Steven Spielberg (106 page)

Lara, Antonio.
Spielberg:
maestro
del
cine
de
hoy.
Madrid: Hargrove, 1990.

Leather, Michael C.
The
Picture
Life
of
Steven
Spielberg.
Franklin Watts, 1988 (children’s biography).

Mabery, D. L.
Steven
Spielberg.
Lerner Publications Co., 1986.

McAllister, Mareia L.
Steven
Spielberg:
He
Makes
Great
Movies.
Rourke Enterprises, 1989 (children’s biography).

Mott, Donald R. and Cheryl McAllister Saunders.
Steven
Spielberg.
Twayne Publishers, 1986.

Pye, Michael, and Lynda Myles.
The
Movie
Brats:
How
the
Film
Generation
Took
Over
Hollywood.
London: Faber and Faber, and New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979.

Sanello, Frank.
Spielberg:
The
Man,
The
Movies,
The
Mythology.
Taylor, 1996.

Schneider, Wolf, ed.
Steven
Spielberg
(American Film Institute Life Achievement Award program booklet). AFI, 1995.

Sinyard, Neil.
The
Films
of
Steven
Spielberg.
London: Bison Books, 1987.

Somazzi, Claudio.
Steven
Spielberg:
Dreaming
the
Movies.
E/K/S Group, 1994.

Taylor, Philip M.
Steven
Spielberg:
The
Man,
His
Movies,
and
Their
Meaning.
London: Batsford, and New York: Continuum, 1992 (revised Continuum edition, 1994).

Van Gunden, Kenneth.
Postmodern
Auteurs:
Coppola,
Lucas,
De
Palma,
Spielberg
and
Scorsese.
McFarland, 1991.

Weiss, Ulli.
Das
Neue
Hollywood:
Francis
Ford
Coppola,
Steven
Spielberg,
Martin
Scorsese.
Munich: 1986.

Balaban, Bob.
“Close
Encounters
of
the
Third
Kind”
Diary.
Introduction by Steven Spielberg. Paradise Press, 1977.

Blake, Edith.
On
Location
on
Martha’s
Vineyard
(The
Making
of
the
Movie
“Jaws”).
Ballantine, 1975.

Duncan, Jody.
“The
Flintstones”:
The
Official
Movie
Book.
Modern Publishing, 1994.

Durwood, Thomas, ed.
“Close
Encounters
of
the
Third
Kind”:
A
Document
of
the
Film.
Introduction by Ray Bradbury. Ariel/Ballantine, 1978.

Erickson, Glenn, and Mary Ellen Trainor.
The
Making
of
“1941.
”
Ballantine, 1980.

Farber, Stephen, and Marc Green.
Outrageous
Conduct:
Art,
Ego,
and
the
“Twilight
Zone”
Case.
Arbor House/Morrow, 1988.

Fensch, Thomas, ed.
Oskar
Schindler
and
His
List:
The
Man,
the
Book,
the
Film,
the
Holocaust
and
Its
Survivors.
Introduction by Herbert Steinhouse. Paul S. Eriksson, 1995.

Gottlieb, Carl.
The
“Jaws”
Log.
Dell, 1975.

Klastorin, Michael, and Sally Hibbin.
“Back
to
the
Future”:
The
Official
Book
of
the
Complete
Movie
Trilogy.
Mallard Press, 1990.

LaBrecque, Ron.
Special
Effects:
Disaster
at
“Twilight
Zone”:
The
Tragedy
and
the
Trial.
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988.

Millar, Al.
E.T.
—
You’re
More
Than
a
Movie
Star.
Privately published, 1982 (pamphlet).

Pourroy, Janine.
Behind
the
Scenes
at
“ER.
”
Ballantine, 1995.

Reed, Rochelle, ed.
“The
Sugarland
Express”
—
Spielberg,
Barwood
and
Robbins,
Zsig
mond.
American Film Institute, 1974.

Shay, Don, and Jody Duncan.
The
Making
of
“Jurassic
Park.
”
Ballantine, 1993.

Spielberg, Steven (introduction).
Letters
to
E.T. 
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1983.

Taylor, Derek.
The
Making
of
“Raiders
of
the
Lost
Ark.
”
Ballantine, 1981.

Walker, Alice.
The
Same
River
Twice:
Honoring
the
Difficult
(on Spielberg’s filming of her novel
The
Color
Purple).
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996.

Michael Crichton’s comment is from his article “Across Time and Culture” in Schneider.

“Firelights Capture Earthlings in Film Premiering Tuesday” was the headline of a March 1964 article in
The
Arizona
Republic.
Spielberg’s boyhood friend Jim Sollenberger told the author that Steven’s mother called him “Cecil B. DeSpielberg”; the “Spielbug” nickname was recalled by Rick Cook, his classmate at Arcadia High School in Phoenix. Spielberg’s ambition to be “the Cecil B. DeMille of science fiction” was reported by
Firelight
crew member Jean Weber Brill.

Sources on
Firelight
include the author’s interviews with Brill and twelve other people who worked on it: Susan Roper Arndt, Judge Charles G. Case II, Bill Hoffman, Clark (Lucky) Lohr, Warner Marshall, Haven Peters, Chris Pischke, Paul G. Rowe, Carol Stromme Shelton, Arnold Spielberg, Betty Weber, and Beth Weber Zelenski (who also described the filming in a March 4, 1994, letter to the author, and to Bill Jones in “Star of Spielberg’s 1st Feature Remembers ‘Hands-Off Director,”
Arizona
Republic,
May 12, 1996). The author also interviewed Charles A. (Chuck) Silvers, then with the editorial department of Universal Pictures and later executive vice-president of Dunhill Media Services of Valencia, Ca.; Silvers consulted with Spielberg during the making of
Firelight
and saw it after its premiere. The premiere was recalled by various people who worked on
Firelight,
as well as by others in attendance, including George Cowie, Richard Y. Hoffman Jr., Lynn Hoffman, Vance Marshall, and Doug Tice; copies of the premiere program and Spielberg’s undated shooting script were supplied by Zelenski. Allen  Zelenski also described the film to the author.

Brief clips from
Firelight
were included in
Citizen
Steve,
a parody biographical film made by Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment as a birthday present for him in 1987;
The
Barbara
Walters
Special
(ABC-TV, March 21, 1994); and
The
American
Film
Institute
Salute
to
Steven
Spielberg
(NBC-TV/A&E;, 1995).
Firelight
was reviewed by Larry Jarrett in
The
Arizona
Journal,
“Young Movie Maker Premieres Own Film,” March 26, 1964. The making of the film was covered by
The
Arizona
Republic
in Clark; Paul Dean, “Encounter with Success Began at Arcadia High,” March 8, 1978; Michael Clancy and Dolores Tropiano, “Early Spielberg Effects Weren’t All That Special,” July 14, 1993; and Jones, “Spielberg’s Spark,” May 12, 1996. Spielberg’s denigration of the film (1974) is from Zimmerman. Spielberg’s mother, Leah Adler, recalled his filmmaking in Paula Parisi, “Wunderkind in the Making,”
HR
Spielberg tribute issue, March 10, 1994. Leah’s description of her son as “a terrible student” is from Margy Rochlin, “So Says Leah Adler,”
LAT,
December 22, 1985.

Steven’s 1963–64 comments on his filmmaking ambitions are from Clark; Jarrett; and “Firelights Capture Earthlings in Film Premiering Tuesday.”

Leah Posner Spielberg (Mrs. Bernard Adler) recalled her parents and her Uncle Boris in Fred A. Bernstein,
The
Jewish
Mothers’
Hall
of
Fame,
Doubleday, 1986. Sources on Spielberg and Posner family history also include the author’s interviews with Arnold Spielberg, Samuel Guttman, Daniel Guttman, and Deborah Guttman Ridenour, and genealogical material compiled by the late Natalie Spielberg Guttman. Natalie was interviewed by Carol Sanger in “E.T.’s Cincinnati Roots,”
The
Cincinnati
Enquirer,
August 22, 1982. Additional genealogical material was provided by Cincinnati researcher Adele Blanton. Also useful were birth, death, and marriage records of family members in Cincinnati; the Cincinnati city directories, 1905ff; and obituaries and marriage listings from various Cincinnati newspapers. Information about Spielberg’s family history also came from the author’s interviews with family friends who knew Steven’s grandparents, including Millie Tieger and Edith Cummins; and from Barry M. Horstman, “Spielberg’s Roots: Avondale Years Shaped
Schindler,
”
Cincinnati
Post,
January 13, 1994. Arnold Spielberg talked about his family history and his own moviemaking in Julie Salamon’s memoir of her family,
The
Net
of
Dreams:
A
Family’s
Search
for
a
Rightful
Place,
Random House, 1996.

Documents on Samuel Spielberg’s estate are from the Probate Court, Hamilton County, Ohio, including his Last Will and Testament, January 2, 1946; Inventory of Estate, May 7, 1946; and Account of Estate, November 29, 1946. Steven Spielberg’s fortune was estimated in “The
Forbes
Four Hundred,”
Forbes,
October 14, 1996. The marriage license of Arnold Spielberg and Lea [
sic
]
Posner was filed in the Probate Court on February 23, 1945.

Among the books on Jewish, Russian, and Jewish-American history consulted were Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog,
Life
Is
with
People:
The
Culture
of
the
Shtetl,
International Universities Press, 1952; Werner Keller, translated by Richard and Clara Winston,
Diaspora:
The
Post-Biblical
History
of
the
Jews,
Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969; Irving Howe,
World
of
Our
Fathers,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976; Chaim Potok,
Wanderings:
Chaim
Potok’s
History
of
the
Jews,
Knopf, 1978; Neal Gabler,
An
Empire
of
Their
Own:
How
the
Jews
Invented
Hollywood,
Crown, 1988; Benjamin Pinkus,
The
Jews
of
the
Soviet
Union:
The
History
of
a
National
Minority,
Cambridge University Press, 1988; Ronald Sanders,
Shores
of
Refuge:
A
Hundred
Years
of
Jewish
Emigration,
Henry Holt, 1988; Jonathan D. Sarna and Nancy H. Klein,
The
Jews
of
Cincinnati,
Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, 1989; Martin Gilbert,
The
Atlas
of
Jewish
History,
Morrow, 1992 (revised edition), and
Atlas
of
Russian
History,
Oxford University Press, 1993 (second edition); Howard M. Sachar,
A
History
of
the
Jews
in
America,
Knopf, 1992; and Edward S. Shapiro,
A
Time
for
Healing:
American
Jewry
Since
World
War
II
(The
Jewish
People
in
America,
Vol. 5), Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Abraham Cahan’s observation about immigrant Jews’ vision of America is quoted in Sachar.

Information about Kamenets-Podolsk is from various histories and reference works on Russia and from a post–World War II Jewish memorial book translated from the Hebrew for the author by Dr. Ida Cohen Selavan: Abraham Rozen, H. Sarig, and Y. Bernshtain,
Kamenets-Podolsk
and
Environs,
Tel Aviv, 1965. Information about Spielberg relatives killed in the Holocaust is from Arnold Spielberg; Weinraub; and Salamon, “The Long Voyage Home” and
The
Net
of
Dreams.

Sources on Cincinnati history included the author’s interviews with the late Dr. Jacob Rader Marcus and others who lived there at the same time as Spielberg and his parents. Among books of local history consulted were John Clubbe,
Cincinnati
Observed:
Archi
tecture
and
History,
Ohio State University Press, 1992; Federal Writers Project, Works Progress Administration,
The
WPA
Guide
to
Cincinnati,
1943, reprinted in 1987 by the Cincinnati Historical Society; B. J. Foreman,
CCM
125:
College
–
Conservatory
of
Music 
1867–1992,
University of Cincinnati, 1992; Reginald C. McGrane,
The
University
of
Cincinnati:
A
Success
Story
in
Urban
Higher
Education,
Harper & Row, 1963; Sarna and Klein,
The
Jews
of
Cincinnati;
and Iola Hessler Silberstein,
Cincinnati
Then
and
Now,
League of Women Voters of the Cincinnati Area, 1982. Also helpful were various interviews in the National Council of Jewish Women–American Jewish Archives Oral History Project, 1980–81 (Cincinnati Historical Society).

Additional sources on the Avondale neighborhood included articles in Cincinnati papers: “Avondale: A Suburb That Appreciates Its Natural Endowments,”
Commercial
Gazette,
May 24, 1892; Robert Heidler, “Avondale … One of City’s Most Populous Areas,”
Times
Star,
November 18, 1950; L. Robert Liebert, “Avondale,”
Enquirer,
October 28, 1951; George Amick, “A Changing Avondale,”
Enquirer
series, February 22–26, 1959; and Steven Rosen, “Avondale’s Memories Preserved,”
Enquirer,
July 29, 1984.

Spielberg described his earliest memory in Corliss’s
Time
cover story “‘I Dream for a Living.’” Cincinnati’s Adath Israel Synagogue was described in
The
WPA
Guide;
Sarna and Klein,
The
Jews
of
Cincinnati;
and “Synagogue Presents Neo-Classic Style; History of Avondale Society Is Recalled,”
Cincinnati
Enquirer,
August 12, 1929.

David Lyman reported on Spielberg’s film project
I’ll
Be
Home
in the
Cincinnati
Post:
“Spielberg Planning Movie in Cincinnati,” December 11, 1989; “Spielberg Movie in Cincinnati Doubtful This Year,” August 13, 1990; and “Spielberg Pledges: He’ll Film Here,” December 5, 1991. Spielberg commented on the project in Ebert and Siskel,
The
Future
of
the
Movies.
See also Mason Wiley’s November 1990
Cosmopolitan
article “The Women Who Write the Scripts,” which includes a section on Anne Spielberg.

Pauline Kael’s comments on
Close
Encounters
and Spielberg’s influence on other filmmakers are from her review “The Greening of the Solar System,”
The
New
Yorker,
November 28, 1977, and from David Blum, “Steven Spielberg and the Dread Hollywood Backlash,”
New
York,
March 24, 1986.
Schindler’s
List
was heralded as Spielberg’s maturation by Schiff and by Mordecai Newman, “Spielberg’s Bar Mitzvah,”
Jewish
Frontier,
January–February 1994; Spielberg’s response was made to Elkin. He discussed his Jewish heritage in various published interviews around the time of
Schindler’s
List
and in the “Spielberg’s Oskar” segment of
Eye
to
Eye
with
Connie
Chung
(CBS-TV), December 9, 1993. The religious practices of the Spielbergs and the Posners were described to the author by Arnold Spielberg. Vincent Canby’s description of Spielberg as “the poet of suburbia” is quoted in Ebert and Siskel.

Steven’s mother discussed her music and its influence on her son to Bernstein and Reilly. Steven’s comment about “genetic overload” and the story about his father’s oscilloscope are from Horstman. John Williams remarked on Spielberg’s musical instincts in Shay and Duncan,
The
Making
of
“Jurassic
Park.
”
 

Natalie Guttman’s description of her nephew as a
“mazik”
and her other comments on his childhood are from Sanger.

Spielberg’s correct birthdate, December 18, 1946, is established by his Certificate of Live Birth, Ohio Department of Health, No. 15473: Steven Allan Spielberg (Cincinnati Board of Health). His birth was reported in
The
American
Israelite,
December 26, 1946, and his bar mitzvah was announced in
The
Phoenix
Jewish
News,
December 25, 1959. His age also was reported correctly in such early articles as Clark; Jarrett; “Universal Pacts Pamela McMyler, Steve Spielberg,”
HR,
and “Univ. Pacts Pair,”
DV,
December 12, 1968; Ray Loynd, “Shorts Makers Get Short Cut to Success Via Short,”
HR,
December 13, 1968; Hull; and Kramer. Incorrect ages were given in such articles as “Spielberg Pacted to Produce for U,”
DV,
December 28, 1970; Cameron; Adler; and Fred Schruers, “Peter Pandemonium,”
Premiere,
December 1991.

Incorrect dates for Spielberg’s arrival at Universal were reported in the Adler article
and in Tuchman; Hirschberg; Corliss, “‘I Dream for a Living’”; and Gross. Spielberg’s actual arrival at Universal in late 1963 or early 1964 was established by the author’s interview with Charles A. Silvers and by Jarrett’s 1964 article. Spielberg’s 1968 comment to Sid Sheinberg was reported in Shah.