No comments about Biography - Jean Harlow.

3 comments about Biography - Carol Burnett.

1. An excellent life story of one of the greatest queens of comedy. I throughly enjoyed learning more about Carol Burnett. Her struggles in life make her comedy that much more appealing. For anyone who enjoyed the Carol Burnett show, A&E once again does a wonderful job in their biography video.



2. This is a very interesting overview of the professional life of Carol Burnett including some of the personal aspects of her marriage and interactions with friends.



3. This DVD Biography of Carol Burnett is the greatest. I have loaned this DVD to many friends. Two liked it so much that they bought their own copies.

No comments about Biography - J. Pierpont Morgan.

2 comments about Biography - John Wilkes Booth.

1. I love history and the Lincoln Assassination is a particular favorite of mine. I like to read bios and watch documentaries about all of the conspirators. I am also always on the lookout for videos to show in my high school social studies class so I wanted to check out Biography's look at JWB. Although it was easy for me to follow, I was disappointed overall. The pace of the video is too slow and the background music is overemphasized. If you like history, you will probably like this video. If not, I urge you to check other materials for now. I am hoping the the good people at Biography will redo the Bio of JWB. He is an important figure in American History and worth knowing about.



2. very lackluster production that closed with the line that booth was killed in maryland. duh! booth was killed in virginia.........anyway
   the same photographs are shown over and over and over, although some of the photographs were ones i had not seen. i will watch it again, and i will keep it as part of my collection, but i wouldnt recommend it to the serious student.

1 comments about Biography - James Earl Jones.

1. James Earl Jones is a Very Creative Man.His Voice Alone is Like No Other.I Have Seen Countless Films With Him in them.He is a All Around Actor.Tv,Stage,&Film.This Video Does a Fantastic Job at Showing THe Highs&Lows in his Life& on&off stage.He is a Very Underrated Actor to me.He has done alot of Good Solid Performances.This Video is a Must.

2 comments about A & E Biography Series: Elizabeth Taylor.

1. The A&E Biography of the life and career of the famed actress Elizabeth Taylor is a must see!!Liz Rules!!



2. This covers Elizabeth's childhood, her health issues, movies, and her many marriages, up to her marriage to Larry Fortensky. It isn't a very long biography, but it's satisfactory and I have watched it a few times. I recommend this if you're an Elizabeth Taylor fan.

No comments about Biography - Boris Karloff.

2 comments about Biography - James Bond.

1. I heard the game now is this the movie?Goldeneye 00



2. fgxdjili

2 comments about Biography - Great Ziegfeld.

1. This biography of Florenz Ziegfeld is up to A&E's usual high standard of entertaining biographies,and clips featuring footage of the real-life Ziegfeld may give you an awful jolt---he most certainly was not the debonair,sophisticated figure portrayed by William Powell in "The Great Ziegfeld" (1936) and "Ziegfeld Follies "(1946),or by Walter Pidgeon in "Funny Girl"(1968)--in fact,the Great Showman comes across as a rather sleazy gangster-type figure -a more accurate screen impersonator would have been Edward G.Robinson! This bio,lavishly illustrated with stills and posters of the era,features a long unseen and invaluable relic..SOUND FOOTAGE of three members of the 1927 ORIGINAL CAST of Ziegfeld's greatest triumph-the first production ever of Kern and Hammerstein's beloved "Show Boat",filmed at the time the original Broadway production was still running. This screen footage,featuring Tess Gardella,Helen Morgan,and Jules Bledsoe,could only have come from one source,the once-presumed lost prologue to the 1929 part-talking film version of "Show Boat",and is an invaluable chance to see some priceless clips.The quality of the video image in these "Show Boat" performance clips is quite bad-be warned-we can't make out Bledsoe's facial features at all;he is photographed in medium shot,and the picture looks almost like a badly developed photo. The sound quality for this sequence is also quite bad,but at least it survives,and is perhaps the only remaining visual record of any part of the actual original production (not to be confused with the magnificent 1936 film version of "Show Boat",a beautifully photographed,acted,and sung film,starring Irene Dunne,Allan Jones,and several members of the Broadway cast of the show.)



2. This video gives us an entertaining peek into the private and public personas of Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. The viewer finds a surprising lot of film footage of Ziegfeld at home with daughter, Patty, and there is even sound footage of the producer discussing his ongoing goal to "glorify the American Girl". I was most fascinated by the stills of Ziegfeld's productions and the short but provacative contemporary interviews with women who were actually glorified by the glorifier. And in keeping with the A & E style, this production does not shy away from presenting Ziegfeld's personal vices as well as his creative genius. A must-see for any Ziegfeld enthusiast.

1 comments about Biography - Lon Chaney Jr.: Son of a Thousand Faces.

1. This video on Lon Chaney Jr. flowed along excellently, showing his tough childhood years being on the road with his vaudeville parents, stepping out from his father's shadow into acting and reluctantly changing his name to Lon Jr., his lean years in the 1930s, success and stardom in the 1940s with The Wolfman and other Universal horror roles, to his television roles and C grade movies from the 1950s and 1960s.

   Former co-stars and his grandson share a lot of intimate looks at Chaney, which portrayed him as a caring, gentle man who was great to work with, despite the alcohol demon that possessed him throughout most of his adult life.

   The transition of showing Lon Sr.'s career and how Creighton stepped into acting and changed his name to Lon Jr. for publicity purposes was nicely done. We see clips of Lon from 1930s westerns, his move into horror roles, and then his character roles throughout the rest of his career, both in movies and on TV.

   Besides his Wolfman role and other Universal starring roles, the biography focused strongly on his role as Lenny in "Of Mice and Men." Chaney was playing Lenny in the Broadway version, and when the film version was announced, Broderick Crawford was to play the part. Chaney was so into the role that he boldly went to the producers and asked to be screen tested against the other actors in the movie, particularly a youthful Burgess Meredith. Chaney was so overwhelming, that he was recast into the part.

   As much as he loved the role of Lawrence Talbot and the Wolfman, he equally hated the role of Kharis the mummy, which he played three times. The makeup was very grueling and took eight hours to do an entire body workover. In many cases, only Chaney's top portion was made up for closeups, and at long-distance shots, he wore a mask instead of the total face makeup, saving a lot of time.

   Of course, the down side is shown too, and his grandson discussed the problems with alcohol. Two sad moments are shown. In 1951, he is doing a live television broadcast of the Frankenstein story, and he is playing the monster. Chaney was drunk and thought that it was just a dress rehearsal. He didn't know the broadcast was live, and during scenes that called for him to go into a rage and smash furniture as he chased people through a huge mansion, he would only pick the furniture up and then set it back down, just going through the motions. This incident put him in the doghouse with movie producers and placed him on the Hollywood B list for pretty much the rest of his career.

   The other sad incident shows a clip from Chaney's last pitiful role in Dracula versus Frankenstein. He was gravely ill at the time, and his face and body are badly swollen from the ravages of alcohol. He was also in the early stages of battling throat cancer and would die only two years later. Following this clip, a few shots are shown of him in his later years, baggy eyed and obviously tired and worn out.

   However, the biography ends on a positive note showing the legacy of universal monsters being preserved at Universal Studios and the fact that Chaney's movies are watched as much as anyone's. A tribute to a man who was a much better actor than he was given credit for.