Stars!

Stars! is a spectacular album of treasured photographs of the greatest and most popular movie superstars -- both on and off screen. It treats movie star photography as art by recreating the image and impact of the kings and queens of the 1920s and 1930s, the originals of the 1940s and 1950s, the new generation of the 1960s, the individualists of the 1970s, and the phenomena of the 1980s. Stars! reveals, through biographical essays and memorable photographs, that the most enduring stars are the same on and off camera. In life, as in films, Elizabeth Taylor is a Love Goddess; Marlon Brando, a Nonconformist; Warren Beatty, a Superstud; Barbra Streisand, a Superstar; Robert Redford, a Winner; and Katherine Hepburn, the One and Only. The nearly 400 photographs collected in the book are a unique mix of film stills and publicity head shots, famous and historical portraits and photographic essays, magaazine and newspaper pictures, and pop-culture artifacts. Together with the text, these illustrations explain, for examaple, why the incomparable Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are the ideal love team in movie history, what makes John Wayne the most macho cowboy-lawman of the Hollywood West, why Meryl Streep's madonna image compels us, how Dustin Hoffman's underdogs inevitably triumph, and why Stephen Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is the superstar of the future....