In April 2001, the Toronto Jewish Film Festival screened a 42-minute documentary on Emma Goldman, the legendary American-Jewish anarchist and feminist who spent several periods of exile in Toronto. Coleman Romalis’s film Emma Goldman: The Anarchist Guest presented a refreshing and overdue account of Goldman’s productive years in Toronto. A recent book pays more attention…
Tag: movies
Legendary Passion: Hellman & Hammett
by •
From the moment Lillian Hellman met Dashiell Hammett in a Manhattan nightclub in 1930 until his death in 1961, she was “not only his best friend but also his only friend,” yet so thoroughly did she mythologize their relationship, and so widespread was her reputation for lying, that Gore Vidal once wickedly pondered: “Did anyone…
Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer
by •
Louis B. Mayer, the Hollywood titan who built and ran Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as his personal fiefdom for three decades, was “probably the greatest single force in the development of the motion picture industry to the heights of prosperity and influence it finally attained,” according to Variety, the film industry Bible. To those who knew him, Mayer…
Gone but not forgotten: author Margaret Mitchell
by •
Timorous and untested as an author, Margaret Mitchell persuaded herself during her seven-year literary labour that the manuscript she was working on was so terrible it would never be printed. Like a woman enceinte but too modest or superstitious to tell anyone, she kept the project a secret from friends and acquaintances. Only her husband…
