Customer Reviews

King of the Movies: Francis X. Bushman

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This masterfully written account of the silver screen's first male romantic idol is a gem. Lon and Debra Davis have captured the spirit of an individual born with exceptional talent and drive, who through his own confidence evolved from an ordinary child to become a silent film star capturing the title King of the Movies. But the title was short-lived, and the individual spent the remainder of his dynamic life doing whatever was necessary to emulate his early role in cinematic history, despite never regaining the crown. A life unparalleled, Francis X. Bushman's journey is extremely intriguing and told in a manner that makes the reader appreciate the actor's humanity while simultaneously scorning his ego. This combination makes the content both riveting and insightful. Although the book was conceived years after Bushman's demise, it is written in a style that eliminates the passage of time and makes the reader experience a oneness with Bushman. Amazingly, the authors were youngsters when Bushman died in the mid-1960s. This fact is not evident in the prose, which is brilliant and convinces the reader that the authors were there first-hand, witnessing every aspect of Bushman's colorful life. Supplemental to the story is a wonderful collection of rare photos, from every era of Bushman's 80+ year life. Also included is a chronology summarizing the ups and downs of the actor's career and family, and an extensively researched filmography chronicling the multitude of familiar and lost film appearances. Clearly, this book is a labor of love. If you are a silent film fan or historian - or someone just wanting to learn more about Francis X. Bushman - this book is for you. A truly magnificent entry from the team of Davis and Davis!

Lon and Debra Davis do a wonderful job in bringing a silent film superstar
to light in their recent book, "King of The Movies", a biography of Francis
X. Bushman, best known to film fans as the original Massala in the original
"Ben Hur." The authors draw on a vast amount of resources, including their
friendship with Mr. Bushman's late widow, and access to his private memorabilia. They
provide just the right amount of detail in fleshing out the exciting
lifestory of this talented, vain, passionate and compelling man.
What I enjoyed most was the vibrant picture Lon and Debra drew of Bushman's
time, from his childhood in Baltimore, his early theater days, to his
heyday in motion pictures. It was almost like stepping back in time.
A delightful, moving and fascinating book, and I strongly recommend "King of
the Movies" for the bookshelf of every classic film fan.

This is the most exciting and enjoyable book I've read in a long time, and it is not often that one can say that about a biography. But then again, the subject of this biography was no doubt an exceptional person, full of vigor and love of life, namely Francis X. Bushman - the first great movie star. Although his career spanned six decades and over 200 roles, the first hundred or more are from the infant years of cinema, namely 1911 to 1914. Long before Rudolph Valentino, it was Francis X. Bushman who was the screen's first Great Lover, male sex symbol and heart-throb, attracting huge crowds of swooning women wherever he went. For those years at the height of his fame, he lived a luxurious, extravagant lifestyle, only to lose everything and be completely broke - and that more than once in his long life. This rollercoaster career would in itself already be an exciting and fascinating read, but the authors have presented not only a legendary celebrity but a real person in this very impressive project that began in the early 1980s. Gleaning information about the great man from Bushman's widow and also his ex-wife and former regular co-star, Beverly Bayne, as well as many other sources, authors Lon and Debra Davis have done a stupendous job of putting all these bits of information together coherently so that the reader can simply enjoy the thrill ride that was the life of Francis X. Bushman.

Many personal details make this biography very colourful and alive so that it feels more like reading a great story about a larger-than-life personality working in the entertainment industry. There is drama and intrigue when Bushman made a life-long enemy out of film mogul, Louis B Mayer, romance with his co-star and later two other wives, comedy in the many quotes by Bushman that reveal a healthy sense of humor, and fascinating details about his greatest passion besides acting: animals. I read with much pleasure and interest how Bushman began keeping a menagerie of animals already as a boy, and at the height of his fame enjoyed keeping company with many Great Danes, fine breeds of horses and rare birds, to name a few. But most of all, the message this book conveyed to me is of a person who had great love and enthusiasm for life, wanting to try everything, do everything and live life to the fullest at all times (which often led to his financial troubles). It is this aspect of his character which I found inspiring, and his sense of humor makes him rather endearing, despite other flaws he may have had.

For silent film enthusiasts in particular, many parts of this book give accounts of what was happening in the early years of cinema in both Hollywood and on the east coast, and the detailed accounts of the making of Ben-Hur in 1925 are most exciting and impressive. This book is beautiful in appearance, and the entire contents are also pleasing in every way, with two sections of many good pictures, and a detailed filmography, as well as a helpful chronology and bibliography at the back. This is a very highly recommended book for not only movie fans and silent film enthusiasts, but for anyone at all because the life of Francis X. Bushman is in itself a great story, made even more enjoyable to read by such skilled and talented authors.

Silent film star Francis X. Bushman was proud, vain, self-aggrandizing, and given to exaggeration, hyperbole, and the extravagant gesture--made to order, in other words, for a juicy celebrity biography. Lon and Debra Davis have produced something quite different.

They make no apology for Bushman's excesses nor give them any greater weight than his accomplishments. More important, they refrain from armchair psychoanalysis, preferring to let Bushman's own remarks serve as an index to his strengths and shortcomings. Against the Davises' detailed background of the period, Bushman's recollections tell of the challenges, frustrations, and temptations attending the pursuit of an acting career in the early days of cinema. It was not for the faint of heart.

The authors describe what is surely one of the steepest declines in a star's fortunes ever recorded. Was Bushman brought down by angry female fans, shocked to learn that their heartthrob had hidden the existence of a wife and five children? Or did Metro cut him loose for insubordinate behavior and declining box office receipts?

Both explanations are credible. If studios put their trust in the satisfying clink of silver, audiences put theirs in the preservation of the sheerest illusion. We know that fake emotion onscreen can elicit real emotion in us, the audience; perhaps this explains why we feel betrayed when the illusion is broken. Bushman wore the mantle of "King of the Movies." If stars are merely human, how can they be larger than life, as inaccessible as kings?

For all his setbacks--Bushman lost one fortune after another--he never lost his sense of humor. He laughed at his errors, dusted himself off, and went back to work.

The Davises' writing is straightforward and free of cant. No film-school jargon here, no axes to grind. Just a thoroughly absorbing story.

Do you read for fun and pleasure, seeking a satisfying interaction between author(s), subject, and reader? Then read King of the Movies! Do you enjoy biographies but avoid like the plague those that contain cover to cover detail, detail, detail, to where the useful cliche, "can't see the forest for the trees" becomes apropos? Then read King of the Movies! Whether a novice to the history of silent films (like me), or a veteran historian of the era, you will appreciate King of the Movies.

The team of Lon Davis and Debra Davis have written a really wonderful book about Francis X. Bushman, arguably the most popular silent screen idol during most of the silent era. Their efforts present enough facts (some new to the field) about the life and performance of FXB to give credibility to their conclusions about the screen idol. Their writing style reveals an animated and passionate voice about not only FXB but their obvious love and admiration for a period of film some of us underestimate and misunderstand.

Anecdotes, photographs (some new), a Chronology, and a Filmography all give a touch of scholarship without a ho-hum line in the entire book. They make a marvelous team, as exhibited in Stooges Among Us and now King of the Movies. You're in for a fun time.

Kudos to Lon and Debra Davis' for their incredible biography of famed silent film star, Francis X. Bushman. The book is a fascinating study of an iconic actor that made a great impact in an impressionable era of film. Bushman was the first, true movie star in an era of film that had been sadly forgotten and neglected. The Davis' paint a wonderful picture of the rise and fall of America's first "King of the Movies" who has been forgotten by both afficionados of film and historians. The research done for this book is quite impressive and includes rare interviews with some of the artists that were involved in the creation of movies,
This book is hard to put down as the reader is tranported to the world of the early twentieth century and the rise of the film industry. There are some tremendous rare photographs of Bushman including from the movie classic "Ben-
Hur."
I strongly recommend this book to everyone from the casual moviegoer to the serious film student. This book captures an important part of our history that impacts our film industry today.

I found the most recent biography of Francis X. Bushman to be full of many facts of his life that were left out of the book by Richard Maturi and his partner. Lon and Debra Davis give historic facts and personal insights that give a fuller understanding of the man in the context of his personal history and that of the lives he touched.
He is described sometimes as "vainglorius",and at other times a hard working thespian with a strong love of his craft. He also loved the instrument that made his profession possible, his body. He was a bodybuilder who firmly believed in pushing his body to its limits and in doing so, made not only his body but his sense of self determinism stronger. I was brought to a deeper understanding of this cinema icon and his life and by extrapolation, my own life. You see, I am the unrecognized great granddaughter of Francis X. Bushman, (his daughter Lenore married the father of my mother, Webster Laurence Marxer). In the Davis book, page 217, there is a photograph of many relatives and Francis X. posing for a group photo where my mother, his uncredited granddaughter (my mother, Linda Scott), Lenore Konti,(his daughter from his first marriage) my uncle Laurence and I (I being the "unknown baby", he is holding in his lap) are all there together in the Palisades home. To my dismay, my mother and I are respectively listed as "unknown guest", and "unknown baby". I am sure the authors were unwitting participants in this lack of recognition of my mother and I but I have always felt apart from my grandmothers side of the family and this picture confirmed it for me.
The authors were given a veritable treasure trove of information and they share this information in a very cogent manner. If there is anything a person is wanting to learn about Francis X. Bushman as a film icon and an entrepreneur it is all in the book. All the principals of my part of the Bushman legacy are dead of non-communicative to me so I was glad to see such a detailed account of his life published so I might learn more about my family and in turn, myself.
If anything, the book has given me a desire to find out more of this powerful mans life. In the life of Francis X. Bushman, we can learn that all things are possible with hard work, belief in yourself and determination. Although this book is heavy on film facts, it is truly an inspirational biography of a man who lived his life exactly as he wished to and the success it brought him as a man and a film legend.

Francis X. Bushman was one of the most important early stars of American motion pictures, and someone long deserving of the thorough biographical treatment he has been given by authors Lon and Debra Davis in this 368 page book. Today, Bushman is best remembered for his performance as Messala--opposite Ramon Novarro's title character in the 1925 silent epic BEN-HUR. Others may recall him for his later character work in films such as SABRINA (1954) and many TV shows right up to his death in 1966. However, the 1910's were Francis X. Bushman's heyday as a movie star--when he regularly topped polls for the most popular actor on screen. The authors recount his early years in Baltimore, Maryland, where he embarked on a Eugene Sandow-inspired bodybuilding regimen that led to a career as a sculptor's model in New York. From there, he entered the stage, playing in stock for a number of years until his rise as a name theatrical performer led to a call to work for George K. Spoor and G.M. Anderson's Essanay company in Chicago in 1911.

The authors capture Bushman's initially less-than-sanguine opinion of the movies, and don't hide his vainglorious attitude that often made him his own worst enemy. The authors detail an incident that may have sowed the seeds for the lifelong chilly relationship between Bushman and Louis B. Mayer, a few years before either were at MGM (and many years before Mayer's later alleged "blacklisting" of Bushman in Hollywood). Lon and Debra Davis also document Bushman's endeavor (at the height of his fame) to construct his own studio, mansion and compound in his hometown of Baltimore--which ended in disaster and bankruptcy even before America's entry into the first World War. However, Bushman was a man of many comebacks and reinventions, and this event marked just one of the times in his life when he had to humble himself, dig deep and persevere through hardships that were sometimes self-inflicted.

Though published in 2009, the authors originally began research for this book in the late 1970's and early 1980's, during which time they became acquainted with, and interviewed, Bushman's second and fourth wives--Beverly Bayne, his longtime co-star at Esssanay and Metro and rumored mistress prior to their marriage; and his widow Iva Richardson, who also wrote the Foreword. These interviews yielded great insight in Bushman's life--everything from his relationships (or lack thereof) with his many children, to his passions as a breeder of Great Dane dogs (which contributed to his bankruptcy, and provides some humorous stories in the book such as a dog show dispute arising from a business dealing between Bushman and fellow Dane enthusiast Harold Lloyd). For historians of silent cinema, the chapters about the lengthy and problem-plagued production of BEN-HUR in Italy and Hollywood alone make this volume worthwhile. The book is handsomely laid out using a period font that is easy to read, yet captures the flavor of the early film era in every page, and the book is well illustrated with stills and candid photographs. Altogether, this is an important work about an important figure in motion picture history.

This book makes a fantastic read, not only for die-hard film buffs, but also for readers who love to be zoomed into the life of one of the most fascinating personalities of the twentieth century: Francis Xavier Bushman, the first hero of the movies, once better known and of higher esteem than movie greats such as Charles Chaplin.

Francis X. Bushman, King of the Movies, comes in a 368-page-volume packed with facts on early filmmaking, then one of the most hazardous enterprises paralleling the dangers of mining or toil in a steel mill.

Bushman was a man beyond known limits. Forget those products of today's doping industry: Bushman would doubtlessly put them in the shade, constantly re-defining the high watermark of what a human being is able to bear (including loads of lavender cigarettes and gallons of champagne).
To put it mildly, Bushman had a rich life which is reflected in a surprise with every new page. Just take the first few years of Bushman's, they are sufficient to fill several utterly exciting lives up to the rim: When you believe that he had reached the pinnacle of his antics the authors are going to present you with yet another, and this made me more than once laugh out with joy. It's an absolute pleasure to witness Bushman's tremendous expenses on luxury as if they were your own and in the end you'll find yourself unshamefully join in the satisfaction of a notorious spendthrift's escapades. However it'll also make you stare in horror at Bushman's incredible pratfalls from which he knows to recover like the classical stand up-doll.

A beautiful linguistic and poetic balance is achieved by the book's two authors, Lon and Debra Davis, by a writing style that can -whenever suitable- be on a par with the effects of an undercranking film camera, with their words well-chosen so that you won't miss a detail.

The book is the quintessence of excellent in-depth research coupled with a wealth of photographs, interviews and reminiscences of contemporaries, close friends and last not least Bushman's own words. It is also the result of the authors' great insight into the entire framework of film history. Brilliant descriptions of production backgrounds, for instance of the now lost ROMEO AND JULIET make you deplore the film's loss even more (maybe Gosfilmofond has it...) and with BEN HUR you'll immediately consult youtube without being disappointed.

I am delighted anytime a cinematic pioneer is remembered ... too often, the great stars who literally created Film as we know it are brushed aside as mere footnotes. That is why this loving chronicle of the life of Francis X. Bushman is such a revelation, and a must for anyone who cares about the movies. Not only was Bushman tremendously important in his day, but he was also a very diverse human being, with large tastes and wide talents. Lon and Debra Davis have obviously worked extremely hard at painting a picture ... with a clean palate to create upon ... that does not aim to place their subject upon a pedestal, but rather establish just WHY he was/is vital to the history of film. This is the type of book that is needed, badly, because it humanizes a name that deserves high remembrance. I know something of the attempt to "bring back" someone from the past whose importance in his day has been lost on subsequent generations - and I appreciate a great book which does that job well. This is such a tribute. Kudos to the Davis', and my thanks to them for taking the time and exerting the effort to tell Bushman's story. It is worth telling, as this book's lucky readers will find out...