20 Favorite Books About Hollywood
By Julie Sara Porter Bookworm
For this list, I have separated fiction and non-fiction in two distinct categories. I have tried to get as many perspectives as possible from actors, actresses, directots, producers, screenwriters, special effects designers, and production designers to get a picture of the many people who contribute to the making of motion pictures.
As always, if you like this list or know of any books that I missed please let me know in the comments below or on Facebook. Also, there may be spoilers. Now as they say in Hollywood and....Action! Fade in.
Fiction
10. Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins (1983)- Hollywood Wives is like Hollywood itself, or rather the public perception of it: loud, flashy, glamorous, shallow, escapist, tacky, and entertaining. It is clearly patterned after the night time soaps of it's day, filled with rich people who play musical beds while wearing designer clothes.
The titular wives are the current or former wives of Hollywood's elite like Elaine Conti who spends most of the time trying to rebuild her husband's career. Ross Conti is a former heartthrob actor who had a way with the ladies but is now feeling his age (think Robert Redford by way of Warren Beatty). but is now trying to regain his lost youth with Karen Lancaster, the daughter of a noted film actor....and Elaine's best friend. In true soap opera fashion, Elaine seeks her own affair with her personal trainer.
Then there's Maralee Gray, the former wife of British director, Neil Gray who now has the role of Cougar, having many younger male lovers at her beck and call. However Maralee can find the opportunity to play the loving wronged wife when the occasion calls for it such as when her former husband suffers a heart attack ( during a moment of pleasure naturally) and there are cameras nearby. Another player is Sadie La Salle, agent to the Stars, who harbors a secret grudge against Ross Conti which takes most of the book to reveal (but is pretty easy to guess if you've seen any show ever) Of course let's not forget about Gina Germaine, a big breasted comic actress with all the depth of a damp napkin.
The two most interesting characters are Montana Gray and Buddy Hudson. Montana, is the current wife of the aforementioned British director, Neil. She is the smartest female, perhaps the smartest character in the bunch. Instead of engaging in one affair after another, Montana is more interested in breaking through the Hollywood Boy's Club, by writing and directing her first major picture.
Buddy is the sole interesting male character as compared to the other flat cardboard men in the book. A former street hustler and drug addict, Buddy is trying to rebuild his life with his sweet naive wife Angel and trying to jump start a career as an actor. Somewhat conceited and confident of his sexual bravado, Buddy isn't quite prepared that playing the Hollywood Shuffle isn't all that different from his former career.
A thriller subplot is introduced and overshadows the final third to provide the narrative with some action and reveal hidden secrets. Hollywood Wives isn't a bad book. If you're looking for edifying literature, look elsewhere but if you're looking for something fun and entertaining then this is it just like, well, a Hollywood Summer Blockbuster.
9. All The Stars in Heaven by Adriana Trigiani (2015)- It was rumored for many years that actors, Loretta Young and Clark Gable had an affair on the set of their movie, Call of the Wild which resulted in Young's pregnancy and birth of a daughter, Judith, whom Young later claimed was her adopted daughter. This rumor was later confirmed when Judith, as an adult, confronted her mother with the story. This bit of Hollywood gossip is the starting point for Adriana Trigiani's novel which focuses on not only the power plays in the Golden Age of Hollywood but between men and women.
Trigiani does a great job of humanizing Old Hollywood's notables. Young is written as a sweet Catholic girl with a close loving family who just happens to have a glamorous job. She is bound with a sharp wit (when a date quotes one of her earlier remarks, she replies:"How refreshing! A man who pays attention") but is also an incurable romantic. When she embarks on her affair with Gable, she does even though she knows it's unwise because he's married, she just can't help herself and throughput wants to believe that somehow she, Gable, and Judith will be a happy family.
Gable is also treated with care and depth. It would be tempting to make him a womanizing cad who seduces his leading ladies, Trigiani does not do this. Instead he is a sympathetic character in an unhappy marriage who is simply looking for some form of happiness and love never really finding it.
Other Hollywood characters are portrayed just as winningly as the two leads. Spencer Tracy has an early chaste affair with Young but is seen as a rugged outdoorsman and sensitive friend to both Young and Gable. David Niven is at the time a young up and coming supporting player but is written as a charming lady's man and staunch friend to Young.
Original characters are also given excellent treatment by Trigiani's writing. Much of the book is told from the point of view of Alda Ducci, a former novitiate turned secretary / Personal Assistant to Young. Alda is enchanted by the glamorous side of Hollywood as any newcomer would but is able to emerge as a true friend to Young and stand by her during the affair and pregnancy. She helps arrange for Young's seclusion and delivery at her former order and looks after her during a vacation to Alda's former home of Padua, Italy. Understanding the pain and consequence of a love affair gone wrong, Alda does not judge Young instead providing a sounding board and sisterly bond with Young that lasts through their older years. In contrast to Young and Gable's rocky relationship, Alda has an understated romance with production designer, Luca Cetta which evolves into a loving stable marriage.
If the book has a flaw, it is that the final two chapters are extremely rushed. Almost forty years are crammed into pages that highlight Judy's childhood in which rumors fly about her parentage ( and Young puts her through a painful surgery to have her ears pulled back so no one would recognize the famous Gable big ears), Gable's marriage to Carole Lombard and her death, Young's unhappy marriage to Tom Lewis and television career, and Gable's death shortly after filming The Misfits. The book starts out promising with deep characterization and a troubled and intense love affair and then becomes a catalog of the career highlights of its two lead characters. However that shouldn't take away that this is an excellent book that truly humanizes the stars of the Silver Screen.
Of his Hollywood short stories, "The Meadow" and " Tyrannosaurus Rex" based on Bradbury's experience when he worked as a screenwriter accurately portray the conflict between producers who care about money and the behind-the-scenes workers who care for the work.
"The Meadow" is more whimsical capturing the child-like innocence going to the movies and visualizing the world on the screen. Smith, a nightwatchman for a movie studio, constantly puts back sets that keep getting torn down for business reasons. He gets a meeting with Douglas, the producer. Smith takes Douglas on a tour through his "world", the beautiful intricate sets that display different landscapes. Using his gift of gab and the sets themselves, Smith shows Douglas a world where if "some guy gets shot in New York he falls over dead in Istanbul." Where a Medieval Norman Tower on one side could have a small town Illinois bank on the other. Seeing this world through the eyes of an amazed child or an enchanted movie goer, Douglas decides to keep the sets going.
If "The Meadow" captures the whimsy of Hollywood movies, then Tyrannosaurus Rex is the spirit of its biting humor and competitiveness. Terwilliger, a stop motion animator (inspired by Bradbury's friend, Ray Harryhausen) is hired by Clarence, baby faced tyrannical producer to create dinosaurs for his latest monster movie. However, Terwilliger discovers no greater horror than working for Clarence. The producer keeps pushing for more changes to make the monster scary: " Scare the pants off of Aunt Jane. " Incensed, Terwilliger puts his anger into his monster until at a private screening both Terwilliger and Clarence both notice that the dinosaur resembles Clarence. Terwilliger hilariously and bitterly accepts his dismissal (Clarence: I took you to lunch! Terwilliger: Once, I picked up the tab. ) until Glass, Clarence's attorney tells his boss that Terwilliger meant the resemblance as a tribute so the average moviegoer would recognize Clarence for his work. Flattered, Clarence lets Terwilliger keeps his job provided he keep the monster.
7. Swing Sisters by Jeane Westin (1991)- Swing Sisters is a brilliant ensemble novel about an all- woman swing band that like all good historic novels features many details from the era it is set, in this case the late 1930's-early 1940's-The Great Depression, The Dust Bowl, soapbox preachers, racism, homosexuality, gangsters, Pearl Harbor, and of course the lure and glamour of Old Hollywood.
The Swing Sisters consist of five women each with her own back story and her reasons for joining the band. Rita Ramone, a former Follies girl and Burlesque dancer forms the band so she can be on top again. Roz Payne, the drummer and former Vaudeville kiddie star harbors a crush on her bandmate, pianist Sara Sandler. Sara herself is suffering from a painful divorce and looking for true love. Tonia La Roubideaux, a fiery trumpeter is in love with an African-American musician who gets her addicted to heroin. Above all is Lovey Anderson, the romantic ballad singer who runs away from her abusive preacher husband and the death of her young son.
While all of the women have great moments and are fully established both alone and together, it is Lovey who gets the most attention and whose path takes her to Hollywood. Lovey begins the book a wide-eyed naive young girl uncertain of her talent and suffering from flashbacks of her son's death. With the help of her band mates (except the scornful Rita) and their manager, Ted Dunham, Lovey learns to embrace her gift for singing and to put her pain into her music. She also becomes the lover of Lucky Ross, a dangerous gangster who after she breaks up with him becomes obsessed with ruining Lovey's life.
To get away from Ross, promote the Swing Sisters, and to provide enough money to divorce her preacher husband, Lovey agrees to star in a short music film. When Lucky Ross and Rita Ramone engineer a breakup in the band, Lovey remains in Hollywood with Ted (soon to be her boyfriend.) while Roz, Tonia, and Sara find their own musical careers and subplots.
With Ted, a cynical son of a Hollywood producer, as her guide, Lovey navigates her way through Culver City starring in a couple of romantic musicals and gaining a following and rabid fans. Ted finds very little to like in this world where names get changed, stories are altered, amd actors' legal troubles are removed by publicity teams. Lovey however is star struck and swept up in the fame. She finds friendship with Lansing Noble, a hammy older actor who decides to mentor Lovey's acting career and more ( which Lovey rebuffs). But she also finds danger and duplicity particularly after she is framed for murder. During Lovey's trial, she sees what happens when fans defend her one minute and turn against her the next.
While the book has some corny bits of dialogue ("Their first love making was as sharply as real to her as G above High C."), Swing Sisters is like a good Old Hollywood film: glamorous, exciting, sometimes unrealistic, romantic and when all is done the Reader is guaranteed a happy ending.
Ben Collier, a military filmmaker arrives in Hollywood to be a technical advisor on war pictures for the fictional Continental Pictures. He is also there to discover what happened to his brother, Daniel, who may have fallen, jumped, or was pushed from his apartment that he may have used for private assasignations or for spying on Hollywood types for suspicions of Communism.
The novel is thick with the paranoia from that era. It is a time when if an actor attended one Socialist's meeting years ago or played a friendly Russian character in a film during WWII (when Russia and the U.S. were allies) those are causes for suspicion. Where Congressman hire servants, press agents, and other actors to become informers and take notes of behaviors during cocktail parties. Where a noted author and Resistance hero who smuggled Jews out of Europe during the Holocaust can have a ruined reputation courtesy of the accusations of others.
Besides the paranoia, there is a constant motif of deception running throughout the book of characters pretending to be one thing or another. Some of it is innocuous such as Liesel Ostermann, Daniel's widow and Ben's girlfriend who gets a starring role in a movie and afterwards changes her name to Linda Eastman and takes voice lessons to thin out her accent "so she can sound American but not too American." Some of the deception is more career threatening such as that of Bunny Jenkins, former child star turned studio executive (and one of the most interesting characters in the book) who hides a disfigured male lover that he is nursing from the public eye.( "Sharing isn't done unless you're a set dresser and I'm not.") Then there's Daniel and his mysterious death. Was he really working as an informer for Un-American Activities or was he a double agent delivering false information? There are so many leads and contradictions given about Daniel's motives that even by the end the Reader still doesn't know.
There is so much deception and double cross carried through this suspenseful page turner that the one truly honest moment when Continental studio mogul, Sol Lasner calls the Committee to task for their bullying, scare tactics, and infringement on Constitutional Rights is tempered by Kanon's Afterword which stated that no studio head ever countered the House of Un-American Activities. In fact most willingly cooperated.
5. Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion (1970)- Joan Didion's disturbing and thought provoking novel shows a woman descending into a nervous breakdown. Unfortunately, the woman is a well-known Hollywood actress and her descent is observed by family, friends, agents, film personnel, and the general public.
Maria Wyeth (pronounced Mar-eye-ah) is 31, considered a critical age for youth obsessed film makers and goers, so her career is going down. She is separated from her director husband, Carter and fights to have visits with her daughter, Katie. Her past wasn't any better. Her father committed suicide after a disastrous move to a Nevada ghost town and a failed effort to turn it into a casino town/tourist stop. Her mother is a distant alcoholic who gave up on life. Her family's meager remaining assets are under the care of her father's former business partner whom Maria blames for her father's decline.
Her troubled past and difficult present result in some compulsive behavior from our protagonist. She drives aimlessly from one end of Southern California to another, sometimes to Nevada and back. She isn't driving anywhere in particular.
She is almost running away perhaps from herself.
She indulges in drugs like cocaine and affairs with various men some unknown like noted actors and Vegas drifters. A brief reconciliation with Carter results in an unwanted pregnancy. In the eeriest passage, she has an illegal abortion and is afterward consumed by the memory and pain of the procedure.
Maria feels nothing but emptiness until she engages in an affair with her friend's husband. The affair confuses her because it alternately repulses her and makes her happy. Sometimes she hopes her lover will rescue her from her numbness but knows he won't. She also becomes involved in he marital troubles between her friends including witnessing one friend's suicide. It is this suicide that is the final push that leads to Maria's break from sanity and eventual institutionalization.
4. The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (1939)- Many books portray Hollywood as some sort of threshold into Hell, but none take it as literally as Nathanael West's satire of Glitter Gulch.
The book is filled with eccentric characters, starting with it's main protagonist, Tod Hackett, a production designer and artist. Tod is forever working on his masterpiece, "The Burning of Los Angeles" using many of his friends, rivals, and associates as models.
Tod is romantically involved with Faye Greener, a shallow bit player who has the looks, but lacks the talent to be a starlet. Tod however has competition for Faye's affections. His rivals are Earl Shoop, a Wannabe cowboy who couldn't be farther from and Homer Simpson (not that one), a milquetoast accountant who moved to California for his health but catches the Hollywood bug. Even minor characters have their quirks such as the Gingos, a family of Native Alaskans who arrived to appear in a documentary but liked Hollywood so much they decided to stay and Faye's father, a former vaudeville clown who is reduced to selling supplies door to door.
The characters converge, argue, make love, and scheme against one another in a city that seems to thrive on such sinister negative energy. Until one night, during a movie premiere when a riot breaks out in the city. No reason is given for the riot's cause except the narration which refers to large masses of people who work in dull lives, longing for excitement, and try their luck in Hollywood only to fall into further despair: "Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they've been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspaper and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can't titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and slaved for nothing." The riot brings Tod's " Burning of Los Angeles" mural to life and pulls him into madness.
3. The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy(1987)-Of all of the unsolved mysteries none is probably more haunting than the murder of Elizabeth "Betty" Short AKA The Black Dahlia (1924-1947). Short was an aspiring actress and model who was found in a vacant lot ,murdered, stabbed, and practically cut open. Because of her raven black hair and her tendency to wear all black, the press dubbed her "The Black Dahlia" in reference to The Blue Dahlia, a movie starring Marlene Dietrich. Many suspects were questioned, but to this day the case has never been solved.
In his dark thrilling novel, James Ellroy takes a stab at solving the murder by providing her with a troubled background and giving the Reader two even more troubled detectives to solve it. Detectives Lee Blanchard and Dwight "Bucky" Bleichart AKA "Fire and Ice" meet as competitors in a police boxing match. Their partnership is cemented while trying to curb the Zoot Suit Riots, a series of riots between Naval sailors and young men, mostly Latino. The duo share everything, even the love of Kay Lake, a bank robber's former girlfriend and Blanchard's current girlfriend. The detectives have a fairly good reputation. Then they get the call to investigate a certain body in a vacant lot.
As the duo become more involved solving the murder, they become obsessed with the case and Short herself. Blanchard suffers from nightmares and flashbacks of his younger sister's disappearance and eventually disappears in Tijuana, never to be seen again.
Bleichart gets the obsession worse. Hearing that Short frequented lesbian clubs, he visits them until he meets Madeleine Sprague, an heiress who bears a strong resemblance to the Dahlia. The two become further involved leading to an affair.
Bleichart's obsession with the Dahlia case not to mention his affair with Madeleine jeopardizes his career and his relationship with Kay (whom Bleichart married after Blanchard's disappearance. ) Kay leaves saying that "(Madeleine) looks like that dead girl."
By far the most interesting beguiling character is the Dahlia herself which Ellroy's book tries to answer always leaving more questions than solutions. Was Elizabeth Short a nymphomaniac who had male and female lovers or was she an innocent victim of the casting couch who tried to make her presence known and stand out from the many young actresses who tried to find fame and failed? Did she have a lover who was killed overseas or several of them? What about Madeleine-was Betty really in love with her, was Betty the seducer, or the seduced? By the end, the Reader becomes as fascinated with the Dahlia as Bleichart.
2. The Biograph Girl:A Novel of Hollywood Then and Now by William J Mann(2000)- Many Readers may not know Florence Lawrence(1893-1938), but they will certainly be aware of her legacy every time they walk into a movie theater, or open a celebrity magazine, or order a movie of a favorite actor or actress on Netflix. That's because Lawrence was considered the first movie star. Lawrence began in vaudeville as "Baby Flo, The Child Wonder Whistler" before she got hired by Biograph Pictures to play ingenue roles. Also known as the "Biograph Girl", Lawrence was among the first film actresses to be known by name and receive fan mail. A public appearance in St. Louis, Mo. caused a riot in 1910. She blamed the end of her career on a studio fire that left her scarred in 1915. Forgotten and reduced to scrambling for bit parts Lawrence, committed suicide in 1938 by swallowing ant paste.
William J. Mann's imaginative and brilliant novel gives us an alternate possibility: What if the First Movie Star faked her death and reemerged in the 21st century? Florence is rediscovered by Richard and Ben Sheehan, a pair of competitive opportunistic twin brothers. They meet Flo Bridgewood, a chain smoking witty tough 106-year-old woman in a nursing home. After some research and evasive answers, Flo tells them that she was indeed the Biograph Girl.
The novel folds neatly into two stories. The first is of course Florence's early years and the days of the begining of motion pictures, back when they were made in New York. Florence is pushed by her domineering mother, who later envies her daughter's success. Florence falls in love with another aspiring actress, Linda and is crushed when Linda marries D.W. Griffith. She has three marriages, one wonderful and two not-so-wonderful but all get sacrificed to the spotlight.
The most moving sections describe Florence's relationship in the late '30s with depressed aspiring actress, Molly Butz whom Florence constantly builds up and tears down. In one heartbreaking passage, Florence jealously believes that Molly slept with Clark Gable for a part. Florence drunkenly reminds Molly of Peg Entwhistle, an actress who committed suicide by jumping off the 13th letter of the Hollywood sign.
Besides the story of Florence's past, the story of her present is just as well-written. Once news of her reappearance spreads, Florence becomes a media darling. She appears on Oprah and Rosie O'Donnell (on the latter she demonstrates her whistling talents by whistling Spice Girls' "Wannabe"). She gets a small part in a John Waters film. While her success is climbing, so are the Sheehans' opportunities and antagonisms towards each other. As Richard plans to write a screenplay of Florence's life and Ben aspires to direct a documentary of people over 100. Both plan to use Florence for their career motivations and to get even with each other.
Florence's return takes a dark turn when questions of her disappearance (not to mention the identity of the person buried in her place,) arise. Florence separates herself into two people the strong-willed tough, private Flo Bridgewood who can talk her way out of any crisis and the flighty passive public Florence Lawrence who needs to be cared for and rescued. When the publicity and the questioning about her presumed death become their strongest, the two sides to Florence's personality seem to battle to face the public or retreat from it until they come to one inevitable conclusion.
This book definitely shows that the dark side of Hollywood and celebrity began from Day (or rather Star) One
1. What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg (1941)- There are certain literary characters where even if you have never read the work, there is instant identification. An overtly optimistic person is called a " Pollyanna" even by those who have never read Eleanor H. Porter's novel. Butlers are often referred to as "Jeeves" even by those unfamiliar with P.G. Wodehouse's writings. ( and are unfamiliar with the fact that in those works, Jeeves was a valet not a butler.) Another one of those identifiable characters is " Sammy Glick" eponymous anti-hero of Budd Schulberg's brilliant character study novel. The name "Sammy Glick" conjures up images of a sleazy Hollywood backstabber/ con artist who schemes his way to the top. While all that is certainly true of Sammy, like many characters whose names become shorthand for a personality type or concept, Sammy is a much more fascinating and multifaceted character in the original context.
Sammy first enters the life of the book's narrator, Al Manheim as a 16-year-old copyboy at the newspaper where Al works as a drama critic. Noticing Sammy running from one station to another never stopping causes Al to ponder the book's title, "What Makes Sammy Run?" ( Running is a constant theme as Sammy runs from place to place job to job to reach success.) Al watches appalled and fascinated as Sammy rewrites one of Al's columns, gets his own radio column next to Al's, then steals a screenplay from Julian Blumberg, a naive screenwriter. Sammy passes the work off as his own earning a Hollywood career as a screenwriter and later producer and abandoning a sweet doting girlfriend in the process.
While Al acquires his own screenwriting career and becomes romantically involved with fellow writer, Kit Sargent, he still observes Sammy'meteoric rise to fame. Al chronicles Sammy's story with bemusement, contempt, derision, and maybe a touch of awe and protectiveness over the man who wouldn't hesitate to screw someone over but thinks of Al as his best most honest friend. Sammy continues to use Julian as a ghostwriter passing off Julian's work as his own ( and paying Julian a pittance under the table for his efforts) and when he displays his first major Hollywood play with much success, only Al notices that it's a blatant rip-off of the Broadway play, the Front Page. Sammy also schemes to conquer the Screenwriter's Guild and conspires with film and business executives to have elderly studio mogul, Sidney Feinman removed and Sammy promoted in his place. It becomes almost a running gag throughout the book that everywhere Al goes throughout Hollywood he either hears Sammy's name or runs into "the little ferret himself."
If the book had just been about his schemes to get ahead, Sammy would just be a contemptible little worm of a cardboard character. Luckily Schulberg took as much care in writing Sammy as he did in his victims. This is shown best in the chapters when Al returns to New York and visits Sammy's impoverished Lower East Side childhood home. Visiting with Sammy's widowed mother, resentful brother, and former bullying classmates gives Al insight to not only Sammy's upbringing but the upbringing of other Sammy Glicks out there, young poor hungry people wanting desperately and doing whatever they can to get a better life. While it doesn't make Sammy sympathetic or even likeable Al and the Reader both begin to understand him more and realize why he chooses to act as he does. Sammy is still a contemptible little worm, but an understable contemptible little worm.
Another scene that makes Sammy a believable character is the final chapter when Sammy thinks that he has everything he could possibly want and in one final confrontation with his sophisticated newly wedded wife realizes that he, the player, had been played. He is filled with the hollow realization that his successful life is only temporary and that there is always someone younger, hungrier, more ambitious, another Sammy Glick ready to take his place.
Non-fiction
10. Two For The Show: Great Comedy Teams by Lonnie Burr (1979)- If one person can't get a laugh why not two (or three or four in the cases of the Marx Brothers and Three Stooges.)? Lonnie Burr's hilarious memorable book describes the rise and fall ( and sometimes just rise) of some of the great comedy teams from Laurel and Hardy to Cheech and Chong.
Burr's book details each team thoroughly by writing about their beginnings, their decisions to team up, and their projects including quoting their best materials. Some of the best bits are shown word for word, many of them comic staples like Abbot and Costello "Who's On First" and Cheech and Chong's "Dave's Not Here." Even an old fashioned vaudeville routine like Smith and Dale's "Dr. Kronkhite" manages to elicit a few laughs from a modern Reader. (Doctor (after his patient told him he doesn't have life insurance): If you should kick the bucket, what will your wife bury you with? Patient: With pleasure)
Revealing the sketches allow the Reader not only a chance to laugh but recognize these lines for their greatness and why they inspired so many comics to follow.
The beginnings of the comedy teams are fascinating to read particularly those who got their start in vaudeville, traveling entertainment troupes that consist of singers, comedians, animal acts, and just about any performance you could think of. Vaudeville is long gone and barely remembered by none but the very few. The Reader learns many interesting tid-bits about these by-gone entertainment venues such as Gracie Allen and Chico Marx got their start as dialect comedians playing stock Irish and Italian characters respectively or that before he became famous, George Burns was a song and dance man using a variety of names such as Williams, Glide, Fry, and Billy Lorraine. The Reader also learns terms that began in vaudeville and continue today like "straight man/comic" ( the serious one asking questions or setting up the situation and the funny one getting the punchline) and "top billing" (The listing on the bill was important. If you were first, you were considered lousy. Before or after the seal act was highly important and if you were last on the bill, you were considered a success.) This gives a glimpse into a world that not many remember but its impact is hard to forget.
Burr also discusses the secrets of some team's success and why they appealed to large audiences and why some didn't last only appealing to small groups. Some like The Marx Brothers took chances with their material such as going from free-for-all plotless comedy like Coconuts to a political satire like Duck Soup. Some evolved their acts such as George Burns who realized that his wife/partner, Gracie Allen, was getting more laughs as a straight woman( or "talking woman") so he reversed their roles so she would be the comic and later changed their routine from boyfriend/girlfriend to husband/wife evolving their characters as their real life evolved. By comparison, Abbott and Costello often did the same routines over and over becoming dated and the Three Stooges' humor never rose beyond slapstick. While both teams have their fans even still, their humor never rose to the depths of their peers appealing to wide audiences.
Burr also dips into scandal such as the acrimonious split between Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, largely because of Lewis' desire to control all aspects of a production and Martin's envy that Lewis was getting more attention and credit for their films. The book also discusses the controversial radio program, Amos and Andy which featured two white men playing stereotypical African-American men (obviously not a favorite for the NAACP). Also the censorship battles between Dick and Tommy Smothers and CBS, the network that carried their controversial variety show is documented as well as the ease Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In went through without being censored. (While Smothers Brothers revealed their anti-war stance and mocked only Conservatives, Laugh-In mocked both sides of the debate. Plus, Laugh-In's format of quick cuts and joke after joke with little set-up allowed audiences and censors little time to be offended before the next joke appeared.)
The most interesting section "The Hidden Comedians" concerns teams from the '60's and '70's who at the time received little coverage because they mostly played comedy clubs or released albums. Burr considered them Hidden because they weren't teams very long before they went on their own. Teams like Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks who had made hits with their "2,000 Year Old Man" albums before Reiner created The Dick Van Dyke Show and Brooks went onto movie comedy fame with such classics as The Producers and Young Frankenstein. There are also Mike Nichols and Elaine May who released a few intellectually based comedy albums before Nichols directed such films as The Graduate and May would write films like the Heartbreak Kid and have notorious legal troubles with her movies like Mikey and Nicky, a troubled production which lawsuits made May reluctant to direct another film for almost a decade. (The two would later reunite for the 1996 Nichols-directed and May-scripted film, The Birdcage starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane.)
Another reason these comedians are considered hidden is they were considered actors first and comedians second, so they could easily create a character and work a scene around it rather than being reduced to playing the same type over and over often giving more depth and realism to the characters they played. Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber had a routine where they played a bigoted businessman and a wily Jewish cab driver respectively. Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara (parents of Ben Stiller) played a young couple who encounter religious differences on their first date but decide to work things out anyway. Injecting topical issues like prejudice and religion allowed these so-called hidden comedy teams to inject some drama into the comedy and make their characters believable.
Because Two For The Show is copyrighted in 1979, and has not been updated that I am aware, it would be interesting to see what modern comedy teams would be included (Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie? Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders? Tina Fey and Amy Poehler? Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele? Steve Harvey and Cedric The Entertainer? Harold and Kumar?) and how they would have stacked against their predecessors
9. West of Eden: An American Place by Jean Stein (2016)- Just as she did with her critically acclaimed bestseller, Edie: An American Biography about model/ Andy Warhol protegee, Edie Sedgwick, Jean Stein takes multiple viewpoints and multiple characters to make another character. Only this time the main character is Hollywood itself from it's beginnings to its current reputation as a Mecca for film, television, and music as well as the inflated egos that come with living in such an environment.
Five families are featured prominently in the book. The first family is that of Edward Doheny, an oil Baron who was the inspiration for the film, There Will Be Blood ( which his great-grandson, Ned insists is completely apocryphal: "All those people-Upton Sinclair with Oil and later the movie people-had a vested interest in furthering their own agendas, and it's ludicrous to confuse those agendas with history.") However, Doheny was involved in exposing the Teapot Dome Scandal which tarnished the Warren G. Harding administration and his son, Ned benefited from. The fallout resulted in the mysterious deaths of Ned Doheny and his business partner, Hugh Plunkett.
The troubles between parents and their children is an ongoing theme throughout the book . For example, the chapter involving Jack Warner not only focused on the struggles and rivalries between the Brothers, particularly when the Red Scare revealed various political motivations and fear of being exposed, but it also focused on Jack Warner's Jr.'s dismissal at the hands of his father, instigated by Jack Jr.'s stepmother, Anne. (Warner says of his father and stepmother: "She hated the idea of two Jack Warners in the world. I would say that my father deserved better, but that's not true. He was a tremendous failure where it counts. Human relationship: zero. He wanted to be loved, and yet he did so much that was unlovable.")
The worst parent-children relationships are revealed in the chapters involving Jane Garland and Jennifer Jones. Jane Garland was the daughter of Grace Garland, a beautiful, but self-centered aspiring actress. She would put her daughter into the care of friends, nannies, and cooks. Jane was often ridiculed for her weight gain and appearance by others including some of the chapter's narrators. Many of the Narrators describe periods of Jane's emotional outbursts, and inappropriate behavior especially towards her mother whom she threatened to kill. Many Narrator's tell of Jane's instability and bouts with Schizophrenia until her frequent hospitalization. The saddest part to Jane Garfield's story is that her final narrator, Ed Moses writes that he last saw of her was seeing her walking in Santa Monica, possibly still mentally ill, and that he hadn't heard from her since.
Jennifer Jones' story is equally filled with sadness. Jones won the Academy Award in 1944 for the film, Song of Bernadette and had several marriages, particularly producer David O. Selznick. She seemed to have a perfect life, but she had depression and attempted suicide by drowning in 1967. She also had deeply troubled relationships with her children, particularly her daughter, Mary Jennifer. Mary Jennifer Selznick gained her mother's anger when she felt that her husband, David paid more attention to their daughter than her. Some Narrators spoke of scratches on Mary Jennifer's face and back from her mother. Mary Jennifer also may have been bipolar and was suicidal, finally falling 22 floors to her death in 1976.
Even the author Jean Stein's family is not free of big egos and complex relationships, particularly with her father, Jules Stein bandleader and founder of the Music Corporation of America. While many spoke of Stein's involvement with various musicians, a few things stand out in the narrative. One is the desperate attempts that Jean Stein went through to please her parents such as to marry wealth, so she married Willam Vanden Heuvel a man she would later divorce. Another is the blatant favoritism that Stein exhibited even on his deathbed towards his granddaughter, Katrina Vanden Heuvel saying "(she'll) do wonderful things," but not his other granddaughter, Wendy, leaving Wendy in tears as she kisses her grandfather good-bye for the last time.
Update: It's hard to read this book understanding the troubled familial relationships, and the dirt underneath the glitz and glamor of Hollywood without thinking of Julie Stein's suicide in April, 2017. West of Eden almost becomes a suicide note to the world that Stein knew that she loved for the opportunities that it gave to people and hated for the arrogance and instability of the people within it.
8. Chaplin: His Life and Art by David Robinson(1985)- Of the silent film stars, the one that is probably best known is Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin (1889-1977). Almost 90 years since silent films gave way to sound and people still recognize Chaplin and his character The Little Tramp , a funny little man with baggy clothes, a small mustache, and a silly walk, a vagabond character who is both mischievous and large hearted. Chaplin is still recognized for his comic and artistic genius and David Robinson's exhaustive and comprehensive book takes a cultural and psychological approach to Chaplin's life and work.
Many of the themes that resonate throughout Chaplin's life and work can be traced through his difficult childhood and upbringing, Robinson writes. Chaplin's impoverished background with a father who abandoned him and a mother who was often mentally ill gave Chaplin a lot of sympathy for those in the lower class who were often at the mercy of authority figures. This theme carried over into Chaplin's films like The Kid, Modern Times, and City Lights. The book also recounts Chaplin's early comic training on the music halls, and under mentors like acting troupe leader, Fred Karno, and Keystone movie studio head, Mack Sennet. The book particularly focuses on Chaplin's somewhat strained relationship with Sennett based on his not getting along with Sennett's girlfriend, Mabel Normand, his desires for more money and creative control and above all Sennett and Chaplin's different comic approaches. Sennett preferred the fast approach with quick editing chops and chase scenes. While Chaplin preferred a slower approach, one that concentrated on storytelling and creating character resulting in Chaplin striking out on his own as a director and producer of his own films, something rarely done in 1915.
Little details are sprinkled throughout the book to give us a picture of Chaplin's life such as his birth announcement, playbills of shows he appeared, and copies of letters and notes. Most telling of all are Chaplin's shooting schedules which feature excess retakes. The famous scene from The Gold Rush where The Little Tramps dances with dinner rolls took 8 retakes. These telling details show Chaplin as a perfectionist who recognized his comedic talents and wanted to hone them until they were right.
Chaplin also is given to stubborn convictions such as his insistence during the beginning of sound that The Tramp not speak resulting in him only using music for the final two little Tramp films, City Lights and Modern Times (though the latter does feature the Tramp singing a song.) It wasn't until 1940 that Chaplin made his first talking picture with The Great Dictator which while featured a similar character did not have The Little Tramp.
Chaplin's political convictions also are dissected such as his refusal to become a U.S. citizen or his seemingly subversive portrayals of authority figures such as oafish immigration officials and snobbish capitalists leading to accusations of Communism and Chaplin's eventual exile from the U.S. in 1952. Robinson's writing shows a man willing to stick by his convictions even at a great cost.
Robinson also portrays the people in Chaplin's life as well-rounded people in their own right. There was Sydney, Chaplin's older brother who became Chaplin's de facto parent at a young age and continued to take care of his younger brother even into adulthood and fame. Chaplin's frequent co-star, Edna Purviance who tried to become a dramatic actress with A Woman of Paris, only to fail miserably but Chaplin kept on his payroll for the rest of her life.
Mildred Harris and Lita Gray, Chaplin's first two wives who were 17 and 16 respectively at the time of their marriages and while hardly naive innocents were caught in the machinations of opportunistic relatives. Paulette Goddard, Chaplin's third wife who achieved fame on her own after her divorce from Chaplin starring in such films as The Women and Northwest Mounted Police but remained friends with Chaplin for the rest of their lives. Finally, there's Oona O'Neil, Chaplin's final wife, who was 18 at the time of their marriage but remained a loyal supportive spouse even to the point of renouncing her U.S. citizenship after her husband's exile.
Using all of these details of Chaplin's personal and professional life gives us a full of picture of the man and helps to understand the genius behind his art.
The Disney Films by Leonard Maltin(1973; 3rd Ed. 1995)-Film critic and historian, Leonard Maltin is known to be quite the conossieur of the works of Walt Disney (1901-1967) .He often provides commentary for the collections of shorts starring the likes of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck as well as collections for Silly Symphonies, True- Life Adventures, and other themes. Beginning in 1973 , Maltin has written this book which stands as the definitive tribute to the works of Walt Disney and the Disney Company.
The book begins by describing Disney's early years as an animator of early projects as Newman's Laugh-O-Grams and the Alice Comedies (the latter of which was known for some then sophisticated techniques such as a live-action girl in an animated setting.) The book also discusses Disney's first star, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit who met with immediate successes but was just as immediately caught up in a rights issue which resulted in Disney's loss of the character to Universal Studios. ( a situation that was only rectified in 2006 when Disney finally regained the rights for Oswald. They celebrated this event by releasing the Oswald cartoons on DVD and making Oswald a feature character in the Epic Mickey video game franchise.)
Besides his early start, Maltin discusses Disney's early career as an innovator in creating Mickey Mouse and making the first synchronized sound cartoon, " Steamboat Willie" and the first color cartoon with Silly Symphony's " Flowers and Trees." He also writes of Disney's willingness to evolve his characters such as creating the short-tempered Donald Duck and clumsy Goofy ( to carry the rough mischievous edges that Mickey was no longer able to convey in his transformation from a troublemaker to a sweet-tempered Everyman er Mouse), giving the female characters, Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck more well-rounded personalities and chances to star in their own cartoons, getting the characters involved in WWIi and later moving them to the suburbs mirroring the audience's move to middle-class post-war suburbia. (Goofy in particular benefited from this change acquiring a wife and son. In subsequent years, the wife disappeared but the son, later known as Max, remained.)
Each Feature Film made from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs made in 1937 to The Happiest Millionaire released in 1967 shortly after Disney's death is greatly detailed, analyzed, and reviewed, a tremendous undertaking considering that is almost thirty years of work. Of course there are the usual predicted favorites such as Snow White ("The sequences lead one to another with perfect precision and harmony, seeming to flow as as if this were the way the story had always been told."), Pinocchio ("a film of amazing detail and brilliant conception"), and Mary Poppins ("There really is only one word to describe Mary Poppins, and that is supercalufragilisticexpialidocious. To attempt a more complete assessment would exhaust a library full of adjectives.") But Maltin expresses fondness for some unknown Disney films such as the Revolutionary War drama, Johnny Tremain ("A vivid fictionalization of the events leading up to the revolutionary war. It is good because it doesn't attempt to boil down to simple blacks and whites." ), and the Irish fantasy, Darby O'Gill and the Little People (which despite the beauty of the landscape and the performances including a pre-James Bond Sean Connery achieved a disappointed box office take leaving Maltin to wonder " It is certainly a sad comment on mass taste to note that a beautiful film like this should fail to attract half the audience that rushed to see The Shaggy Dog.")
Of course being a fan of one's work does not stop one from being a critic and Maltin is not above making criticisms about films he didn't like such as the aforementioned, The Shaggy Dog ("The final thing that the Disney people learned from the film was that repetition and the obvious were the sure-fire laugh getters of them all."), and Alice in Wonderland ( which Maltin describes as "flashy but lacks warmth.") He also points out critical and box office failures alongside successes. He reminds us for every Mary Poppins, a beloved classic and winner of five Academy Awards; there's a Monkeys Go Home, a formulaic comedy and box office dud.
The two final chapters update the Company's projects to the '90's. One chapter " Without Walt" deals with the company's decision, after lackluster live action films and animated movies which used recycled cels, to appeal to older audiences by creating PG rated films under the Disney label and Touchstone Pictures, which specialized in adult films PG and above. ( While the decision was met with criticism, Maltin's writing suggests that they realized that they either had to adapt to their maturing audience or die.)
The final chapter goes into great detail about the Disney Renaissance which began with critical and commercial hits like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid which used groundbreaking computer animation and innovative storytelling to attract a new audience. Since this edition ends in 1995, it only glosses over Disney's union with Pixar by mentioning the release of Toy Story leaving room for other editions and other projects to come.
6. The Girl Who Walked Home Alone Bette Davis: A Personal Biography By Charlotte Chandler (2006)- The tombstone for Bette Davis (1908-1989) reads "She Did It The Hard Way". It is an apt description of the two-time Oscar winning actress who was known for playing tough, argumentative characters with commanding presences on screen. It is clear from this book, that reads like an autobiography since it was based on a series of interviews between Davis and author, Charlotte Chandler, that those characters were easy for her to play because that's who she was in real life, tough, argumentative, and commanding.
" I have been called fearless," Davis said in the introduction already speaking of her legendary self-reliance. "Well I am pretty much. I like to think of myself as a lioness, a lioness who couldn't find a lion as it turned out. I was doomed to live without a real mate in my empty den, though I was always protective of my cubs."
Davis' self-reliance began at an early instilled in her because of her parent's divorce. She described her father, Harlow as icy and indifferent to his daughter. ("I was never able to gain Daddy's full attention but I never gave up trying until he died-not even then.") Her mother, Ruthie who worked mostly as a photographer before her daughter's fame was loving and domineering towards her talented daughter. ("I've always preferred the company of men, but Ruthie was my best friend. I could talk with her about anything. Well almost anything. We pretended sex didn't exist.") Besides her parents Davis describes her younger sister, Bobby with the same wry detachment mixed with hidden vulnerability and honesty particularly Bobby's frequent emotional and mental problems resulting in her institutionalization. ("None of us found out where Bobby belonged- especially Bobby.")
Davis' early career often played in small roles that did very little to display her talents. (An apocryphal tale stated that when the creators for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? wanted to use clips from Davis' earliest films to show how terrible an actress her character, Baby Jane Hudson was supposed to be, Davis generously said they could use any of them which they used Parachute Jumper and Ex-Lady both from 1933.) Davis also learned a great deal about the power plays between studio heads and performers during the studio star system. "It was feudal serfdom. If we didn't behave ourselves, we get lashed tongue-lashed that is, but lashed nonetheless, and if we slaves revolted, we could have our contracts canceled. The only thing worse than having a studio contract was not having one."
This hatred of the studio system caused Davis to "revolt" particularly at Warner Brothers where she worked from 1932-1949. She challenged the Brothers particularly Jack for better films and roles but was often refused. She was suspended and taken to court twice resulting in a reputation for being difficult and losing out on roles such as the lead role in Mildred Pierce (which went to her rival, Joan Crawford.) Davis responded about her reputation in the book, "They've called me difficult. Well they were correct. But what it meant was I absolutely cared about getting it right not wrong."
Davis also recounted her most memorable roles: Mildred in Of Human Bondage ("at the time I was playing Mildred, there was a lot of anger inside of me that I drew upon like a proper Method actor") Julie in Jezebel which she won her second Oscar ("I have played quite as many calm heroine-type women as I have a Jezebel type person. But the Jezebels are always remembered more, because people are fascinated by a woman like that more than the heroine.") and Charlotte in Now Voyager (Which she didn't agree with the character compromising herself to be in a relationship with Paul Henried',s character, instead she visualized Charlotte being an independent woman: 'She takes courses in psychology.....She has a brilliant career. Do you like that?")
She spent a great deal of time reminiscing about her definitive role, that of Margo Channing in All About Eve which she considered a career saver in 1950 and was forever grateful to director/writer, Joseph Mankiewicz for offering the role after original choice Claudette Colbert injured her back. Referring to the previous five year slump in which Davis was offered lackluster roles, Davis told Mankiewicz, "You resurrected me from the dead." (The role of Margot continued to resonate throughout Davis's life as she fell in love with and married her Eve co-star, Gary Merrill who played Margo's lover, Bill Sampson and when they adopted a daughter, they named her Margot)
As for her role as Baby Jane Hudson and her infamous feud with Joan Crawford, the normally candid Davis was surprisingly mum. She only said that she told director, Robert Aldrich that she didn't want him favoring Crawford with more close-ups and that while Crawford wanted to look beautiful, Davis wanted to look ugly "Miss Crawford was the glamourpuss and I was the actress," Davis said.
While she is written in the book as normally caustic and sardonic, Davis' words also carried a great deal of vulnerability in discussing the men in her life particularly director, Wim Wyler ("the perfect man for me except one.....He didn't want to marry me. Certainly not enough, because he married someone else") and her four marriages particularly to Eve co-star, Gary Merrill. ("The trouble was he thought he was marrying Margot Channing and I thought I was marrying Bill Sampson.") She also writes of her protectiveness towards her three children, Margot who was mentally disabled and institutionalized, her only son, Michael, and particularly her strained relationship with her older daughter, B.D. Hyman. Her quote referring to Christina Crawford's Mommy Dearest about Joan, "The one thing in life I know is that my children would never write such a hateful book about me" came back to haunt Davis after the publication of B.D.'s book My Mother's Keeper. Among the allegations were that Davis was an alcoholic amd abusive. Calling it a "hateful indictment" Davis and B.D.'s relationship was completely severed and the two remained estranged until Davis's death. "Your children are there but for a few short years. They grow up and leave you. But the power they have over you last a lifetime", Davis said.
The title of the book comes from someone who asked Groucho Marx why he brought two girls to a party. Marx responded, "I hate to see a girl walk home alone." "That's been the story of my adult life, Davis said. "I was always afraid of walking home alone. And it's not only my story, but it's true now for so many women. Many girls and women will walk home alone." For many women, Davis gave a face and voice for that woman who walked home alone.
5. Me: Stories of My Life by Katharine Hepburn (1991)-Katharine Hepburn's (1907-2003) autobiography begins with a conversation between herself and someone she called "The Creature" or "The Character". This was the public persona that people saw in Hepburn. This was the character that she played in most of her films: a witty, independent, tough minded heiress or career woman who could always hold her own against the boys, the character who while she usually ended up falling in love, usually with Cary Grant or Spencer Tracy, was still herself in the end. It is this character that goaded Hepburn into writing her autobiography. "I am writing my life story. I've been driven to it. What else can I do? I have to say that's probably why people write their life story." Hepburn wrote.
Hepburn's book is filled with warm, sometimes funny, always moving stories which seem disjointed and repetitive but using many of her verbal expressions such as "Mother died when I was forty odd." and are always personable. It seems as though Hepburn is in the same room reading aloud.
Hepburn wrote lovingly of her childhood in Connecticut with five siblings, her father, Dr. Thomas Norval Hepburn, who studied venereal disease and lobbied for contraception, and of her mother, Katharine Maria Hepburn, who headed the local chapter. of the women's suffrage association. Because of the Progressive nature of her parents, the children were encouraged talk about anything from sex, to women's votes, to politics to social issues. "There were NO RULES," Hepburn wrote. "There were certain things that which we did-and certain things which we didn't do because they hurt others."
Hepburn also recalled the suicide of her older brother, Tom with aching sadness. At 14, Hepburn was the one who discovered her brother's body from being hung. Even at the time of writing, Hepburn still was confused about the motives towards Tom's death, "There seemed to be a sort of feeling at the time that he might have made a pass at his girl and maybe it didn't work and maybe in despair he- Anyway we'll never know."
Hepburn recalled her earliest influences that led to her acting career like her education at Bryn Mawr where she picked up her distinct accent, her experience in plays like The Warrior's Husband which helped her shape "The Character", and her only marriage to Ludlow Ogden Smith who helped finance Hepburn's move to New York to start Hepburn's career. (Hepburn's marriage to Smith ended in divorce mostly because of pressures of her new Hollywood career and Hepburn admitted her own selfishness "being a me, me, me person" but they remained good friends.)
Many of Hepburn's most famous film roles are detailed such as: Jo March in Little Women (which she said was "Heaven to do" because it reminded her of her Connecticut childhood and her youthful self who was a tomboy), Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story ( which she played the role on Broadway and then for the 1940 film. She cited the popularity of this movie and the role from saving her reputation from being labelled as "box office poison"), and Rose Sayer in The African Queen (A previous book Hepburn wrote about the making of The African Queen, detailed Hepburn's relationship with director, John Huston "For and Against. He was an amazing character. He had flashes. And those flashes were brilliant.") All of these characters were examples of the independent woman that Hepburn often played both on screen and off. Throughout the book she demonstrated her love of sports like golf and swimming (particularly swimming in cold water), her preference for wearing slacks and exhibiting a cold air about her and not being overly emotional in public. Her Democratic politics were important to her particularly when she campaigned for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's reelection and spoke against the McCarthy Hearings.
Above all, this book is about Hepburn's love for her frequent co-star and lover, Spencer Tracy to whom Hepburn devoted the final section. ("You may think you've waited a long time," she informed the Reader. "But let's face it. So did I. I was thirty-three.") The two made nine films together from 1942's Woman of the Year to 1967's Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. Hepburn spoke of discovering what "I love you." really meant. "I loved Spencer Tracy. He and his interests and demands came first," Hepburn wrote. "This was not easy for me because I was a me me me person. It was a unique feeling that I had for (Tracy) I would have done anything for him. My feelings-Katharine can you describe them?-the door between us was always open. There were no reservations of any kind." While Hepburn's devotion to Tracy belies her reputation as an independent woman, her writing reminds us that unlike her screen characters, Hepburn was a woman of many facets and many personalities that recognized love when she saw it and the sacrifice that came with it. Hepburn supported Tracy through his frequent bouts of alcoholism, cared for him during the last seven years of his life, and was with him when he died in 1967. The final chapter, an open letter to Tracy where Hepburn discussed the last moments of his life and the legacy he left behind "You were really the greatest movie actor.", Hepburn wrote. " I say this because I believe it and also I have heard many people standing in our business say it."
Hepburn's autobiography is simple and plain writing but filled with real warmth and emotion. Thank you to "The Character" for making her write it.
4. The Fifty Worst Films of All Time And How They Got That Way by Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss (1978)-Before Mystery Science Theater 3000, before the Golden Raspberries, there was this hilarious book by Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss which recalls Hollywood's worst mistakes.(besides giving the Kardashians their own show) The authors wrote in their introduction, that they conceived of this idea because during conversations, "people show greater enthusiasm in laughing together over films they despise than in trying to praise the films they admire."
The lowlights include Abraham Lincoln("Such an inspiring moment was not seen again for thirty years, until Walt Disney designed his"Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" attraction for Disneyland. The only difference was that Disney's robot gave a far more life-like performance than did Walter Huston in the film."), Lost Horizon (Mocking the lyrics to one of the musical's insufferable lyrics: "Why can't we make ourselves believe it/Have we found nausea or has it found we."), and The Conquerer (5 words: " John Wayne as Genghis Khan." However, the book does not mention that the movie was filmed where fallout from the nuclear tests lay resulting in cancer from various cast and crew members including Wayne.)
Medved and Dreyfuss even tear into art films like Last Year at Marienbad. ("The three stars compete with one another to see who can do the best imitation of a talking corpse") and cult favorites like the Trial of Billy Jack (On the opening scene in which Billy Jack hangs his head in disapproval as a bloody massacre of Vietnamese civilians goes on around him-" the bloodlust of the audience is appeased at the same time it's social conscience is stroked.")
Besides being a book of funny reviews, it also provides interesting information on the filmmaking process such as while filming the Sci-Fi dud, Robot Monster the production team realized that they couldn't afford alien costumes, but the director decided on what he felt was the next best thing....a gorilla suit. Or that The Samuel Goldwyn musical romp, The Goldwyn Follies was originally going to feature the music of George Gershwin including his tonal poem, "An American in Paris". However, Goldwyn turned it down concerned about what "the miners of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania would think" and replaced the score with a bland tuneless one by Vernon Duke. ( Somewhere out there, Gershwin can't be too upset. Look at what happened when the 1976 musical At Long Lost Love tried to recreate the songs of Cole Porter and failed miserably.)
Extreme publicity campaigns abound as filmmakers and theater personnel went to some unusual lengths to promote these movies.
American International Productions, the team behind the lackluster animated film, Alakazam the Great displayed caged monkeys in the theater auditoriums. While filming Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the producers booked the seagulls in a room at the Holiday Inn in Carmel, California. (New maids would be tricked into cleaning that room. The noise was so deafening that people in the lobby could hear the gulls.) Then there's Tom Laughlin's " Billy Jack Vs. The Critics"campaign in which, the star/director/producer/screenwriter of the Billy Jack franchise wrote an open letter criticizing the critics who would dare oppose his film. The backlash was so great that Laughlin himself withdrew distribution of the movie one week after it's rerelease.
Besides the extreme lengths of the filmmakers to film and promote their turkeys, Medved and Dreyfuss describe the lengths they went to in finding these not-so-treasures, particularly the Ronald Reagan-Shirley Temple vehicle, That Hagan Girl. The duo write of playing telephone tag with various production companies until being allowed a private viewing at the University of Wisconsin's film depository. "The cost of the screening-free." They write, " The plane fare to Wisconsin however, made it one of the most expensive admission prices we had ever encountered." Some people will go the extra mile to prove something is terrible.
3. Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger(1975)-Celebrity and Gossip go hand in hand from the Silent film days all the way to the current bumper crop of Reality stars and Internet sensations. Sometimes the gossip is worse than the source and sometimes it's the truth that is worse. Anger's book filled with such gossip and is tacky, tawdry, questionable in facts, but is fascinating and hard to ignore and put down.
Hollywood Babylon begins during the Silent era giving faces and names to performers many of which the younger Readers may never have heard. Such as Olive Thomas, who committed suicide shortly after a heroin deal gone wrong on behalf of her husband Jack Pickford. ( Mary Pickford's brother.) William Desmond Taylor, an early Paramount director who was found murdered, a case that has remained unsolved. Barbara La Marr and Alma Reubens, two actresses who were beautiful and addicted to heroin. Then there are the most infamous scandals that still resonate today: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's alleged murder of actress, Virginia Rappe, Rudolph Valentino's short-lived marriages to women who were lesbians and his mysterious death ( rumored to be at the hands of a jealous lover but was in reality appendicitis.), and Charlie Chaplin's teenage brides Mildred Harris and Lita Gray who were 17 and 16 respectively at the time of their marriages to the much older Chaplin.
When silent movies gave way to sound, the scandals just kept on coming some related directly to sound's advent such as the debacle involving John Gilbert's first "talkie" revealed his voice to be a shrieking whine. (Some believe his voice was deliberately sabotaged by sound engineers under the pay of MGM boss, Louis B. Mayer who was looking for a reason to end Gilbert's contract.)
Some involved sex such as Mary Astor's diary which detailed her affair with George Kaufman ending her marriage with Dr. Frederick Thorpe, or the list of Hollywood stars who were homosexual or bisexuals like Marlene Dietrich and Cary Grant. Suicide and murder are also prominent features in post-sound careers such as Peg Entwhistle, who jumped off the Hollywood sign and the murder of Lana Turner's lover, Johnny Stompanato, by her daughter, Cheryl Crane.
Many of Anger's allegations were found to be untrue but became the stuff of urban legends such as that Silent actress, Clara Bow serviced the USC football team ( she didn't but was a big fan of college football and hosted parties for the team.) or that bombshell, Jayne Mansfield was decapitated ( She wasn't but the photograph shows her wig thrown on the dashboard after her fatal car accident.) However despite the exploitiveness of the book, Anger clearly shows empathy for many of these actors and actresses considering them innocents caught up in fame. Nowhere is this more prevalent than Anger's chapter on Frances Farmer.
Farmer started in a few minor movies and was billed as " The New Garbo". In 1942, she was arrested for drunk driving and attacked her arresting officer. This incident led to a series of public drunkenness, violent outbursts, and an eventual breakdown. No one came to her aid, not the studio who wrote her off and not her mother who had her committed. Instead she was lobotomized and became a pleasant vague shell of her former self. Anger wrote that "Her downfall brought little compassion in the Glitter Town that exploited her.......The unusually gifted actress was no threat against law and order of the public safety. Something that began as merely a traffic reprimand grew into a case of personal violence, a serious charge, and a jail sentence. And all because a sensitive high-strung girl was on the verge of a nervous breakdown." Frances Farmer, another like the other stars in this book fallen into the shadows of Hollywood Babylon.
2. Hollywood: Stars and Starlets, Tycoons and Flesh Peddlers, Movie Makers and Moneymakers, Frauds and Geniuses, Hopefuls and Has-Beens, Great Lovers and Sex Symbols by Garson Kanin (1967)- Many of the books on this list are from authors or about characters who hate Hollywood or want to expose it's flaws of being all surface and image and little else. It's very rare to read a book from someone who loves Hollywood and while is aware of it's flaws also recognizes it's worth of being filled with creative talented eccentricities. Garson Kanin captures that love in his memoir of his time as a screenwriter of such films as Adam's Rib (also written by his wife, Ruth Gordon) and Born Yesterday.
Kanin talks about his first job as a story editor for producer, Samuel Goldwyn ("I checked into the Goldwyn Studios on Monday morning and Alice in Wonderland was a piker.") Even after he worked for other producers such as Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures, Kanin remained good friends with Goldwyn, the man who always called Kanin, "Talboig" (because Kanin resembled Irving Thalberg, head of Universal and Goldwyn liked the idea of ordering Irving Thalberg around or rather his doppelganger.)
Many of Kanin's reminisces are about Goldwyn, portraying him as a temperamental witty man with the occasional delusion of grandeur. (He created the big budget musical flop, The Goldwyn Follies because he wanted to measure up to Broadway producer, Florenz Ziegfield.) Goldwyn is quite a character. There is a whole chapter devoted to his sayings, Goldwynisms some apocryphal like " Gentlemen include me out" some genuine like "modern dancing is so old-fashioned." But he is written as aware of the needs of his movie-going public, such as during a storyboarding session when he suggested that some exposition be cut from the opening of a film. When told the plot of the movie is too complicated with many characters and there were concerns the audience wouldn't understand the film, Goldwyn responded: "Stop worrying! The public is f'Chrissake (sic) smarter than we are."
Besides Goldwyn, Kanin also writes anecdotes of other Hollywood figures, with their quirks, oddities, peccadilloes, and above all talent. There is John Barrymore who refused to be upstaged by anyone even a little girl who does a simple gesture like playing with Barrymore's tie. Carole Lombard who Kanin describes as a vibrant funny lady with a colorful vocabulary and frequent profusion of the F-bomb ("She was clearly using language to express herself and not to shock or offend." Kanin wrote) Ginger Rogers who was known as a beautiful and talented actress/dancer and her films with Fred Astaire but really wanted to play Queen Elizabeth I in Mary Queen of Scots.
Then there's Kanin's dream opportunity of observing the films of childhood hero, Charlie Chaplin with Chaplin in attendance making wry comments and criticisms about the works. These little details make these performers into real people instead of matinee idols or symbols of Hollywood's decadence.
Besides the performers, Kanin's book offers an interesting look at the movie making process and the many hands that go into making and shaping a movie. An insistence on creating a vehicle for actors, Gary Cooper and Merle Oberon results in a game of word association and a thin plot where a cowboy and a lady fall in love (called originally enough The Cowboy and The Lady.) To cheer up his depressed wife, Kanin suggests putting up a billboard with her name on it. This idea germinates in the Judy Holliday film, A Name for Herself.
Of course there are the times when an idea is completely changed such as Kanin's intriguing script of a woman's life possibilities with three different sets of potential adopted parents. Daryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, altered with the script until it changed to three separate actresses all with standard happy endings.
Kanin does explore the darker nature of Hollywood a little bit here and there. He became an eyewitness in a marital battle between Vivian Leigh and Sir Laurence Olivier over Olivier's private time with Greta Garbo, which he insisted involved a discussion about flowers and nothing else. Ingrid Bergman who Kanin was somewhat responsible for her introduction to director and future husband, Roberto Rosselini (Kanin recommended her for Joan of Lorraine in which one of her co-stars introduced her to Rosselini). Bergmann's affair with Rosselini resulted in scandal when she left her first husband for him and almost ruined her career forever. It wasn't until the 1950's with the movie, Anastasia, that Bergman was able to make a comeback.
The most interesting scandalous section involves Kanin's visits to Mae's Pleasure Palace in which "Mae West" (or a madam who resembled her) serviced men with prostitutes that looked and dressed like Hollywood starlets like Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Jean Harlow etc. (an obvious inspiration for James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential.) Not only were the prostitutes required to look like the Stars but they had to read the latest news on them so they could respond in character. Mae's Pleasure Palace showed that everyone from the lowest hooker to the highest mogul had something to show their public.
1. You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again by Julia Phillips(1991)- One thing we can say about Julia Phillips' tell-all. It's title is dripped in irony and foreshadowing. Shortly after the book was published, Phillips was denied service for life in Morton's, a swank restaurant. However, Phillips' bitingly honest and witty memoir proves the adage that if you go down, you might as well go down in flames.
Julia Phillips was the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Picture for The Sting, and was the producers of Academy Award nominated films, Taxi Driver and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. However, her book is less about her successes than it is about her struggles with cocaine addiction, living the high Hollywood life in the '70's, and her relationships with the members of New Hollywood which she calls " a Rogue's Gallery of Nerds."
Her book is honest about her own problems. She wrote that she spent Oscar Night 1976 high on a variety of drugs. That her frequent drug use interfered in her relationships with men especially her former husband and business partner, Michael and enabled her to be involved with an abusive drug dealer, she called "Rottweiler"
She also has a lot to say about the Hollywood crowd. Some gossipy like Goldie Hawn ("always dirty but you have to love The Giggle."), actresses, Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt ("best friends and roommates until they fell out over a man.") Some more serious like Martin Scorcese ("complete mysoginist.....only hired Cybil Shepherd for Taxi Driver because he loved her ass."), Richard Dreyfuss (always getting Phillips to try new drugs like one called "The Green."), and Steven Spielberg whom Phillips shared more than a love of filmmaking.
While there are plenty of targets for Phillips' rancor, two men in particular stand out: director/actor, Francois Truffaut and head of the Creative Artists Agency and Hollywood Power Player, Mike Ovitz. Truffaut earns Phillip ire after he pens an open letter accusing her of being unprofessional and difficult to work with on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind which he featured. Phillips wrote that she spent a great deal of time working with Truffaut's accent and paying him concessions. The fight becomes a factor along with an expanded. budget and Phillips' frequent drug use that causes Phillips to be fired from Close Encounters during post-production thereby ending Phillips' once promising career.
Phillips spent the'80's trying to revive her career but getting rejected for one picture after another such as Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire. She only produced one film,. The Beat, which was a critical and commercial flop. She blamed much of her inability to find work on the "Hollywood Boy's Club" particularly agent, Mike Ovitz whom she accused of sexism.
She implied that if she were a man, she would have been forgiven for past sins and produced a blockbuster. Phillips also blamed Ovitz for the decline of filmmaking in the'80's because of people like him who cared more about profit than about artistic challenges.
Many debated and challenged her claims. Some defended her. Richard Dreyfuss has gone on record to say the truth was far worse. One thing that can be said: Until her death in 2002, Phillips stuck to her claims and never refuted them proving that she had the last word in the end
Honorable Mention: The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Easy Riders and Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind, , Tinseltown: Murder Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood by William J, Mann, I Fatty by Jerry Stahl, Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford, Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud by Shaun Considine, Awake in The Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert, I Hated,. Hated, Hated This Movie, and Your Movie Sucks by Roger Ebert, Weird Hollywood: Your Travel Guide to Hollywood's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets by Joe Osterle, Mark Moran and Mark Securman, Hollywood Goddesses by Michael Moellering, The Story of Hollywood: An Illustrated Biography by Gregory Paul Williams, Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe by Anthony Summers, Cary Grant: A Biography by Marc Eliot, Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography by Frank Capra, and L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy.
And...Cut and print. That's a wrap.
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