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Guest Name
George Stevens Jr
George Stevens Jr
Guest Occupation
Master storyteller, Writer, Playwright, Director, Producer
Guest Biography

Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. 15 Emmys. Worked with seven US presidents. Founding Director of the American Film Institute. Co-founded, wrote and produced the Kennedy Center Honors, 1978-2014. Author and playwright. Iconic journalist Edward R. Murrow was a mentor in JFK’s New Frontier.

 

George Stevens, Jr. has spent an illustrious career behind and around the camera. Finally, a master storyteller shares his own unique and extraordinary story, with touching insight and historical perspective in My Place in the Sun: Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington that was published last summer to great fanfare. Now, in his own voice, the AUDIO BOOK is available on Spotify and 28 platforms.

 

Stevens, Jr. tells an intimate and moving tale of his relationship with his Oscar-winning father and how he emerged from his father’s shadow to claim his own place as a major force in American culture through his own exciting career in Hollywood and Washington. Fascinating people, priceless stories and a behind-the-scenes view of some of America's major cultural and political events grace this riveting memoir.

 

Stevens, Jr. grew up in Hollywood working on film classics with his father and writes vividly of his experience on the sets of A Place in the Sun (1951), Shane (1953), Giant (1956) and The Diary of Anne Frank (1958). He explores how the magnitude of his father's talent and achievements left him with questions about his own abilities and future.

 

He began to forge his unique bi-coastal career when the legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow recruited him to work at the United States Information Agency in John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. He moved from Hollywood to Washington in 1962 and initiated what has been called the Golden Age of USIA filmmaking. In 1967 he became the founding director of the American Film Institute, shepherding the rescue of 10,000 endangered motion pictures (the AFI Collection now contains over 40,000 films), and creating the AFI Conservatory to train a new generation of filmmakers. He created the Kennedy Center Honors and made distinguished films and TV programs that explored social justice.

 

Stevens, Jr. provides a fascinating look at his pioneering American family that spans five generations in the performing arts. He shows us the private side of the dazzling array of people who cross his path, including Elizabeth Taylor, Sidney Poitier, Alfred Hitchcock, Maya Angelou, Fred Astaire, Robert and Ethel Kennedy, Yo-Yo Ma, Cary Grant, James Dean, Muhammad Ali, Bruce Springsteen, Barack Obama, and many more.