Frank Tashlin

Locarno/London: with the British Film Institute / Éditions Yellow Now. Fine. 1994. First Edition. Softcover. [very nice tight copy, essentially as new]. Trade PB (B&W photographs, drawings) The first major work on the life and career of this somewhat under-appreciated (except in France) film director, a former cartoonist, animator and comedy gag man who moved into live-action features in the late 1940s, becoming "a major transitional figure, the link between the screwball comedies of Hawks and Sturges, and the modern comedy film." Prepared in conjunction with a retrospective of Tashlin's work presented at the 1994 Locarno Film Festival, the book contains critical essays, an interview, excerpts from his published and unpublished works, extensive notes on all his feature films, and an equally extensive "Documentation" section that presents a chronology of his life, detailed credits of his work in animation, an account of his work as a gag man and comedy screenwriter, a bibliography of his published and unpublished books, his radio and television credits, and a catalog of some of his unrealized projects. The entire enterprise benefitted greatly from archival research and the concurrent rediscovery of his papers, which permitted the correction of some previously-published versions of his life and career. The illustrations include a number of never-before-published photographs, plus reproductions from his books and his personal scrapbooks. .