George Cukor’s People: Acting for a Master Director

McBride (cinema, San Francisco State Univ.; The Whole Durn Human Comedy) brings his incredible depth of knowledge as a film historian to this analysis of director George Cukor (1899–1983). Known as a “women’s director” (code-speak for gay), Cukor was so much more. He started in theater and migrated to Hollywood to work as a dialogue coach and, sometimes, uncredited co-director. He directed future classic films such as Holiday, Adam’s Rib, A Star Is Born (the 1954 version starring Judy Garland), The Women, Gaslight, My Fair Lady, and Sylvia Scarlett, among many others. Movie by movie, actor by actor, McBride discusses Cukor’s works, emphasizing how he shaped actors’ performances and subtly inserted gender-fluid and socially subversive themes into his films. He worked with Katharine Hepburn on 10 films and even coaxed moving scenes out of Marilyn Monroe near the end of her career and her life. McBride covers Cukor’s directorial triumphs and failures, generously citing biographies, interviews, and analyses by other authors and filmmakers. The author name-drops occasionally and is sometimes repetitive but creates a good portrait of a great director and his immense body of work.