Hollywood: The Oral History

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As for why the West Coast was picked for this new enterprise, Henry Blanke, producer of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, explains: “There was eternal sun here. Whereas, in fact, the two men were interviewed on different occasions and with no knowledge of what others might say. The award-winning costume designer Edith Head (1897-1981) describes getting a foot in the door by showing a portfolio of drawings that weren’t hers.

Fay Wray, who in 1933 squirmed in the sweltering paw of King Kong, is happy to reflect that at least now the studios have air conditioning, which is a complete joy and a wonderful protection against that eternal, necessary sun.Along those same lines someone in the final chapter says movies today are all about making money, they aren't about making art anymore.

She has appeared in several movie-related documentaries and completed audio commentaries on about a dozen classic films.

It's often the impression I got reading, that the person who we'd actually like to be hearing from, who might actually have been in the room or who might have had some insight, just didn't figure into the trove of interviews Wasson and Basinger worked from. But first: The savory opening chapter draws on anecdotes from some of the now-gone greats of classic Hollywood, including Raoul Walsh, Frank Capra, Leo McCarey, Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks and Lillian Gish, schmoozing about their starts in the business. It's a wealth of information from the people who were involved in American cinema from the very beginning until now.

The authors have reviewed many interviews from people in the industry, extracted paragraphs of interest, then organized these by topic (e.From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer. At the very least, here is testimony by over 300 industry professionals, some of whom made silent movies and are now dead, others of whom are Steven Spielberg and Jordan Peele. Marilyn Monroe gets a few pages; Gary Cooper a few; Humphrey Bogart one or two; the blacklist years, a few; often there are accounts given that take up several pages, and these are often entertaining but just as often contain a majority of hearsay and defensiveness regarding the Hollywood we "think" we know.

Not every silent film star was blessed with the vocal talents to allow them to thrive in the sound era. The silent film sections are fairly short and shallow (and somehow manage to spell Allan Dwan's name wrong throughout), but it's when we get onto New Hollywood and beyond that the book falls apart, in a blizzard of barely-connected anecdotes, followed by some stunningly dull material about deal-making. Everything was experimental in the earliest days --- from the use of equipment to the physical actions of the actors, especially before “talkies” allowed for more than the most dramatic pantomimes.The last third of the book discusses the end of the system and the beginning of independent movie producers.