Awards

• Commended for Lambda Literary Awards (Bisexual Nonfiction) 2009

Overview

"Vincente Minnelli started out as a set and costume designer in New York, where he first notably applied his aesthetic principles to the Broadway stage design of Scheherazade. He became the first director of New York's ""Radio City Music Hall"", as well as some of the most lavish Broadway musicals, including Ziegfeld Follies, and brought Josephine Baker back from Paris to star in his shows. As a film director, he discovered Lena Horne in a Harlem nightclub and cast her in his first movie, the legendary musical Cabin in the Sky.The winner of the Best Director Academy Award for Gigi, the first film to win in all nine of its Oscar nominations, Minnelli also directed such classics as the Oscar-winning ""An American in Paris"", ""Meet Me in St. Louis"", ""Father of the Bride"", ""The Bad and the Beautiful"", and ""Some Came Running"". He was married to Judy Garland, who he met on the set of ""Meet Me in St. Louis"" and directed in such landmark films as ""The Clock""; their daughter is actress-singer Liza Minnelli."

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Reviews

"""At a time when independent American films are more visible and important than ever before, this is an invaluable study. Emanuel Levy's writing is wise, passionate, and amazingly well-informed."" --Roger Ebert on ""CINEMA OF OUTSIDERS"" ""Levy makes a good case for placing [Cukor] in the top echelon of studio directors . . . Levy has constructed a well-rounded biography that smoothly melds Cukor's long career with his discreet private life."" --""Library Journal ""on ""GEORGE CUKOR, MASTER OF ELEGANCE"""""" ""Vincente Minnelli is the greatest director of motion picture musicals the screen has ever known"" --Alan Jay Lerner, librettist of ""My Fair Lady"""

Well-informed biography of the flamboyant director, utterly lacking the stylishness that made his films so memorable.The son of touring players, Vincente Minnelli (1903 - 86) had only the briefest experience of the kind of small-town, Midwestern life he would later enshrine in such popular MGM fare as Meet Me in St. Louis and Father of the Bride. Film scholar Levy (All About Oscar, 2003, etc.) does a commendable job with Minnelli's early professional years in Chicago and New York, where he dressed department-store windows and designed sets and costumes for movie theaters' stage shows; he would remain deeply, some said overly, concerned with visual effects in all of his films. Levy also evinces a solid understanding of the essentially somber worldview that made Minnelli as successful with melodramas like The Bad and the Beautiful as with such brilliant musicals as An American in Paris and Gigi. He was the quintessential studio director, capable in most genres and able to produce highly personal work within the assembly-line system's confines. Indeed, first wife Judy Garland complained that he didn't support her in the battles with MGM that led to her spectacular flameout and the couple's divorce. The bisexual Minnelli's stormy union with Garland is the only one of his four marriages that receives much attention here, and only a single male partner is mentioned by name. Aside from a rather catty portrait of his close bond with daughter Liza, the director's personal life is scanted in favor of his career, which makes sense since he lived for his work. Levy's judgments about the films are sound; it's a pity they're conveyed in dreadful, occasionally incomprehensible prose. This sentence about Father of the Bride is regrettably typical: Stanley confronts his worst fear of humiliation, here reflected actually a nightmare rather than imagining or dreaming about at. Such painfully inept presentation undercuts the author's strong case that Minnelli is the most underrated of Hollywood's Golden Age craftsmen.Solid work in desperate need of the careful attention of a competent copy editor. (Kirkus Reviews)

At a time when independent American films are more visible and important than ever before, this is an invaluable study. Emanuel Levy's writing is wise, passionate, and amazingly well-informed. --Roger Ebert on CINEMA OF OUTSIDERS Levy makes a good case for placing [Cukor] in the top echelon of studio directors . . . Levy has constructed a well-rounded biography that smoothly melds Cukor's long career with his discreet private life. -- Library Journal on GEORGE CUKOR, MASTER OF ELEGANCE Vincente Minnelli is the greatest director of motion picture musicals the screen has ever known --Alan Jay Lerner, librettist of My Fair Lady

At a time when independent American films are more visible and important than ever before, this is an invaluable study. Emanuel Levy's writing is wise, passionate, and amazingly well-informed. --Roger Ebert on CINEMA OF OUTSIDERS   Levy makes a good case for placing [Cukor] in the top echelon of studio directors . . . Levy has constructed a well-rounded biography that smoothly melds Cukor's long career with his discreet private life. -- Library Journal on GEORGE CUKOR, MASTER OF ELEGANCE   Vincente Minnelli is the greatest director of motion picture musicals the screen has ever known --Alan Jay Lerner, librettist of My Fair Lady

Author Information

EMANUEL LEVY is a critic, author of nine film books, and film professor at University of California Los Angeles. A two-time president of the LA Film Critics Association, Levy, a former critic of Variety and chief critic of Screen International, and is now editor of the acclaimed website, EmanuelLevy.com. A frequent juror at major international film festivals such as Cannes, Venice, and Sundance, he has written for a wide variety of publications from the Los Angeles Times to the Financial Times. He lives in Los Angeles, California

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