and screenwriter, and discusses the plot of each film.

The Encyclopedia of Novels Into Film

What was it like to work behind the scenes, away from the spotlight's glare, in Hollywood's so-called Golden Age? The interviews in this book provide eye-witness accounts from the likes of Steven Spielberg and Terry Gilliam, to explore the creative decisions that have shaped some of Classical Hollywood's most-loved films.

Speaking with the Legends of Hollywood

Those Who Made It

James M. Welsh

Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century brings to life the most popular movie star of his day, the personification of the Golden Age of Hollywood. At his peak, in the teens and twenties, the swashbuckling adventurer embodied the new American Century of speed, opportunity, and aggressive optimism. The essays and interviews in this volume bring fresh perspectives to his life and work, including analyses of films never before examined. Also published here for the first time in English is a first-hand production account of the making of Fairbanks’s last silent film, The Iron Mask,/i>. Fairbanks (1883–1939) was the most vivid and strenuous exponent of the American Century, whose dominant mode after 1900 was the mass marketing of a burgeoning democratic optimism, at home and abroad. During those first decades of the twentieth century, his satiric comedy adventures shadow-boxed with the illusions of class and custom. His characters managed to combine the American Easterner’s experience and pretension and the Westerner’s promise and expansion. As the masculine personification of the Old World aristocrat and the New World self-made man—tied to tradition yet emancipated from history—he constructed a uniquely American aristocrat striding into a new age and sensibility. This is the most complete account yet written of the film career of Douglas Fairbanks, one of the first great stars of the silent American cinema and one of the original United Artists (comprising Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith). John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh’s text is especially rich in its coverage of the early years of the star’s career from 1915 to 1920 and covers in detail several films previously considered lost.

Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century

Ramsey Campbell

The second issue of Penumbra is highlighted by "Lost for Words," a new story by Ramsey Campbell, the leading writer of weird and supernatural literature of our time. In addition, veteran writers Darrell Schweitzer and Mark Samuels contribute original tales. Among younger writers, Curtis M. Lawson presents a science fiction/horror hybrid; Katherine Kerestman pens a skillful tale of vampirism; Scott J. Couturier, Geoffrey Reiter, Scott Bradfield, and Shawn Phelps offer glimpses of terror and strangeness; and Manuel Arenas contributes a moving prose poem. The issue also includes, as its classic reprint, Algernon Blackwood's first published weird tale. Among the articles in this issue, Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen examines religiosity in the early tales of Lord Dunsany; James Goho analyzes the roots of terror in the work of Caitlín R. Kiernan; John C. Tibbetts studies weird elements in the oeuvre of acclaimed science fiction writer Greg Bear; S. T. Joshi presents a comprehensive account of the weird work of Guy de Maupassant; and other essays discuss William Hope Hodgson, vampire poetry, Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea cycle, John Collier, and other subjects. Adam Bolivar, Wade German, Ann K. Schwader, Leigh Blackmore, Maxwell I. Gold, and Frank Coffman are among the poets included in this issue. In all, Penumbra No. 2 is a cornucopia of the bizarre in fiction, essays, and verse.

A Journal of Weird Fiction and Criticism

Penumbra No. 2 (2021)

Professor John C Tibbetts

Critically surveys the films of Tony Richardson, one of Britain’s most inventive directors of stage and screen.

Essays and Interviews

The Cinema of Tony Richardson

Horror novelist Peter Straub creates highly personalized fiction with an allusiveness and ambiguity that deny the genre’s explicit nature. For him, the Gothic style is to be created and recreated in a changing world—Faustian pacts, buried secrets, haunted places, ghosts, vampires and succubi take on strange new shapes and effects. Stephen King describes Straub’s style as “a synthesis of horror and beauty.” Drawing on interviews with Straub and featuring an exclusive interview with King, this study explores the work of the author who has been called “a writer of rare wit and intelligence in a field beset with cynical potboilers” (Douglas E. Winter, Washington Post, October 14, 1984).

The Gothic Worlds of Peter Straub

Tony Williams

Thomas L. Erskine

Over 300 entries arranged by their theatrical origins provides an overview and critical commentary of each film and highlights similarities and differences to the source play.

Film Adaptations of Plays on Video

Video Versions

This is a critical study of the great British man of letters G.K. Chesterton, devoted to the novels, stories and essays that explore the darker fringes of his wild imagination. "Everything is different in the dark," wrote Chesterton; "perhaps you don't know how terrible a truth that is." Chesterton's use of the theme of "gargoyles" provides the thematic structure of the book. It covers the detective stories of Father Brown and others, the locked rooms and miracle crimes in his writing, his status as a science fiction writer, and the riddles and paradoxes of three works--Job, The Man Who Was Thursday, and the play The Surprise. This volume also includes an interlude about Chesterton and Jorge Luis Borges and a robust appendix including interviews about the formation of Ignatius Press's Collected Chesterton.

Gargoyles and Grotesques

The Dark Side of G.K. Chesterton

Contains entries for three hundred films, providing the date of release, the production company, and the director and screenwriter, and discusses the plot.

This first book-length critical examination of the life and work of Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952) reveals a major English writer whose prodigious output included stories of history, romance, and the supernatural. As Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda writes in his Foreword, Bowen may be "the finest British woman writer of the uncanny of the last century," a view that echoes the high regard of cultural historian Edward Wagenknecht, who called her "a literary phenomenon," one whose best work places her alongside such contemporaries as Edith Wharton and Daphne du Maurier. Publicly acclaimed--known only by a series of pseudonyms (including "Marjorie Bowen")--but privately inscrutable, she was and is a mysterious and complex character. Drawing for the first time upon archival resources and the cooperation of the Bowen Estate, this book reveals a woman who saw herself as a rationalist and serious historian, but also as a mystic and "dark enchantress of dread." Above all, through a lifetime of domestic storms and creative ecstasy, Bowen worked tirelessly as both a professional writer and a consummate artist, always seeking, as she once confessed, "to find beauty in dark places."

The Furies of Marjorie Bowen

In American Classic Screen Features, editors John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh have assembled some of the most significant and memorable essays and critical pieces written for the magazine over its ten-year history. This collection contains fascinating accounts of Hollywood history including articles on Marilyn Monroe's first screen test, John Ford's favorite film, Olivia De Havilland's lawsuit against Warner Bros., Walt Disney's unfinished projects, and Stanley Kubrick's early noir classics. This volume also contains in-depth examinations of classic films, including Birth of a Nation, The Big Parade,The Jazz Singer, King Kong, and Citizen Kane. This compendium of essays recaptures the spirit and scholarship of that time and will appeal to both scholars and fans who have an abiding interest in the American motion picture industry.

American Classic Screen Features

Horror novelist Peter Straub creates highly personalized fiction with an allusiveness and ambiguity that deny the genre’s explicit nature. For him, the Gothic style is to be created and recreated in a changing world—Faustian pacts, buried secrets, haunted places, ghosts, vampires and succubi take on strange new shapes and effects. Stephen King describes Straub’s style as “a synthesis of horror and beauty.” Drawing on interviews with Straub and featuring an exclusive interview with King, this study explores the work of the author who has been called “a writer of rare wit and intelligence in a field beset with cynical potboilers.” Winner, Bram Stoker Award—Horror Writers Association“A major work of biography and criticism...a must read for any admirer of this restlessly protean man of letters”—The Washington Post “John Tibbetts’ study is a detailed and long overdue look at an author whose dark psychological insights and brilliantly crafted sentences have placed him in the front rank of American authors for nearly four decades.”—Gary Wolfe, Roosevelt University “Straub brings a poet’s sensibility to the field, creating a synthesis of horror and beauty. He writes a beautiful prose line that features narrative clarity, sterling characterization, and surprising bursts of humor.”—Stephen King “Peter Straub has demonstrated the strength of American lit in modern horror by reclaiming the pioneering themes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, segueing through Shirly Jackson, and elegantly matching both with Stephen King’s rock star vigor.”—Greg Bear, Darwin’s Radio and Blood Music “With The Gothic Worlds of Peter Straub, John Tibbetts makes a major contribution to the study of one of America’s finest, most underrated novelists. Approaching Straub’s complex body of work from a variety of thematic and literary perspectives, Tibbetts has written an intelligent, highly readable volume that no future Straub scholar can afford to ignore. This is an important...and very necessary...book.”—Bill Sheehan, At the Foot of the Story Tree “It is difficult to speak of Peter Straub except in superlatives. Gifted with a prose style of impeccable fluency and elegance, he is also able to create scenes of clutching terror, heartrending pathos, and baffling mystery that set him several cuts above his contemporaries. To refer to him merely as a writer of horror tales is absurdly limiting. When we read him, we experience far more than merely a shudder up our spine; we gain profound insights into ourselves and others.”—S. T. Joshi, Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction “Peter Straub has created a literary form all of his own, mating the macabre with the magical, interweaving the psychological with the uncanny, illuminating the dark side of humanity with the light of the fantastic. His vision is profoundly personal, his prose enviably elegant. Constantly surprising, his work invigorates and enriches the imagination, and it deserves to be savoured like the finest vintage.”—Ramsey Campbell, Ancient Images, Incarnate “Peter’s gift of language is so great that he uses it to tear apart, break down and open up the ways that we see, perceive speak of and understand everyday life and experience. And in doing so, he reveals to us and draws us into the Gothic dimension, which is always with us, like a shadow.”—Thomas Tessier, Finishing Touches and Rapture

Peter Weir: Interviews is the first volume of interviews to be published on the esteemed Australian director. Although Weir (b. 1944) has acquired a reputation of being guarded about his life and work, these interviews by archivists, journalists, historians, and colleagues reveal him to be a most amiable and forthcoming subject. He talks about “the precious desperation of the art, the madness, the willingness to experiment” in all his films; the adaptation process from novel to film, when he tells a scriptwriter, “I’m going to eat your script; it’s going to be part of my blood!”; and his self-assessment as “merely a jester, with cap and bells, going from court to court.” He is encouraged, even provoked to tell his own story, from his childhood in a Sydney suburb in the 1950s, to his apprenticeship in the Australian television industry in the 1960s, his preparations to shoot his first features in the early 1970s, his international celebrity in Australia and Hollywood. An extensive new interview details his current plans for a new film. Interviews discuss Weir’s diverse and impressive range of work—his earlier films Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, Gallipoli, and The Year of Living Dangerously, as well as Academy Award–nominated Witness, Dead Poets Society, Green Card, The Truman Show, and Master and Commander. This book confirms that the trajectory of Weir’s life and work parallels and embodies Australia’s own quest to define and express a historical and cultural identity.

Interviews

Peter Weir

Michael Saffle

William A. Everett

Performing Music History offers a unique perspective on music history and performance through a series of conversations with women and men intimately associated with music performance, history, and practice: the musicians themselves. Fifty-five celebrated artists—singers, pianists, violinists, cellists, flutists, horn players, oboists, composers, conductors, and jazz greats—provide interviews that encompass most of Western music history, from the Middle Ages to contemporary classical music, avant-garde innovations, and Broadway musicals. The book covers music history through lenses that include “authentic” performance, original instrumentation, and social context. Moreover, the musicians interviewed all bring to bear upon their respective subjects three outstanding qualities: 1) their high esteem in the music world as immediately recognizable names among musicians and public alike; 2) their energy and devotion to scholarship and the recovery of endangered musical heritages; and 3) their considerable skills, media savvy, and showmanship as communicators. Introductory essays to each chapter provide brief synopses of historical eras and topics. Combining careful scholarship and lively conversation, Performing Music History explores historical contexts for a host of fascinating issues.

Musicians Speak First-Hand about Music History and Performance

Performing Music History

Amadeus . . . Yankee Doodle Dandy . . . Swanee River . . . Rhapsody in Blue. Even before movies had sound, filmmakers dramatized the lives of composers. Movie biographies—or biopics—have depicted composers as diverse as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, George M. Cohan, Stephen Foster, and George Gershwin. In this enticing book, the first devoted entirely to such films, John C. Tibbetts surveys different styles and periods from the Hollywood of the 1920s and 1930s to the international cinema of today, exploring the role that film biographies play in our understanding of history and culture. Tibbetts delves into such questions as: How historically accurate are composer biopics? How and why have inaccuracies and distortions been perpetrated? What strategies have been used to represent visually the creative process? The book examines the films in several contexts and considers their role in commodifying and popularizing music. Extensive archival research, dozens of illustrations, and numerous interviews make this an appealing book for film and music enthusiasts at all levels.

John C. Tibbetts

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