Ayn Rand at the Movies

Loved and hated, adored and derided, Ayn Rand has been one of the most controversial philosophers and authors of our time. She is considered a Goddess of Capitalism by some and a quintessentially "Mean Girl" by others. Denise Noe tries to bring complexity to the life of this most complex figure and, especially, to explore in depth her strong relationship with the motion picture industry. Ayn Rand fell in love with movies during the silent era when she was a young girl growing up in Russia and that love affair with cinema lasted all her life - and had profound effects on her life. One of her first published works was on a favorite actress, Pola Negri. She met her husband, Frank O'Connor, when she worked as an extra on Cecil B. DeMille's King of Kings. Ayn Rand penned the screenplays for the 1945 films Love Letters and You Came Along as well as for the 1949 The Fountainhead, a motion picture made of her groundbreaking novel of the same name. Ayn Rand has been the subject of films like the documentary Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life and the fabulously stylish Hellen Mirren vehicle The Passion of Ayn Rand. This book discusses the three-part Atlas Shrugged movie series. It delves into the making of a Saints vs. Scoundrels episode pitting Rand against Roman Catholic author Flannery O'Connor. It tells how her dystopian novella Anthem was made into an inspired cartoon as was her screenplay Red Pawn. It talks at length about how The Simpsons put on delightful send-ups of Rand works-send-ups that were also tributes to those works. This book discusses lavish Hollywood productions and high school projects that can be viewed on YouTube, feature films and shorts, to show how gloriously both the life and work of Ayn Rand are intertwined with the motion picture industry.