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Just in time for Russell Crowe to raise a misunderstood ruckus at this year's Oscars (perhaps he'll seduce Whoopi Goldberg and sucker punch Tom Hanks in the name of artistic expression) there are several new books about Hollywood in all its glory --- the good, the bad, and occasionally, the truth.
THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL:
Hollywood in the Fifties
Sam Kashner and Jennifer MacNair
W. W. Norton & Company
Entertainment
ISBN: 0393043215
THE BAD & THE BEAUTIFUL by Sam Kashner and Jennifer MacNair is a dark walk into Hollywood of the '50s, just after the golden age and entering its greatest period of decline.
The book takes a look at the seamy side of Hollywood at the height of tabloid journalism and the crumbling of the studio system. More than a collection of sordid tales, THE BAD & THE BEAUTIFUL is a depressing trip down memory lane, compiling the sad lives of studio creations like Rock Hudson and Lana Turner.
The book's intention seems to be demonstrating that '50s Hollywood was a very creepy place and it succeeds admirably. The reader has a ringside seat as Edward G. Robinson's son Manny winds up in jail like one of his father's famous gangsters, while director Nick Ray seduces the young stars (James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Natalie Wood) on the set of Rebel Without A Cause.
The few moments of lightness are provided by profiles of neurotic musician Oscar Levant and Rex Reed's comment that an aging Mae West's voice sounded like "an old cat having a bad dream."
If ever there was a book to disabuse your fantasies of old Hollywood glamour, this is it.
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LOST HOLLYWOOD
David Wallace
LA Weekly Books/St. Martin's
Entertainment
ISBN: 0312261950
A less dismal look at Tinseltown history is David Wallace's LOST HOLLYWOOD, which covers Los Angeles during the early days of the motion picture industry.
Filled with stories of Cecil B. DeMille (who had a foot fetish), Rudolph Valentino, and the great mansion Pickfair (where Hollywood royalty Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford made their home), LOST HOLLYWOOD tells the tale of landmarks and stars now forgotten.
The book is a loving look at the characters that made Hollywood, the boats they sailed, the places they partied, and where they lived. Most notable is a chapter on The Garden of Allah apartments, where folks like Frank Sinatra and Ronald Reagan (between marriages) held court by the pool and Charles Laughton swam with his Hunchback of Notre Dame costume as a flotation device.
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THE GREAT MOVIES
Roger Ebert
Broadway Books/Random House
Movie Criticism
ISBN: 076791032X
The brighter side of film is revealed in Roger Ebert's THE GREAT FILMS, a collection of bi-weekly essays he has written over the past five years about his favorite movies .
Because we have watched him argue with the late Gene Siskel (and now Richard Roeper) on television for so long, it has been easy to forget that Ebert is far more than a goofy caricature or blurb machine a la Gene ("Sea of Love --- See It! You'll Love It!") Shalit.
Rather, as anyone who has ever read Ebert's film reviews or his occasional op-ed pieces in the Chicago Sun-Times, he is a very talented writer and probably the finest movie critic alive.
THE GREAT MOVIES compiles 100 of Ebert's favorite movies (including Taxi Driver and Citizen Kane as well as several foreign films like Werner Herzog's Aguirre, The Wrath of God) and demonstrates his love of them from both a popular and scholarly viewpoint. Throughout the book, Ebert never strays from being a fan yet he manages to make the artistic achievement of each film come alive for even the casual reader.
Like Pauline Kael before him, Ebert gives readers a fresh view of each film he writes about and does it in a style that's neither imperious nor highfalutin. He simply loves these movies so much that readers may find themselves rethinking their opinions on movies they have seen before and finding art in places they never expected.
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GREGORY PECK: A Biography
Gary Fishgall
Scribner
Biography
ISBN: 068485290X
Gregory Peck is the rarest of Hollywood biography subjects --- dignified, intelligent, gentlemanly and not unlike his screen characters in films like Gentleman's Agreement, Roman Holiday, and To Kill a Mockingbird.
In GREGORY PECK: A Biography, author Gary Fishgall, who has previously written about Burt Lancaster and Jimmy Stewart, takes on this quiet film icon who became a star in the generation between screen giants like Clark Gable and more rough hewn characters like Robert Mitchum.
Born in San Diego to a pharmacist and his wife, Peck was a withdrawn child of divorce with little aspiration to become a movie star. Originally planning to be a doctor, Peck was discovered by a theater director walking across campus at the University of California and wound up in New York at the Neighborhood Playhouse, eventually making his way to Hollywood, where he would become a leading man and one of the town's most respected performers.
Despite an unsuccessful first marriage and the suicide of one child, Peck's life is generally free of the kind of hell raising and scandal that one encounters when reading about practically anyone else who came of age in the movie business. Instead, Fishgall ably tells the story of this principled man, who quietly had one of the great careers in film history.
Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.
--- Reviewed by Josh Karp (karpj2323@aol.com
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