HOLLYWOOD FRAME BY FRAME:

Contact sheets are rolls of still photos taken by film cameramen for use in publicity, and in the 1950s they replaced carefully posed studio shots as the preferred source of promotional images. In this unusual book on the world of Hollywood, contact sheets for over 70 iconic films are reproduced, together with the editor's comments. Some of the photos show the actors in character, others relaxing on set. A few are in colour, most in black and white. An interesting snippet of information is the fact that for Some Like it Hot, Marilyn Monroe requested that the publicity stills should be in colour, but was told colour was not sufficiently flattering to her co-stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, who were appearing in drag with full female make-up. A 1951 contact sheet for A Place in the Sun, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, displays a fairly conventional set of romantic images, but the still with a red tick of approval is the more daring one in which Clift is smoking a cigarette. Stills of The African Queen show Bogart in cavorting mode, while James Stewart and Grace Kelly in Rear Window (1954) keep failing to embrace with just the right combination of frisson and decency. As we enter the 60s, the stills for Psycho have more nudity but less tension. Witness for the Prosecution posed a particular problem as Dietrich played a double role which audiences were asked not to reveal. From Russia with Love (1963) came out before the Bond franchise achieved blockbuster status, and there is a visible lack of chemistry between Connery and Bond girl Bianchi. Films from Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Silence of the Lambs take the story right up to the revolution of the digital era. 208pp, photos on every page.