Joseph McBride (born August 9, 1947) is an American film historian, biographer, screenwriter, author and educator. He has written books on a variety of subjects including notable film directors, screenwriting, the JFK assassination, and a memoir of his youth.
He also serves as professor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University.
Books in order of publication:
Orson Welles (1972, revised and expanded 1996)
John Ford (1975, with Michael Wilmington, revised and expanded 2023)
Kirk Douglas (1976)
Orson Welles: Actor and Director (1977)
High and Inside: An A-to-Z Guide to the Language of Baseball (1980)
Hawks on Hawks (1982)
Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (1992)
Steven Spielberg: A Biography (1997, revised and expanded 2012)
The Book of Movie Lists: An Offbeat, Provocative Collection of the Best and Worst of Everything in Movies (1998)
Searching for John Ford (2001)
What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career (2006, revised and expanded 2022)
Writing in Pictures: Screenwriting Made (Mostly) Painless (2012)
Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippit (2013)
The Broken Places: A Memoir (2015)
Two Cheers for Hollywood: Joseph McBride on Movies (2017)
How Did Lubitsch Do It? (2018)
Frankly: Unmasking Frank Capra (2019)
Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge (2021)
Political Truth: The Media and the Assassination of President Kennedy (2022)
The Whole Durn Human Comedy: Life According to the Coen Brothers (2022)
George Cukor’s People: Acting for a Master Director – 2025
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