Richard Schickel

Richard Warren Schickel was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1933. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin with a political science/history degree, he joined Sports Illustrated in New York as a junior reporter. For the next several years, he worked for various New York-based media companies. He began film reviewing in 1965, working for Life magazine and is currently the film reviewer for Time .

He is also well known for his teleplays, documentary scripts, novels, and in particular for his in-depth examinations of Hollywood history and celebrities.

In his 1985 work Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity, he explores what it means to be famous in a media-conscious society, and how the many levels of fame can be exploited to serve less than noble goals.

His biographies of key cinema personalities are thoughtful and thorough but nevertheless entertaining and accessible.

Selected Bibliography

Harold Lloyd: The Shape of Laughter , New York Graphic Society, 1974.

Cary Grant: A Celebration , Little-Brown, 1983

D.W. Griffith: An American Life , Simon & Schuster, 1984

Matinee Idylls: Reflections on the Movies , Ivan R. Dee, 1999.

Good Morning Mr. Zip Zip Zip: Movies, Memory and World War II , Ivan R. Dee, 2003.

Elia Kazan: A Biography , HarperCollins, 2005