An edition of Mad As Hell (1994)

Mad as hell

the life and work of Paddy Chayefsky

1st ed.
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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 14, 2024 | History
An edition of Mad As Hell (1994)

Mad as hell

the life and work of Paddy Chayefsky

1st ed.
  • 2 Want to read

That Paddy Chayefsky was the greatest writer ever to emerge from television's fabled "Golden Age" is unquestionable. But that his work for television, theatre, and film firmly places him alongside his most heralded contemporaries - Arthur Miller, William Inge, and Tennessee Williams - is the compelling thesis of Mad as Hell: The Life and Work of Paddy Chayefsky by Shaun Considine.

In Considine's exhaustively researched biography of Chayefsky, we examine the formative roots of the only individual screenwriter ever to win three Academy Awards (for Marty, The Hospital, and Network). From his boyhood in the Bronx to his tumultuous years in Hollywood, Chayefsky emerges here as an ambitious man, devoted in his friendships, hesitant and shy in romance, yet fierce and exacting as a creative force.

His genius for capturing the American vernacular elicited classic performances by such legends as Bette Davis, Kim Stanley, and George C. Scott, and his larger-than-life personality garnered him close relationships with such varied notables as Laurence Olivier, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Bob Fosse, and playwright Herb Gardner. And for each friendship there also seemed to be a fight: Chayefsky's vengeful brawl with Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, his tempestuous struggles with Edward G.

Robinson, Burt Lancaster, Zero Mostel, and Ken Russell, and his politically charged hatred for Vanessa Redgrave are just a few of the conflicts detailed here.

Throughout his fifty-eight years, Paddy Chayefsky was a man in search of understanding - of both himself and his changing world. Unhappily, a sense of fulfillment and of his own identity would remain beyond his grasp until his final days. His hopeful optimism in the 1950s evolved into a resolutely skeptical view of contemporary life, as he confronted in his scripts the military, the medical and television industries, and even man's relationship to God.

In Mad as Hell, Shaun Considine gives us, at last, a full picture of a unique latter-century American genius.

Publish Date
Publisher
Random House
Language
English
Pages
426

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Mad As Hell
Mad As Hell: The Life and Work of Paddy Chayefsky
September 2000, Backinprint.com
in English
Cover of: Mad as Hell
Mad as Hell
November 13, 1995, Random House Value Publishing
Hardcover in English
Cover of: Mad as hell
Mad as hell: the life and work of Paddy Chayefsky
1994, Random House
in English - 1st ed.

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. [405]-408) and index.

Published in
New York

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
812/.54, B
Library of Congress
PS3505.H632 Z57 1994

The Physical Object

Pagination
xvii, 426 p., [8] p. of plates :
Number of pages
426

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL1434302M
Internet Archive
madashelllifewor00cons
ISBN 10
0679408924
LCCN
93046154
OCLC/WorldCat
29548164
Library Thing
990160
Goodreads
893938

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History

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July 14, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
August 6, 2021 Edited by New York Times Bestsellers Bot Add NYT review links
July 5, 2019 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
December 4, 2010 Edited by Open Library Bot Added subjects from MARC records.
December 10, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page