Paperback reprint of a book depicting the oddly brilliant relationship between Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick, two of Hollywood's most legendary filmmakers.

Rich in detail and anecdote, Hemingway and His Conspirators profiles the nascent media age and its personalities - among them F. Scott Fitzgerald, Helen Hayes, Sinclair Lewis, David O. Selznick, and Gary Cooper.

“This excellent, lively study examines the ‘raucous debate’ sparked by the Code over the morals and ideals of American movies.” —Publishers Weekly The new edition of this seminal work takes the story of the Production Code and motion picture censorship into the present, including the creation of the PG-13 and NC-17 ratings in the 1990s. Starting in the early 1930s, the Production Code Director, Joe Breen, and his successor, Geoff Shurlock, understood that American motion pictures needed enough rope—enough sex, and violence, and tang—to lasso an audience, and not enough to strangle the industry. To explore the history and implementation of the Motion Picture Production Code, this book uses 11 movies: Dead End, GoneWith the Wind, The Outlaw, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Bicycle Thief, Detective Story, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Moon Is Blue, The French Line, Lolita, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The authors combine a lively style with provocative insights and a wealth of anecdotes to show how the code helped shape American screen content for nearly 50 years. “A readable, intimate account of the rise to near-tyrannical power, and the fall to well-deserved ignominy, of the old Production Code Administration.” —Atlantic Monthly “A valuable insight into our own innocence and naiveté.” —The New York Times Book Review “The triumph of Leff and Simmons’s fine work is that they have reminded us of how fatuous and inimical a code of conduct can be: how tempting it is as a theoretical answer, and how intrinsically flawed it is as a working solution.” —The Times of London

A valuable and thoroughly researched history of Hollywood censorship.--The Philadelphia Inquirer. As the debate over the current movie rating system rages, no book could be more topical than this. Using 12 movies to explore the history and implementation of the Motion Picture Production Code, the authors combine a lively style with provocative insights and a wealth of fascinating anecdotes to show how this sytem helped shape screen content for nearly 50 years of American life. 16-page photo insert.

Como director y productor, Hitchcock y Selznick, colaboraron entre 1939 y 1947 en 4 films: Rebeca, Recuerda, Encadenados, y El proceso Paradine. Leonard J. Leff ha examinado y comprobado escrupulosamente los escritos y documentos de aquella historia tensa y frecuentemente tormentosa, pero fructuosa de Hitchcock y Selznick, ofreciéndonos el más completo documento que poseemos de Hitchcock en su perspicaz adecuación a los sistemas de trabajo de Hollywood, al tiempo que se convertía en una de susfiguras (Chicago Tribune).