Because You Watched... : Perry Mason

"Morley Swingle, veteran prosecuting attorney, combines true crime and legal analysis with a healthy dose of humor as he re-creates more than thirty stories of villains, heroes, and ordinary citizens, taking readers from the crime scene to the courtroom and sharing the occasional 'Perry Mason moment'"--Provided by publisher.

All that writer Cece Caruso -- a thirty-nine-year-old former beauty queen from New Jersey -- really wants to do is finish her biography of Erle Stanley Gardner so that she can finally stop obsessing about Perry Mason. ...

Cy Endfield (1914-1995) was a filmmaker who was also fascinated by the worlds of close-up magic, science, and invention. After directing several distinctive low-budget films in Hollywood, he was blacklisted in 1951 and fled to Britain rather than "name names" before HUAC, the U.S. House of Representatives' Un-American Activities Committee. The Pennsylvania-born Endfield made films that exhibit ...

In the early twentieth century, Tulsa was the "Oil Capital of the World." The rush of roughnecks and oil barons built a culinary foundation that not only provided traditional food and diner fare but also inspired upper-class experiences and international cuisine. Tulsans could reserve a candlelit dinner at the Louisiane or cruise along the Restless Ribbon with a pit stop at Pennington's. Generations of regulars depended on family-owned establishments such as Villa Venice, The Golden Drumstick and St. Michael's Alley. Join author Rhys Martin on a gastronomic journey through time, from the Great Depression to the days of "Liquor by the Wink" and the Oil Bust of the 1980s.

"Ever since French critics began using the term film noir in the mid-1940s, a clear definition of the genre has remained elusive. Though sometimes defined visually, there is more to film noir than meets the eye. This interdisciplinary examination argues for the central importance of class in the creation of film noir and demonstrates how the form itself came to fruition during one of the most active periods of working-class agitation and middle-class antagonism in American history." "After World War II, the crime film centered around the movement of its protagonist outside the law. This movement was congruent with postwar labor movements that were forced to use extralegal means because of the increasing pressure applied by new legislation such as the Taft-Hartley Act, which declared strikes to be illegal. At the same time, many unionists were driven out of the industries they helped to organize by the House Un-American Activities Committee. It is during this period that noir became a lament, with protagonists moving further outside the law to seek justice and with these struggles written on their battered corpses at the end of the film." "Expanding this investigation into Cold War ...

Discusses the creation, production, characters, and 275 episodes of the mystery show featuring the popular fictitious lawyer.

Taking issue with many orthodox views of Film Noir, Frank Krutnik argues for a reorientation of this compulsively engaging area of Hollywood cultural production. Krutnik recasts the films within a generic framework and draws on recent historical and theoretical research to examine both the diversity of film noir and its significance within American popular culture of the 1940s. He considers classical Hollywood cinema, debates on genre, and the history of the emergence of character in film noir, focusing on the hard-boiled' crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain as well as the popularisation of Freudian psychoanalysis; and the...

Secrets can be deadly in this suspenseful thriller about undercover Russian spies in 1980s Washington D.C. Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings seem to be a typical suburban couple, but they're actually lethal KGB agents plotting to bring down America. As the Cold War escalates, Philip and Elizabeth must take extreme measures to continue their mission to keep their true identities hidden. But when an FBI agent movies in across the street, they become ensnared in a pulse-pounding game of cat and mouse.

Consider the usual view of film noir: endless rainy nights populated by down-at-the-heel boxers, writers, and private eyes stumbling toward inescapable doom while stalked by crooked cops and cheating wives in a neon-lit urban jungle. nbsp; But a new generation of writers is pushing aside the fog of cigarette smoke surrounding classic noir scholarship. In Kiss the Blood Off My Hands: On Classic Film Noir, Robert Miklitsch curates a bold collection of essays that reassesses the genre's iconic style, history, and themes. Contributors analyze the oft-overlooked female detective and little-examined aspects of filmmaking like love songs and radio aesthetics, discuss the significance of the producer and women's pulp fiction, as well as investigate Disney noir and the Fifties heist film, B-movie back projection and blacklisted British directors. At the same time the writers' collective reconsideration unwinds the impact of hot-button topics like race and gender, history and sexuality, technology and transnationality. nbsp; As bracing as a stiff drink, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands writes the future of noir scholarship in lipstick and chalk lines for film fans and scholars alike.

Sarah's life was changed dramatically after witnessing the suicide of a woman who looked just like her. Sarah learned that, not only were she and the woman clones, but there were others just like them, and dangerous factions at work set on capturing them all. Now, the mysterious world of Orphan Black widens, with new layers of the conspiracy being peeled back in this series by co-creators John Fawcett and Graeme Manson! Based on the hit BBC America TV Show!

Includes "Bibliography of Erle Stanley Gardner" compiled by Ruth Moore (pages 311-341) and index.

Film noir--literally "black cinema"--is the label customarily given to a group of black and white American films, mostly crime thrillers, made between 1940 and 1959. Today there is considerable dispute about what are the shared features that classify a noir film, and therefore which films should be included in this category. These problems are partly caused because film noir is a retrospective label that was not used in the 1940s or 1950s by the film industry as a production category and therefore its existence and features cannot be established through reference to trade documents. The Historical Dictionary of Film Noir is a comprehensive guide that ranges from 1940 to present day neo-noir. It consists of a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, a filmography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on every aspect of film noir and neo-noir, including key films, personnel (actors, cinematographers, composers, directors, producers, set designers, and writers), themes, issues, influences, visual style, cycles of films (e.g. amnesiac noirs), the representation of the city and gender, other forms (comics/graphic novels, television, and videogames), and noir's presence in world cinema. It is an essential reference work for all those interested in this important cultural phenomenon.

Conventional wisdom holds that television was a co-conspirator in the repressions of Cold War America, that it was a facilitator to the blacklist and handmaiden to McCarthyism. But Thomas Doherty argues that, through the influence of television, America actually became a more open and tolerant place. Although many books have been written about this period, Cold War, Cool Medium is the only one to examine it through the lens of television programming. To the unjaded viewership of Cold War America, the television set was not a harbinger of intellectual degradation and moral decay, but a thrilling new household appliance capable of bringing the wonders of the world directly into the home. The "cool medium" permeated the lives of every American, quickly becoming one of the most powerful cultural forces of the twentieth century. While television has frequently been blamed for spurring the rise of Senator ...