Starmaker

Milan Hain is assistant professor of film studies at Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic. He is author or coauthor of five books and his work has appeared in such publications as the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, Czech and Slovak Journal of Humanities, and Jewish Film and New Media. Since 2013, he has been a programmer at the annual Noir Film Festival, the only event of its kind in Central Europe.

Hain offers an extremely well-researched overview of Selznick, in collaboration with numerous archives, and crafts a narrative that is sure to be enjoyed by fans of classic film and various Selznick productions.--Annette Bochenek "Hometowns to Hollywood blog" Neither description nor excerpting conveys the dimension of Selznick's activities. That experience is reserved for researchers fortunate enough to see for themselves. Collected at the University of Texas in the Harry Ransom Center's David O. Selznick Archive are "4,674 document boxes, plus 428 oversize or custom boxes, 147 music folders, 6 galley folders, 101 sound discs, 155 bound volumes, and 35 flat file drawers (2,388 linear feet)." . . . [F]ilm scholar Milan Hain has made admirable use of this voluminous collection in his excellent Starmaker: David O. Selznick and the Production of Stars in the Hollywood Studio System, a step-by-step examination of David Selznick's process of creating and utilizing stars.--Sydney Ladensohn Stern "Flim and History" Starmaker draws on Thomas Schatz's 2015 study, "The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era," a seminal history that Mr. Hain uses to deepen our sense of how interrelated the means of production were with the advent of screen personalities.--Carl Rollyson "New York Sun" Starmaker is the first book on Selznick that concerns his professional career and his (mis)judgment of talent as he aided in the creation and development of stars. This approach makes it an extremely interesting, unique take on the role of the film producer not tackled before in book form.--Gillian Kelly, author of Robert Taylor: Male Beauty, Masculinity, and Stardom in Hollywood Starmaker is one of the best pieces of work I have read in recent years about the phenomenon of stardom and about Hollywood cinema in the 1930s and 1940s.--Peter Kraemer, senior research fellow in cinema and television at De Montfort University