[...]... silent era in support of his comic stars For the most part, animals have traditionally played supporting roles to human actors, but a number of assorted animals have managed to ascend to a star status of their own Animals, of course, don’t really act but are merely taught tricks that can be photographed in short takes and made to appear as if the animal knows what he or she is doing Yet an animal that becomes... becomes a star for any length of time is almost always an amazing creature capable of responding to an enormous number of commands In addition, such animals, just like their human counterparts, have an undefinable star qual- 11 ANIMATION Let us not forget, however, that in addition to the actual stars, there was a whole menagerie of animals who became well-known supporting players These animals are often as... share of hardedged protagonists, but it wasn’t until Bogart played Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941) that the antihero was born Bogart continued playing antiheroes in films such as Casablanca (1942) and To Have and Have Not (1944), but as the 1940s progressed and the film noir became a movie staple, actors such as JOHN GARFIELD and ALAN LADD joined the antihero ranks The rise of the western in the. .. today as the human actors who were the stars of the films in which they appeared For instance, there was Cheetah (the chimp) in the Tarzan movies, Clyde the orangutan in two of Clint Eastwood’s films, Every Which Way But Loose (1978) and Any Which Way You Can (1980), Asta (the dog) in the Thin Man series, Pete (yet another dog) in the Our Gang comedies, Ben (a rat) in Willard (1971) and Ben (1972), and. .. up” and turning them into visual stories has often proved difficult Even such well-known and enjoyable adaptations as The Petrified Forest (1936) and The Philadelphia Story (1940) tend to be static In the hands of visually acute and creative directors, however, plays can be turned into great films such as Amadeus (1984) Yet there are also some absolutely dreadful adaptations, such as Man of La Mancha (1972),... talent, and an American original, at that Ameche, Don (1908–1993) Don Ameche was a busy actor at the star-starved Twentieth Century–Fox of the latter 1930s and early 1940s An amiable leading man in light comedies and musicals, Ameche occasionally showed his stuff in dramas as well, most memorably in the BIOPIC The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939) The movie was so successful and the actor became so... winner, and actors, directors, producers, editors, screenwriters, etc., are almost always able to demand higher salaries after receiving an Academy Award The awards ceremonies—as well as the awards themselves—have changed over the years In the early days, an actor might be nominated for several films (see the winners of 1927–28 above) In 1936 the new categories of Best Supporting Actor and Actress were added,... stable of cartoon characters for a basketball game with a live-action Michael Jordan Far more successful was Dreamworks’s Shrek (2001), a satiric swipe at fairytale creatures and cartoon characters, a box -of ce phenomenon that spawned a sequel and a host of media tie-ins in print and television Paradoxically, perhaps, the one traditional animation technique that survived the 1990s was stop-motion animation... the very earliest days of cinema in the work of Emile Cohl and Willis O’Brien, it matured in the film fantasies of the 1940s and 1950s by Ray Harryhausen and George Pal The 1990s saw several standout box -of ce hits in the stop-motion process, including two from the team of Tim Burton and Henry Selick, The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and James and the Giant Peach (1996), the latter containing a. .. his animated shorts as early as 1933, inventing the multiplane camera for greater clarity, depth, and detail, and pushing forward to make ambitious, critically and commercially successful animated features as early as 1938 with the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, followed by Pinocchio (1940) and his belatedly appreciated masterpiece, Fantasia (1940), among many others Disney’s success was . owe a debt of gratitude to Shirley and Samuel Siegel, Clare and Samson Teich, Lillian and Jack Goldberg, and Stephanie Tranen who took us to the movies. and Barbara Siegel New York, NY May 2003 And for the Revised Edition . . . We also wish to thank a few scholars who came to our aid and assistance at the