Overview

A proud Armenian who claimed a distant link to nobility, born in what was then part of czarist Russia, Rouben Mamoulian (1897–1987) became one of the most astonishing and confounding directors of American film and theater, directing the original stage productions of Porgy and Bess, Carousel, and Oklahoma!, as well as films including Love Me Tonight, Queen Christina, City Streets, and Silk Stockings. He was famously fired from the film version of Porgy and Bess in a dispute over publicity, and quit Cleopatra after arguments over a single scene. His iconoclastic self-confidence was high among the reasons he had a reputation for being unable to compromise. This frustrating mix of genius and stubbornness, of critical successes and financial flops, has proven challenging for biographers. Any examination of Mamoulian’s life must explore film, theater, and music history, while being conscious of the racial culture in both American society and the world of entertainment during the mid-twentieth century. Kurt Jensen’s magisterial volume, extensively researched and filled with trenchant observations, brings to life this charming, flawed, and fascinating man. With lived-in details and surprising revelations, Jensen fleshes out the contours of a remarkable life. Drawing upon Mamoulian’s unfinished memoir and voluminous diaries, as well as interviews with the director’s surviving collaborators, he delivers fresh and informative insider stories from seminal productions. Meanwhile, he explores Mamoulian’s aesthetic principles and strategies as manifested in lighting, choreography, and sound design. Jensen reveals Mamoulian’s mercurial confidence and autocratic tendencies at the height of his power, demonstrating how the wellspring of his art contained the seeds of his own destruction. A tour de force, Peerless offers readers a multifaceted, in-depth look at an idiosyncratic genius.

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Reviews

“Jensen’s fresh, sparkling prose allows Mamoulian to emerge as the type of suave, charming, larger-than-life character so often portrayed in his films. Jensen’s thoughtful use of Mamoulian’s own words in journals and interviews allows this work to serve as the intimate, lively memoir the great director never completed.”—Cynthia Brideson, author of He’s Got Rhythm: The Life and Times of Gene Kelly “A biographical feat: a multidimensional portrait of a trailblazing director and his turbulent times. Jensen fills his book with resonant details that spark surprising revelations about Mamoulian’s life and career. He conjures such an intimate perspective on Mamoulian’s groundbreaking work, including soundstage marvels like Love Me Tonight and stage milestones like Porgy and Bess, that we feel present at its creation.”—Michael Sragow, contributing writer, Air Mail and Film Comment, and author, Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master “Jensen generously takes us to the heart of Mamoulian land: his genius, his arrogance—and his absolute refusal to budge on his opinions. Yes, warts and all live here. Where there was brilliance and controversy, there was Mamoulian. In this relentlessly detailed telling of Mamoulian’s life, there is no place for the peerless to hide!”—Marilyn Ann Moss, author of Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood’s Legendary Director

Author Information

Kurt Jensen has been a film reviewer and news writer for several Catholic publications, and his contributions have been published in Studies in Musical Theatre and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

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