What to read after Four Hollywood Legends in World Literature: References to Bogart, Cooper, Gable and Tracy?

Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy had an immense impact upon popular culture. Included in this book are quotations from nearly six hundred literary works—novels, short stories, plays, poems and some nonfiction books—by nearly three hundred authors over the last eighty years, illustrating a diverse and contextually rich multitude of references to both the actors themselves and to a majority of their films.

An overwhelming number of allusions have been found to such unforgettable classics as It Happened One Night, Boys Town, Gone with the Wind, Beau Geste, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, High Noon and Inherit the Wind. 

The authors whose works are quoted here include a large number of highly acclaimed American writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, John O’Hara, Budd Schulberg, Herman Wouk, J. D. Salinger, James Jones, James A. Michener, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Philip Roth, William Styron, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Tim O’Brien and Paul Auster—and a host of foreign writers, such as Julio Cortázar, Umberto Eco, Romain Gary, Herman Koch, Stieg Larsson, Alan Sillitoe and Markus Zusak.

“This is a brilliant book . . . to see the impact that my father, along with the other three seminal stars of Hollywood's golden age, had outside the film world is both enlightening and astounding. I think my father would find it an honor to be included. . . . A must have for anyone who loves movies and loves literature.” — Stephen Humphrey Bogart
 
About the Author: Henryk Hoffmann was born and educated (M.A. in English Philology) in Poznań, Poland, where he worked as an English teacher, translator and interpreter. Having immigrated to the USA in 1992, he kept teaching (Latin, German, English and History) and started writing reference books related to film and literature, such as “A” Western Filmmakers: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers, Directors, Cinematographers, Composers, Actors and Actresses—his first publication. Hoffmann is an active member of the Western Writers of America and lives, with his wife Betsy, in Lititz, PA.

This book, a result of many years of painstaking research, is unlikely to hit a bookstore near you since the publishing house is rather small, but it's still a must-have reference book for any fan of American cinema and culture. Written by Henryk Hoffmann, it brings together hundreds of literary references fiction writers have made in their work to four American stars: Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy (and puts each reference in context). What emerges is a nearly 1000-page panoramic view of world and American literature and its close ties to the mythology of the movies. The book is now available also on Kindle for $9.95.

-- Michał Oleszczyk