The Healer's Tale: Transforming Medicine and Culture

by Sharon R. Kaufman

Escape Artist based on Glenn Lovell s extensive interviews with John Sturges, his wife and children, and numerous stars including Clint Eastwood, Robert Duvall, and Jane Russell is the first biography of the director of such acclaimed films as The Magnificent Seven , The Great Escape , and Bad Day at Black Rock . Lovell examines Sturges s childhood in California during the Great Depression; his apprenticeship in the editing department of RKO Pictures, where he worked on such films as Gunga Din and Of Human Bondage ; his service in the Army Air Corps in World War II; and his emergence as one of the first independent producer-directors in Hollywood.Chronicling the filmmaker s relationships with such luminaries as Spencer Tracy, James Garner, Yul Brynner, and Frank Sinatra, Escape Artist interweaves biography with critical analyses of Sturges s hits and misses. Along the way, Lovell addresses the reasons why Sturges has been overlooked in the ongoing discussion of postwar Hollywood and explores the director s focus on masculinity, machismo, and male-bonding in big-budget, ensemble action films. Lovell also examines Sturges s aesthetic sensibility, his talent for composing widescreen images, and his uncanny ability to judge raw talent including that of Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn, all of whom began their careers in Sturges s movies. This long overdue study of a major Hollywood director will find a welcome home in the libraries of film scholars, action movie buffs, and anyone interested in the popular culture of the twentieth century.
Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association
"Pick up a copy of film critic and scholar Glenn Lovell's terrific new Sturges biography, Escape Artist. . . . I can't urge you enough to check out this interview-rich, aesthetically and culturally perceptive look at the filmmaker and his work." Bob Strauss, Los Angeles Daily News
Lovell s list of interviewees reads like a who s who of Hollywood and they obviously provided rich source material for this full-scale biography and career survey. Leonard Maltin
This long overdue study of a major Hollywood director will find a welcome home in the libraries of film scholars, action movie buffs, and anyone interested in the popular culture of the twentieth century. Turner Classic Movies (TCM.com)"

368 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 1993

About the author

Sharon R. Kaufman is Chair of the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She is the author of …And a Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life.

Reviews

[Josephine Ensign · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book based on oral history interviews with seven American physicians whose careers spanned the time-period from the 1920s into the 1970s. Through their lived experiences, I am able to better appreciate the significant changes in health care in our country during the twentieth century. One in particular that was highlighted in the book was the fact that before antibiotics and more extensive childhood immunizations, the curing role of the physician was extremely limited.