Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fleming, who directed most of The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, and all of The Virginian and Bombshell, was not just a consummate studio craftsman but a distinctive artist, contends this rapt biography. Film critic Sragow has a tough case to make. Fleming's varied oeuvre suggests no signature onscreen style; instead, Sragow celebrates his feel for action and fantasy, and his intuitive way of directing actors. He also credits Fleming with inventing the Hollywood masculinity embodied by screen idols like Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable. Fleming, a big-game hunter and a polished bon vivant known for bedding his female stars, was both a man's man and a ladies' man, Sragow writes, who made male characters correspondingly tough but chivalrous (though offscreen Fleming wasn't above twisting Lana Turner's arm or slapping Ingrid Bergman to draw on-camera tears). Sragow's intricate, engrossing accounts of the making of Fleming's films convey his on-set charisma (and form a fine montage of Hollywood's evolution), but the real auteur is the studio system itself and its well-honed myth-making machinery (Fleming's last movie, Joan of Arc, an independent production, was a fiasco). Sragow's Fleming is a man who personified Old Hollywood, but didn't transcend it. Photos. (Dec. 9)
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Product Description

The full-length, definitive biography of the legendary director of Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.

Victor Fleming was the most sought-after director in Hollywood’s golden age, renowned for his ability to make films across an astounding range of genres–westerns, earthy sexual dramas, family entertainment, screwball comedies, buddy pictures, romances, and adventures. Fleming is remembered for the two most iconic movies of the period, Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, but the more than forty films he directed also included classics like Red Dust, Test Pilot, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Captains Courageous. Paradoxically, his talent for knowing how to make the necessary film at the right time, rather than remaking the same movie in different guises, has resulted in Victor Fleming’s relative obscurity in our time.

Michael Sragow restores the director to the pantheon of our greatest filmmakers and fills a gaping hole in Hollywood history with this vibrant portrait of a man at the center of the most exciting era in American filmmaking. The actors Fleming directed wanted to be him (Fleming created enduring screen personas for Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Gary Cooper), and his actresses wanted to be with him (Ingrid Bergman, Clara Bow, and Norma Shearer were among his many lovers).

Victor Fleming not only places the director back in the spotlight, but also gives us the story of a man whose extraordinary personal style was as thrilling, varied, and passionate as the stories he brought to the screen.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 656 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (December 9, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375407480
• ISBN-13: 978-0375407482
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #76,195 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Long Overdue Bio, February 3, 2009

By	gail powers "Gail" (Homewood, IL United States) - See all my reviews

I snatched this book up at my local bookseller's the week it was released and allowed it to languish on my book shelf for 2 weeks. Big mistake!

If ever there were a case study on how to write a biography of a person who had been dead for nearly sixty years, this book is it.

I've long loved movies that were directed by Victor Fleming and knew the basic info.......Fleming was a ladies man, a competent director, someone who died when he still looked good and should have had had many good years left. It could have well been summarized by his rather unimpressive crypt at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.......here was someone who once was somebody but was now relegated to obscurity. Not so! Michael Sragow had me within the first five minutes of starting this book. Here was a guy who was larger than life......handsomer than most of the male stars he directed and more fearless, too. A real life romeo, an adventurer, a guy who could be tough when necessary and a gentleman too. Based on interviews with Fleming family members, contemporaries, archival data, analysis, Sragow was able to put together a detailed profile of Victor Fleming that was not only very informative but compelling. I wanted to know where his story was going even if I knew where it was going to inevitably end.

If you are interested in film or just interested in reading a good bio, this book is a wonderful choice.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars TERRIFIC BIOGRAPHY!, January 24, 2009

By	L'escribe (ohio USA) - See all my reviews

I had long admired Victor Fleming, (primary) director of Gone With The Wind, and The Wizard of Oz, two movie greats. This biography by Michael Sragow is outstanding in its meticulous presentation. Origins of Fleming's early life and beginnings as a movie director, as well as a glimpse into the early silent picture era are well documented and make for a good read for those interested in the motion picture era. Interesting as well, for noting the pictures he wanted to have made and didn't, among those, "The Yearling" for reasons too obtuse to be real!
Fleming was a very sensitive artist, a director who could also have been a psychologist, as he understood and dealt with his actors in ways beyond the sterotypical factory approach among directors of the era. Also well documented are the director's various paramours (another word for girlfriends) and marriage. Although a little long, it is fascinating reading. A must for fans of Fleming and the magnificent pictures he directed, or anyone interested in the golden age of movies.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Victor Fleming is an underrated Hollywood Film Director who gets his due in this definitive biography, July 27, 2009

By	C. M Mills "Michael Mills" (Knoxville Tennessee) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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Quick! Who directed those two great masterpieces of 1939, "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone With the Wind?" The correct answer is the talented Victor Fleming (1889-1949). Fleming has long deserved a full-length biography of his life and career. Baltiomore film critic Michael Sragrow has accomplished that task using vivid prose in telling the saga of an American original artist of the cinema.
Fleming was a native Californian born to poor farmers who had migrated west from Missouri. He was enamored of photography, tinkering with cars, chasing women and general old fashioned carousing with his friends. During World War I he became an officer who photographed President Woodrow Wilson during the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919 which transpired in Paris.
Fleming became known as a photographer who soon won a director's chair during the Silent Screen era. He directed and befriended the great Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Fleming was the lover of such silent sexpots as the alluring Clara Bow the famous "It" girl and several starlets. He would later go have affairs with among many others: No
Bessie Love, Norma Shearer and most famously the incandescent Swede Ingrid Bergman.
Fleming was not faithful to his wife Lu but was a good father to his two daughters. He never got past the seventh grade in school but was an autodidatic chap who knew a good deal of history, the art of film directing, mechanics and flying aircraft. His pals were such he-men as Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Henry Fonda. He was a macho Hemingway man who was handsome, well spoken, sometimes gruff and always professional on the set. His best pal was probably the irascible film genius Howard Hawks.
We remember him, of course, for the great films he directed. In aadditon to Oz and GWTW that number includes such gems as: Tortilla Flat; Test Pilot; Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Treasure Island, "The Virginian, Abie's Wild Irish Rose;Red Dust with Gable and Harlow and Joan of Arc starring Ingrid Bergman. Fleming is notable for working in all genres from comedy to adventure to melodrama. He was the top director on the MGM lot. He had previously spent several years at Paramount.
Fleming was a tough hombre who was conservative who, suprisingly, often voted for the Democratic party. He did not care for easterners being proud of his native California heritage. He was an avid big game hunter, fisherman and loved the outdoors. Fleming was tall, handsome and well tanned. Gable based his GWTW role of Rhett Butler on Fleming's persona. He was loved by women and respected by men in the tough show business world of early Hollywood.
Sragow's biography will, hopefully lead to a renewed interest in such figures as Fleming, Wellman, Walsh, Ford and Hawks who were the men who made the movies great in the long ago golden age of Holywood.