A portrait of the trailblazing film producer whose career spanned five decades.

The long, colorful career of Walter Wanger (1894-1968) is one of Hollywood’s greatest untold stories. An intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas, Wanger’s career started at Paramount studios in the 1920s and led him to work at virtually every major studio as either a contract producer or an independent. He produced a series of American film classics, including Queen Christina, Stagecoach, Foreign Correspondent, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as well as a few notable flops, such as Cleopatra. This comprehensive biography brings to life a distinctive film personality and offers a new appreciation of the role of the producer in the history of American cinema.

Matthew Bernstein teaches film studies at Emory University. He is editor of Controlling Hollywood: Censorship Regulation in the Studio Era (1999) and coeditor (with Gaylyn Studlar) of Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film (1997).