The first-ever biography of the seminal American director whose remarkable life traces a line through American entertainment history
Acclaimed as the ultimate New York movie director, Sidney Lumet began his astonishing five-decades-long directing career with the now classic 12 Angry Men, followed by such landmark films as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network. His remarkably varied output included award-winning adaptations of plays by Anton Chekhov, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O’Neill, whose Long Day’s Journey into Night featured Katharine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson in their most devastating performances.
Renowned as an “actor’s director,” Lumet attracted an unmatched roster of stars, among them: Henry Fonda, Sophia Loren, Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Ethan Hawke, and Philip-Seymour Hoffman, accruing eighteen Oscar nods for his actors along the way.
With the help of exclusive interviews with family, colleagues, and friends, author Maura Spiegel provides a vibrant portrait of the life and work of this extraordinary director whose influence is felt through generations, and takes us inside the Federal Theater, the Group Theatre, the Actors Studio, and the early “golden age” of television.
From his surprising personal life, with four marriages to remarkable women―all of whom opened their living rooms to Lumet’s world of artists and performers like Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson―to the world of Yiddish theater and Broadway spectacles, Sidney Lumet: A Life is a book that anyone interested in American film of the twentieth century will not want to miss.
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“The book’s greatest strength is its first half, thanks no doubt to Spiegel’s access to Lumet’s unfinished memoir. The director abandoned his autobiography as the story line reached his 20s. As a result, in Spiegel’s book, Lumet’s early years, before his movie career kicks off, are chronicled with a gripping degree of detail.”
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Washington Post