| | I read City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s by Otto Friedrich for Chunkster Challenge (edition 0520209494, 495 pages),
Friedrich (1929-1995) was a journalist and cultural historian. In City of Nets, he covers the last decade in which movie moguls like Louis B. Mayer and Cohn Brothers ruled like kings over actors, writers, and members of craft unions. They reigned in collusion with gangsters, journalists, and other unsavory types.
The attraction is that Friedrich combines his knowledge gleaned from reading about 500 books about Hollywood with his strong interest in the German expatriate community in SoCal. So, we can read juicy gossip and hilarious anecdotes, plus the responses to California by civilized people like the Mann Brothers Thomas and Heinrich, Brecht, and Schoenberg. Not so attractive is his incessant cracking wise about anybody left of center (like the Hollywood 10 or Charlie Chaplin) while he says nary a word about the bullies, cowards, and sneaks that hounded them.
Overall, because I learned much figures such as Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder and the German expats I recommend it, though by the end of its 500-some pages I was flagging, sated with The Tinsel Town Without Pity. Or brains. Or taste. Or integrity.
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| | Posted 3/23/2010 9:36 AM - 59 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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