Film's First Family: The Untold Story of the Costellos (Screen Classics)

Before finding fame, Maurice Costello (1877-1950) was a struggling vaudeville actor making a meager living in the theater circuit. This all changed, however, when he began miming for moving pictures to support his family, a gig not yet labeled 'acting' but which paid handsomely in comparison to the bookings he worked onstage. Understanding cinema's popular potential before the rest of his peers, Costello jumped at the chance to expand his professional horizons into unknown territory. Known best for his roles in Les Miserables (1909), A Tale of Two Cities (1911), and Through Life's Window (1914), he eventually became film's first male screen idol, the first actor to be mobbed by fans, and the first to be a household name. Soon, his family would become irrevocably intertwined with the Barrymores to form a film dynasty riddled with jealousy, resentment, and heartbreak. In Film's First Family: The Untold Story of the Costellos, Terry Shulman proposes the first book about the Costellos, an eccentric and tragic family that has largely been omitted from film history. With unprecedented access to the family's personal documents and artifacts, Shulman details Maurice Costello's ascension to the top of the film elite as well as his rather quick downfall after 'aging out' of the heartthrob persona ascribed to him by his studio. The end of his screen career was marked by accusations of spousal abuse, drunkenness, and physical assault, and tensions over his daughter Dolores' marriage to John Barrymore, arguably the most famous man in Hollywood during the late 1920s and early 30s, caused an irreparable rift in the Costello family. Costello's other daughter Helene was the first actress to star in an all-sound film, but her career was wracked by scandal during her very public divorce from actor-director Lowell Sherman in 1932, who testified that his wife was a drunk and an avid reader of pornography. Shulman proposes to explore the dramatic histories of the Costellos and the Barrymores to the present day, interviewing several family members including Dolores Ethel Barrymore Bedell, the daughter of John and Dolores, and Helene's daughter Deirdre. The story behind Film's First Family is a strange and sad one that will provide new insight into the politics and drama during the tumultuous beginnings of cinema. The volume will also depict the creation of celebrity culture in the American film industry, highlighting some of its more devastating effects. Shulman's work will appeal to film buffs and anyone interested in the roles of the 'first families' in the movies--

• | Author: Terry Chester Shulman
• | Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
• | Publication Date: November 12, 2019
• | Number of Pages: 304 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 0813178096
• | ISBN-13: 9780813178097