Mom in the Movies

Book excerpt: Turner Classic Movies and film historian Richard Corliss present Mom in the Movies: The Iconic Screen Mothers You Love (and a Few You Love to Hate), the definitive, fully illustrated book that shares the many ways Hollywood has celebrated, vilified and otherwise memorialized dear old Mom. With a foreword written by Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher, and sidebar essays by Eva Marie Saint, Illeana Douglas, Jane Powell, Sam Robards, and Tippi Hedren, this book is packed with an incredible collection of photographs and film stills. Mom in the Movies makes a great gift for any mom—and for anyone with a mother who oughta be in pictures. Here, you will meet the Criminal Moms, like Shelley Winters in Bloody Mama, and the eccentric Showbiz Moms, including those from Gypsy and Postcards from the Edge. You’ll also find Great American Moms, as warm and nourishing as apple pie, in movies such as I Remember Mama and Places in the Heart, along with Surrogate Moms, like Ginger Rogers in Bachelor Mother, Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame, Dianne Wiest in Edward Scissorhands and Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side. And who can forget the baddest mothers of all? No book on movie moms would be complete without Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate. From the cozy All-American mom to the terrifying Mommie Dearest or the protective Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, when it comes to mothers on the silver screen, it takes all kinds. With Mom in the Movies, Richard Corliss and Turner Classic Movies bring those many moms vividly to life, in words and pictures.