James Harvey, whose "meticulous, capacious books on silver-screen love, romantic comedy and the mysteries of star quality are required reading for cinephiles," died May 15, the New York Times reported. He was 90. Harvey "wasn't a popular film critic with a cozy berth at a major publication, or an academic theorist presiding over a formidable film studies department," but his three books were each "more than a decade in the making and meticulously yet gorgeously written." His first title, Romantic Comedy in Hollywood: From Lubitsch to Sturges (1987), made his reputation. The book was a celebration and analysis of what Harvey called "Hollywood's essential genius," the screwball comedy.
On NPR in 2008, novelist Anthony Giardina called Harvey "the Samuel Johnson of film writing," and said Movie Love in the Fifties (2001) was the best film book he had ever read. Harvey's third book, Watching Them Be: Star Presence on the Screen From Garbo to Balthazar (2014), "examined the ineffable, transcendent qualities of leading movie actors," the Times wrote. Foster Hirsch, a film historian at Brooklyn College, said, "Even if you thought you knew a film, he taught you something more about it." Watching Them Be: Star Presence on the Screen from Garbo to Balthazar is available in paperback from Farrar, Straus and Giroux ($18).