Ready for My Close-Up!: Great Movie Speeches

If I want to send a message, I’ll call Western Union. This famous line has been attributed to numerous movie moguls through the years, but at the time it was spoken, Hollywood was in the midst of a golden age of dialogue. Writers all over Hollywood turned out prose that sent messages of all kinds - after all, how could they resist? They had the biggest platform in the world, the Hollywood movies. Ready For My Close-Up! brings together more than 200 speeches form some of the best - and a few of the worst - films ever made. From Grouch Marx’s I shot an elephant in my pajamas to Julia Roberts’ What it takes to be a movie star, here is the wit and wisdom of the greatest Hollywood screenwriters.