Customer Reviews

British Stars and Stardom: From Alma Taylor to Sean Connery

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Though there have been hundreds of books published over the years on American film actors and actresses, their British counterparts haven't enjoyed the same treatment. I had high hopes when I sent for BRITISH STARS AND STARDOM. Alas, this collection of 17 essays on stars such as Sean Connery, Trevor Howard, Julie Andrews, Deborah Kerr, Albert Finney, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, James Mason, Alec Guinness and other 'Mother Country' thespians is a turn-off for all but students taking college-level film classes or Film Studies professors; which just happen to make up the bulk of the essayists featured in this book!

The 17 essayists - employed at such institutions as the University of East Anglica, Southampton University, Queen Mary and Westfield College, the University of Pittsburgh and Spain's University of Zaragoza - examine an electic selection of British stars including the aforementioned along with Ivor Novello, Garcie Fields, Flora Robson, Anton Walbrook, Margaret Lockwood, James Donald, Diana Dors, even porn star Mary Millington!

Unfortunately, the writers were commissioned to not just describe the particular star's career but also to analyze their life and career "so as to illuminate some larger question(s) of British stardom." So, while readers are furnished with some interesting biographical information, they also have to wade through a great deal of mind-numbing philosophizing and high-blown criticism. If the essayists do, in fact, illuminate those British stardom questions, they do so at the cost of chasing away many readers with their dry, dense verbage. Someone is taking themselves way too seriously here!

For those reasons, most film buffs, even those interested in British cinema, can safely pass up this 2001 Manchester University Press release. While informative, its academic nature renders it a hard slog. Not recommended.