Start gifting
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Limited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks when you make the switch!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Make the switch
Gift audiobook credit bundles
You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.
Start giftingThe Hollywood Studios
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreHollywood in the years between 1929 and 1948 was a town of moviemaking empires. The great studios were estates of talent: sprawling, dense, diverse. It was the Golden Age of the Movies, and each studio made its distinctive contribution. But how did the studios, “growing up” in the same time and place, develop so differently? What combinations of talents and temperaments gave them their signature styles? These are the questions Ethan Mordden answers, with breezy erudition and irrepressible enthusiasm, in this fascinating and wonderfully readable book. Mordden illuminates how the style of each studio was primarily dictated by the personality, philosophy, and attitudes of its presiding mogul—and how all these factors affected the work and careers of individual actors, directors, writers, and technicians, and the success of the studio in general.
Ethan Mordden is the author of numerous books and countless magazine articles on theater, opera, and film, as well as several novels. A frequent contributor to the New Yorker, Mordden has received the National Magazine Award for Fiction. He lives and works in New York City.
Barrett Whitener, based in D.C., has read countless audiobooks and voiceovers. His audiobook credits include Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, Frank W. Abagnale's Catch Me If You Can, Orson Scott Card's Children of the Mind, and John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. Barrett has also lent his voice to a range of commercials, including those for The American Red Cross, the Boeing Corp, Legend Entertainment Corp, and PBS. AudioFile Magazine has described his voice as "crisp, precise, assured, intelligent [and] attention-grabbing."
Reviews
“The book also brings forth a strange nostalgia—not for the films...but for the era.”
“Entertaining, informative…Written with a flair and clarity that will delight even the casual movie lover, this study is a refreshing and convincing alternative to the auteurist approach to film history.”
“Much film writing is either sappy or esoteric, but this book is accessible, well written, humorous, and informed. Barrett Whitener is brisk and crisp—as always, a delight to listen to.”
“Written with wit by an expert, this book gives more insight and perspective to the rise of the studios than such books as John Douglas Eames’ The Paramount Story. Recommended for all film collections.”
Expand reviews