The Debonairs

📖 The Scoop

Part of the Encore Film Book Classics series, this is a reprint of the original text to The Debonairs by James Robert Parish and Don E. Stanke. Things came easy to him: money, adventure, women. But he did make things easier for lady luck, thanks to his ingenuity, wit, and refined behavior. He enjoyed his success in opulent surroundings, wearing tasteful, expensive, perfect clothing like a second skin. He was the screen's Debonair-a rather specialized model from Hollywood's Golden Age. You can still see the likes of him in old movies. The Debonairs probes the intriguing lives of eight leading men of the bygone Tinseltown era; screen stars who most perfectly defined the Debonair manner, morality, and method. Their impressive careers, many major films, colorful lives, and memorable personalities emerge in vivid detail: RAY MILLAND-The quick smile, the easy disposition (and something deeper as displayed in The Lost Weekend) . . . ROBERT MONTGOMERY-Smooth and smart, he was the All-American sophisticate . . . DAVID NIVEN-Lighthearted enthusiasm almost hid the quiet courage of a gentleman . . . WILLIAM POWELL-Suave as silk, he could play a martini-guzzling detective or a bellowing head of the household with equal aplomb . . . GEORGE BRENT-Tough hero (in real life as well) turned light romantic lead . . . MELVYN DOUGLAS-So elegant he must have been born in a dinner jacket . . . REX HARRISON-His greatest professional problem was that he made it all look so easy . . . CARY GRANT-Larcenous or courtly, but always stylish. Whether aristocratic by birth or by training, the Debonair was always the gentleman-even when he was a cad. He made evening clothes respectable, a shoeshine necessary, gallantry indispensible. He flourished during the grim Depression. Now the dapper Debonairs stroll again in this book which contains hundreds of casts and credits of the subjects, pertinent critical judgments, contemporary reviews, and dimensional biographical studies of these gallants and their contemporaries (including the women in their lives). For all time, The Debonairs deftly captures this specialized type of sophisticated screen leading man as we love to remember them: impeccably tailored, unobtrusively rakish, sly, dry-and charming even when they aren't half trying.

Genre: Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism (fancy, right?)