Vanity Fair Mar-15

From the pages of Vanity Fair By EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY • ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT • F. SCOTT FITZGERALD SHERWOOD ANDERSON • CLARENCE DARROW • THEODORE DREISER LANGSTON HUGHES • FORD MADOX FORD • STEPHEN LEACOCK • BERTRAND RUSSELL WALTER WINCHELL • ROBERT SHERWOOD • P. G. WODEHOUSE WALTER LIPPMANN • DOROTHY PARKER • WILLIAM SAROYAN • GERTRUDE STEIN CARL SANDBURG • ROBERT BENCHLEY • DALTON TRUMBO • NOËL COWARD D. H. LAWRENCE • E. E. CUMMINGS • JEAN COCTEAU • ALDOUS HUXLEY • JANET FLANNER DJUNA BARNES • PAUL GALLICO • THOMAS MANN • A. A. MILNE • THOMAS WOLFE COLETTE • T. S. ELIOT...and many more “Enduring essays [from an] incredible cast of writers.” —THE NEW YORK TIMES “Impressively prescient... . A book as a box of chocolates.” —ASSOCIATED…

THIS MONTH’S ONLINE EXCLUSIVES FOLLOW US ON TWITTER AND INSTAGRAM @VANITYFAIR ONLINE FEATURES HOLLYWOOD’S BIG NIGHT Follow @VanityFair on Twitter and Instagram for live coverage of the 87th Academy Awards and, afterward, Vanity Fair’s ultra-glamorous Oscar party. PHOTOGRAPHS ALL-STAR ASSEMBLY After months of planning by V.F. for its annual Hollywood Issue cover (no complaints here), see how the magic is made in bonus behind-the-scenes photos from the star-studded shoot. SNOW BOOTS OPTIONAL What’s the next-best thing to attending Sundance? Watching Krista Smith’s intimate interviews and scrolling through Justin Bishop’s spontaneous portraits of the festival’s top talent. WALK THE WALK In The Walk, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the expert tightrope artist Philippe Petit as he floats between the Twin Towers. See exclusive photos of Gordon-Levitt on the set of the film, perfecting…

1 Mark Bowden In reporting for “Kim Jong Un’s Supreme Dilemma” (page 336), contributing editor Mark Bowden was surprised to learn that the young North Korean dictator has made several intelligent moves, including substantial economic reforms. Unsurprising were the anecdotes typical of despots. “If you’re the absolute ruler, you have a wide prerogative for those things that give you pleasure,” says Bowden, “whether it’s dining on endangered species or, in Kim Jong Un’s case, inviting Dennis Rodman to a party.” 2 Jason Bell The British Invasion theme of this year’s Hollywood Portfolio (page 292) came to photographer Jason Bell at a time when Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man were all being played by British actors. Bell off-handedly told V.F. photography director Susan White, “It’s got so out of hand, you could…

Intolerance, D. W. Griffith’s silent epic, made a hundred years ago, was what Hollywood generally refers to as a message film. It’s divided into chapters, one of which centers on the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants that explosively divided Paris at the end of the 16th century. As the massacre at the Paris offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo demonstrated only too brutally, history is a serial repeater. Indeed, intolerance—of the religious as well as the nationalistic variety—has dominated headlines since last Thanksgiving. And it has left a wound in the operative manifestation of tolerance: freedom of expression. Both the hacking of Sony Pictures by the North Koreans and the Charlie Hebdo slaughter by Islamist extremists have brought the world into the discussion of what exactly is…

This month’s topic is superstition. We all engage in it, one way or another. Even those who say they’re not superstitious do superstitious things, in high numbers (85 percent say, “God bless you”) or low (about half of us make a birthday wish, more than a third cross our fingers). And the older we are, the less superstitious we are. Some 42 percent of 18-to-34-year-olds describe themselves as “not at all” superstitious, but for the 65-plus crowd that percentage goes up to 69. And it’s younger Americans who are more likely to recognize the quote “God does not play dice with the universe” as Albert Einstein’s—39 percent got it right, and that number drops steadily as the age groups get older. Speaking of God, Americans are evenly divided on which…

This year we celebrate the 21st annual Hollywood cover. Annie Leibovitz shot the first one in 1995 and all but three since, and she returned once again last December to photograph 10 actors, all of whom had noteworthy performances over the past year, at Smashbox Studios in Culver City, California. For this intimate sitting, styled by Jessica Diehl and produced by Kathryn MacLeod, the men wore bespoke white-tie and the women channeled old Hollywood glamour, while D.J. SoSuperSam enhanced the playful mood. “We made the picture in the same studio where we did the first Hollywood cover,” Leibovitz says. “It looks fairly simple, but in fact it was difficult to shoot. We choreographed it over two days. Usually you shoot from fairly far away, but we wanted to get really…