‏Scott Allen Nollen‏

Scott Allen Nollen is an American historian, biographer, archivist, filmmaker and musician known widely as the author of a series of popular books on the history of film, music, literature and African American studies. His father, Harold N. Nollen, served in the United States Coast Guard prior to running a successful petroleum distribution business, to which his mother, Shirley A. (Stoltz) Nollen, also contributed. From age 12 in 1975, Nollen worked for his father until beginning his university studies in 1984. The maternal line of his father's family has been traced back to Bavaria in 1676.

Nollen's literary collaborators include science-fiction legend Ray Bradbury, author-filmmakers Nicholas Meyer and Michael A. Hoey, British musicians Ian Anderson and Dave Pegg, R&B singer Ruth Pointer, television producer Tony Oppedisano, celebrity offspring Dame Jean Conan Doyle (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), Sara Jane Karloff (Boris Karloff) and Chris Costello (Lou Costello), and Theron Denson, "the World's Only African-American Neil Diamond Tribute Artist." He also is known for producing, directing and playing two roles in the independent film "Lofty" (2005), with his nephew, Ryan C. Baumbach, and co-writing the screenplays for the award-winning documentaries "Kreating Karloff" (2006) and "Finnigan's War" (2013).

Nollen's parents began reading to him at a very early age, and he was able to read and write by the age of four, before attending Kindergarten. He has cited his favorite authors as Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, H. G. Wells and Mark Twain. He has noted that his greatest writing "teachers" have been Stevenson, Conan Doyle and Poe, all of whose considerable works (including essays and uncompleted material) he has read in their entirety. Stevenson's classic novel "Treasure Island" (1883) he describes as a "perfect literary work and perhaps the only truly 'cinematic' work ever created entirely in another medium, especially prior to the invention of film." His favorite poet is Scottish bard Robert Burns, whose works are written in English and the Auld Scots dialect, which Nollen also reads and writes.

Nollen's top 20 classic film directors are John Ford, Charles Chaplin, Akira Kurosawa, John Huston, James Whale, Raoul Walsh, Michael Curtiz, F. W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Nicholas Ray, Anthony Mann, Robert Wise, William A. Wellman, Edward Dmytryk, Frank Borzage, Elia Kazan, Henry Hathaway, Budd Boetticher, John Brahm and William Dieterle.

His five top post-1960 directors are Sidney Lumet, Nicholas Meyer, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood.

Boris Karloff has been Nollen's number-one thespian from childhood; and over the decades of viewing nearly every surviving classic Hollywood film through the 1960s (as well as a large percentage of world cinema from the same period), Edward G. Robinson, Glenda Farrell, Robert Ryan, Henry Fonda, Stan Laurel, Ward Bond, Ann Dvorak, Janet Gaynor, Edmond O'Brien, Basil Rathbone, James Cagney, Takashi Shimura, Victor McLaglen, Peter Lorre, Humphrey Bogart, Steve Cochran, John Cassavetes, Chester Morris, Richard Dix, Loretta Young, Bette Davis, Toshiro Mifune, Lionel Barrymore, Lou Costello, Richard Conte, Guy Kibbee, Laurence Olivier, Paul Robeson and, of course, Marlon Brando were added to his acting pantheon. His top child actors are Roddy McDowall, Margaret O'Brien and Shirley Temple.

From "more recent years," his top actors (for both films and classic television) are Robert Duvall, Susan Oliver, Rip Torn, Woody Strode, Harry Bellaver, Nehemiah Persoff, Ossie Davis, Lois Nettleton, Brock Peters, Rod Steiger, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, James Whitmore, Nita Talbot, Paul Picerni, Ed Harris, Frank Langella, Jeremy Irons, Ian McKellen and Dennis Franz.

After studying the Hollywood cinema for nearly 50 years, Nollen has concluded that "the single most under-rated, nearly unnoticeably versatile actor, because of his Hollywood movie star status and 'unsavory' reputation, was the indescribable, mightily intelligent Errol Flynn, whose real talent, as a performer and writer, which is what he really wanted to be, will never be known. Basil Rathbone called him 'the most beautiful male human animal I have ever seen,' and his self-torture made him destroy himself. I've often empathized and identified with Errol."

Nollen's most "personally mesmerizing" experience while watching a film in a theater occurred in 2008 during "Frost/Nixon," directed by Ron Howard, in a Dallas cineplex while having the venue "all to himself."

His two favorite places are Inverness, Scotland and Monument Valley, Navaho Nation, on the border of Utah and Arizona, where John Ford shot many of his finest films, including two of Nollen's "Top 20 Films of All Time," "The Searchers" (1956) and "Fort Apache" (1948).

Since 1983, Nollen has written scores of articles and essays, as well as authoring and editing over 40 books, including "The Boys: The Cinematic World of Laurel and Hardy" (1989), "Boris Karloff: A Critical Account of His Screen, Stage, Radio, Television and Recording Work" (1991), "Robert Louis Stevenson: Life, Literature and the Silver Screen" (1994), "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at the Cinema: A Critical Study of the Film Adaptations" (1996), "Boris Karloff: A Gentleman's Life" (1999), "Robin Hood: A Cinematic History of the English Outlaw and His Scottish Counterparts" (1999), "Jethro Tull: A History of the Band, 1968-2001" (2001), "The Cinema of Sinatra: The Actor, on Screen and in Song" (2003), "Louis Armstrong: The Life, Music and Film Career" (2004), "Warners Wiseguys: All 112 Films that Robinson, Cagney and Bogart Made for the Studio" (2007), "Abbott and Costello on the Home Front: A Critical Study of the Wartime Films" (2009), "Jilly! Sinatra's Right Hand Man" (2009), "Paul Robeson: Film Pioneer" (2010), "Three Bad Men: John Ford, John Wayne, Ward Bond" (2013), "Black Diamond: The Real Illusion" (2013), and "Glenda Farrell: Hollywood's Hardboiled Dame" (2014).

Of all his editing assignments, Nollen is most pleased to have worked on the U.S. edition of the autobiography of one of his heroes, Sir Christopher Lee, "Tall, Dark and Gruesome" (1999). Along with Sir Christopher, his favorite acquaintance and correspondent was actor, author and gourmet chef Vincent Price. His closest film-industry friend will always remain "the beloved Michael A. Hoey," whose original screenplay for the bizarre comic Elvis Presley film "Stay Away, Joe" (1967) he called (in the writer's presence) "a tragically under-rated experimental masterpiece."

Nollen co-wrote the Grammy-nominated book for the Time Warner CD box set Frank Sinatra in Hollywood 1940-1964 (2002), joining other Sinatra scholars including film historian Leonard Maltin, jazz authority Will Friedwald, and record producer Chuck Granata. In 2002, Nollen's "Jethro Tull" was nominated for Best Rock 'n' Roll/R&B book by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections.

Educated at the University of Iowa, Nollen earned a BA in Honors History (1988), a BA in Broadcasting and Film (1988), and an MA in United States, Modern European and African American History (1989). His main influences while at the University were Professor Lawrence Gelfand (History) and Professor Samuel Becker (Communication Studies), who had been recommended to him by Nicholas Meyer, who has maintained a strong relationship with the school. Another highlight for Nollen were his private discussions with legendary astronomer and physicist James Van Allen.

From 1991-2001, Nollen served as a federal archivist, filmmaker and lecturer for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, DC, and at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa. His travels took him to institutions throughout the U.S., including a "private visit" in the boarding house where President Abraham Lincoln passed away and a night sleeping in the (very short) bed of President Rutherford B. Hayes.

The onset of two serious, permanent progressive illnesses, requiring long term hospitalizations and major surgeries during 2010-11, ended Nollen's extensive traveling to do research for book projects. Now confined to home under strict diet and medication regimens, Nollen remains out of the public eye, often serving as a pro-bono consultant for other biographers, historians, filmmakers and activists

In 2014, Nollen was selected by the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress to contribute to the National Film Registry website, writing essays on Paul Robeson's "The Emperor Jones" (1933) and John Ford's "Stagecoach," "The Quiet Man," "The Searchers" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." . In 2015, Nollen completed a chapter on Robert Louis Stevenson's novels "Treasure Island" and "Kidnapped" for a two-volume book on the Walt Disney films for Rowman & Littlefield. He also is writing two long-planned books for 2016: one on the classic Warner Bros. "social-problem" film "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" (1932), starring Paul Muni and Glenda Farrell, which includes a full biography of the actual fugitive, Robert Elliott Burns; and another on classic 1930s Hollywood star Mae Clarke ("The Public Enemy" (1931), "Frankenstein" (1931)), a collaboration with musician and college professor Douglas R. Norwine, who knew Clarke well during her final years.

The composer of hundreds of "home-grown" songs and tunes over the past four decades, Nollen served as drummer for the Midwestern-based jazz quintet "Together" during 1978-1984, and has constantly collaborated with his cousin, guitarist and songwriter Todd M. Jacobsen, since 1974. The duo write and record as "The Bramwell Fletcher Band," a tribute to the British actor who "laughs himself insane" in the classic Universal horror film "The Mummy" (1932), starring Boris Karloff in the titular role. "Without music, life would be even more difficult to live!" has kept a strong heartbeat pounding.

Nollen maintains a permanent residency in the United States but, as of December 2017, lives with his wife, Yuyun, and stepson, Julio ("The Little Monster"), in Bandung, Indonesia. In the end, he'd like to be known as having "tried as damn hard as I could to avoid prejudice and hate in all its forms. In my lifetime, I'm afraid humans have become so enamored with disposable technology that they've imparted so little importance to their own intellectual and philosophical evolution. After 30 years of working as a historian, it's often difficult to remain positive, but there's always hope. My Number-one U.S. President is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. My all-time favorite human beings have been (male) the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and (female) Jane Addams."