New Books

NEWBOOKS Henry Cohen, The Public Enemy. 188 pp. Patrick McGiIl igan. Yankee Doodle Dandy. 240 pp. Gerald Peary. Little Caesar. 188 pp. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981. $15.00 cloth, $5.95 paper. These three latest titles in the Wisconsin screenplay series retain the quality of the eleven earlier volumes. Each includes an introductory essay based on analysis of the manuscript materials from the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. Each traces the evaluation of the screenplay from original idea through a number of script revisions to the final screen version. And each provides the complete shooting script of the film annotated to point out differences from the film as actually released. These carefully researched volumes, and the future ones planned for the series, represent a significant contribution to our knowledge of the process of Hollywood filmmaking. Judith Trojan. American Family Life Films. Metuchen, N.J. : Scarecrow Press, 1981. 508 pp. $25. Ruth M. Goldstein and Edith Zornow. The Screen Image of Youth: Movies About Children and Adolescents. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1980. 384 pp. $20. Both of these new contributions from Scarecrow Press are valuable reference aids for the high school or college library. The volume on American Family Life Films includes entries on some 2000 short and feature-length documentaries that deal with a large range of American family life concerns. The annotations are too short to help the scholar or film scheduler in a very detailed way, but the guide does offer scores of ideas for this productive approach to a subject of growing interest. The Screen Image of Youth deals with only about 400 films, but its annotations are far more valuable. Both books are cross indexed by subject sub-categories, and both include distributor information. 44 William T. Stewart, Arthur F. McClure, and Ken D. Jones. International Film Necrology. Boston: Garland, 1980. 328 pp. $35. Everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about the birth and death dates of thousands of film actors, directors, writers, cinematographers and composers who worked in film from 1900 through early 1980. This work's significance to the researcher is that, wherever possible, the original historical records were checked to confirm the dates and places in question. For research libraries, too long required to refer scholars to unreliable sources, this volume should be an important acquisition. FILM & HISTORY NEWS HFC PLANS FOR LOS ANGELES The Historians Film Committee will be co-sponsoring a session at the 1981 AHA meeting next December in Los Angeles. The session, focusing on resources for film history research, will feature presentations by John O'Connor and Thomas Cripps and comments by archivists from major film/television related collections. Also at Los Angeles, the HFC will be offering a screening of a new television production on TV news coverage of the Vitenam War made by Peter C. Rollins and David Culbert. Both producers will be on hand to discuss their work entitled Television's Vietnam. SPECIAL ISSUE COMING THIS FALL The Fall 1981 issue of Film & History will feature several articles on film and the history of technology. This special issue is stimulated by the response to a session on the same theme at the 1980 meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) at Toronto. 45 ...