Hollywood: The Oral History
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Narrated by:
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Timothy Andrés Pabon
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Marni Penning
About this listen
The real story of Hollywood as told by such luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Harold Lloyd, and nearly four hundred others, assembled from the American Film Institute’s treasure trove of interviews, reveals a fresh history of the American movie industry from its beginnings to today.
From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly three thousand interviews, involving four hundred voices from the industry, Hollywood: The Oral History, lets a listener “listen in” on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera—Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd—to the biggest behind it—Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele, as well as the lesser known individuals that shaped what was heard and seen on screen: musicians, costumers, art directors, cinematographers, writers, sound men, editors, make-up artists, and even script timers, messengers, and publicists. The result is like a conversation among the gods and goddesses of film: lively, funny, insightful, historically accurate and, for the first time, authentically honest in its portrait of Hollywood. It’s the insider’s story.
Legendary film scholar Jeanine Basinger and New York Times bestselling author Sam Wasson, both acclaimed storytellers in their own right, have undertaken the monumental task of digesting these tens of thousands of hours of talk and weaving it into a definitive portrait of workaday Hollywood.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2022 Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson (P)2022 HarperCollins PublishersRelated to this topic
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Story
A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away is a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most influential films of the last 50 years by Paul Hirsch, a film editor who worked on more than 40 features. Starting with his work on Carrie, Hirsch gives insight into the production process, touching upon casting, directing, cutting, and scoring. It’s a riveting look at the decisions that went into creating memorable and iconic scenes and offers fascinating portraits of filmmakers, stars, and composers.
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Enjoyable listen for fans of film and film Editing
- By E. Terrell on 05-12-21
By: Paul Hirsch
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The Movie Musical!
- By: Jeanine Basinger
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 24 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Irresistible and authoritative, The Movie Musical! is an in-depth look at the singing, dancing, happy-making world of Hollywood musicals - an essential audiobook for anyone who's ever laughed, cried, or sung along at the movies. Leading film historian Jeanine Basinger reveals, with her trademark wit and zest, the whole story of the Hollywood musical - in the most telling, most incisive, most detailed audiobook of her long and remarkable career.
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So You Think You Know Movie Musicals
- By Orson Scott Card on 02-19-20
By: Jeanine Basinger
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Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties
- The Collapse of the Studio System, the Thrill of Cinerama, and the Invasion of the Ultimate Body Snatcher—Television
- By: Foster Hirsch
- Narrated by: Foster Hirsch
- Length: 36 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Hollywood in the 1950s was a period when the film industry both set conventions and broke norms and traditions—from Cinerama, Cinemascope and Vistavision to the epic film and lavish musical. It was a decade that saw the rise of the anti-hero; the smoldering, the hidden, and the unspoken; teenagers gone wild in the streets; the sacred and the profane; the revolution of the Method; the socially conscious; the implosion of the studios, the end of the production code; and the invasion of the ultimate body snatcher: the “small screen” television.
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Great book full of fascinatinghistory
- By Judy Gunnery on 10-17-24
By: Foster Hirsch
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The Path to Paradise
- A Francis Ford Coppola Story
- By: Sam Wasson
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Francis Ford Coppola is one of the great American dreamers, and his most magnificent dream is American Zoetrope, the production company he founded in San Francisco years before his gargantuan success, when he was only thirty. Through Zoetrope’s experimental, communal utopia, Coppola attempted to reimagine the entire pursuit of moviemaking. Now, more than fifty years later, despite myriad setbacks, the visionary filmmaker’s dream persists, most notably in the production of his decades-in-the-making film and the culmination of his utopian ideals, Megalopolis.
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Narrator was awful
- By Cyrus Nowrasteh on 12-17-23
By: Sam Wasson
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City of Nets
- A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940's
- By: Otto Friedrich, Glen David Gold - foreword
- Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan
- Length: 25 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1939, 50 million Americans went to the movies every week, Louis B. Mayer was the highest-paid man in the country, and Hollywood produced 530 feature films a year. One decade and five thousand movies later, the studios were faltering....
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Disjointed and flawed
- By A. N. Onymous on 01-18-22
By: Otto Friedrich, and others
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The Last Action Heroes
- The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage
- By: Nick de Semlyen
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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The Last Action Heroes opens in May 1990 in Cannes, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone waltzing together, cheered on by a crowd of famous faces. After years of bitter combat, the world’s biggest action stars have at last made peace. In this wildly entertaining account of the golden age of the action movie, Nick de Semlyen charts Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s carnage-packed journey from enmity to friendship against the backdrop of Reagan’s America and the Cold War.
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Fantastic!
- By Alan on 07-17-23
By: Nick de Semlyen
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The Castle on Sunset
- Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont
- By: Shawn Levy
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Since 1929, Hollywood’s brightest stars have flocked to the Chateau Marmont as if it were a second home. An apartment building-turned-hotel, the Chateau has been the backdrop for generations of gossip and folklore: where director Nicholas Ray slept with his 16-year-old Rebel Without a Cause star Natalie Wood; Jim Morrison swung from the balconies; John Belushi suffered a fatal overdose; and Lindsay Lohan got the boot after racking up nearly $50,000 in charges in less than two months. Much of what has happened inside the Chateau’s walls has eluded the public eye - until now.
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Was enjoying it until...
- By leigh on 04-22-20
By: Shawn Levy
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20th Century-Fox
- Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio
- By: Scott Eyman
- Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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March 20, 2019 marked the end of an era - Disney took ownership of the movie empire that was Fox. For almost a century before that historic date, Twentieth Century-Fox was one of the preeminent producers of films, stars, and filmmakers. Its unique identity in the industry and place in movie history is unparalleled - and one of the greatest stories to come out of Hollywood.
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Our media world is unlike anything we’ve ever known
- By Amy Evans on 12-04-21
By: Scott Eyman
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Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions
- My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood
- By: Ed Zwick
- Narrated by: Ed Zwick
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Though there are many factors behind such success, including luck and the contributions of his creative partner Marshall Herskovitz, he’s known to have a special talent for bringing out the best in the people he’s worked with, notably the actors. In those intense collaborations, he seeks to discover the small pieces of connective tissue, vulnerability, and fellowship that can help an actor realize their character in full.
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Authentic, Sobering & Full of Grace
- By David_Leah Wiley on 02-17-24
By: Ed Zwick
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MCU
- The Reign of Marvel Studios
- By: Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, Gavin Edwards
- Narrated by: Andrew Kishino, Joanna Robinson
- Length: 16 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Marvel Entertainment was a moribund toymaker not even twenty years ago. Today, Marvel Studios is the dominant player both in Hollywood and in global pop culture. How did an upstart studio conquer the world? In MCU, beloved culture writers Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and Gavin Edwards draw on more than a hundred interviews with actors, producers, directors, and writers to present the definitive chronicle of Marvel Studios and its sole ongoing production, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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Puff piece.
- By Habu1271 on 10-26-23
By: Joanna Robinson, and others
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Down and Dirty Pictures
- Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film
- By: Peter Biskind
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 23 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Down and Dirty Pictures chronicles the rise of independent filmmakers and of the twin engines - the Sundance Film Festival and Miramax Films - that have powered them. Peter Biskind profiles the people who took the independent movement from obscurity to the Oscars, most notably Sundance founder Robert Redford and Harvey Weinstein, who with his brother, Bob, made Miramax an indie powerhouse.
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For the independent film lover!
- By natalie on 08-26-14
By: Peter Biskind
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Martin Scorsese
- A Journey
- By: Mary Pat Kelly, Leonardo DiCaprio, Steven Spielberg
- Narrated by: Nancy Linari, P.J. Ochlan
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Few filmmakers, if any, make the kind of impact that Martin Scorsese has made on American cinema. The winner of every prestigious film award, including the Oscar, Scorsese is a living legend. Bestselling author and award-winning filmmaker Mary Pat Kelly’s groundbreaking biography reveals how this working-class boy from Manhattan’s Little Italy became one of our most acclaimed, celebrated, and influential filmmakers. Martin Scorsese: A Journey maps Scorsese’s personal and artistic evolution.
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Good behind the scenes of early Scorsese films
- By Boxing Fan on 12-04-23
By: Mary Pat Kelly, and others
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Cinema Speculation
- By: Quentin Tarantino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Quentin Tarantino
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In addition to being among the most celebrated of contemporary filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino is possibly the most joyously infectious movie lover alive. For years he has touted in interviews his eventual turn to writing books about films. Now, with Cinema Speculation, the time has come, and the results are everything his passionate fans—and all movie lovers—could have hoped for. Organized around key American films from the 1970s, all of which he first saw as a young moviegoer at the time, this book is as intellectually rigorous and insightful as it is rollicking and entertaining.
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A letdown I didn't see coming.
- By polycow on 11-03-22
What listeners say about Hollywood: The Oral History
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Paul
- 11-30-22
The deep dive into Hollywood’s pool of talent
It is a dream come true that such a volume would be written or, rather, meticulously pieced together. The editors did a masterful job creating a century-long conversation. It is unfortunate that with some major stars, negatives outweighed the positives. Did I learn that Judy Garland could take one look at a script and have it memorized? That she could hear director’s notes and incorporate them all impeccably into the next scene? What made her one of the brightest stars? This book won’t tell you. Rather, the focus is on her being late and a few around her questioning whether and to what degree she may have been mentally ill. Mayer is entirely let off the hook.
That’s one example and perhaps the most egregious. Astaire and Rogers are well praised. The same with more contemporary actors. Ultimately, it’s an oral biography of Hollywood focusing more on the titans of the industry and how it evolved dramatically over time. But you will hear from and about many celebrities. I must say, the narration by just one woman and one man was superb. They each adjusted their voices to resemble those from whom the words originally flowed. You get just a flavor of Lucille Ball or Clark Gable—not impersonations but enough of an impression to keep the story sounding like it was indeed a compilation of hundreds of eye witnesses. The two are masterful storytellers: bringing emotional truth to every voice, aware of pacing, tone, and inflection. I hope they have or will narrate many other books. My last point is one often noted in reviews of celebrity biographies and memoirs: the dreaded mispronunciation of names. There was a cavalcade in this case, overwhelmingly by the male narrator. Here are most if not all of them:
David Niven pronounced it like Nigh-ven, rhyming with thrivin’
‘Marleen’ Dietrich not Mar-lay-nah
Warren ‘Beety’
Otto Preminger and John Schlesinger said with hard Gs
Zootrope in two syllables
Mario Pew-zoh rather than pooh-zoh
Cannes in two syllables, rhyming with Alannis
Many of those are common errors and the talents of these narrators made forgiving them very easy. In case it isn’t clear, I highly recommend this book!
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10 people found this helpful
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- Steve
- 10-09-23
Excellent reportage, but no point of view.
Excellent reportage, but no point of view. The use of voices brings the words of important players, long dead, to life.
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- Deal W. Hudson
- 12-30-22
Wow!
I’ve read a ton of books about the movies. But I learned more about filmmaking and its history from this book than any other.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Patrick
- 12-22-22
Picky, Picky!
I don't know how, in a 29 hour audiobok, in which thousands of different names are mentioned, a narrator is supposed to figure out how every name is pronounced. What resource would you use to determine such info? Missing some names is OK. Come on people! You got 29 hours of interesting, well performed book for only one credit.. Give it a rest. How much fun are you to live with?
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15 people found this helpful
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- Steven R. Weber
- 01-26-23
Confounding
What should have been entertaining and informative was instead a confounding listening experience made so by the arguably necessary announcement of each person’s name with every quote. No flow, and ultimately impossible to enjoy. Individual attributions are seemingly impossible obstacle for an audiobook to overcome.
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1 person found this helpful
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- rdk
- 12-07-22
VicenTAY Minnelli really?
Great book about great directors and the like! Unfortunately the audio version could have used a great director as the male narrator mispronounces so many famous legends names!Example: Vicente Minnelli is Vincent not VinceTAY, what is more Minnelli didn’t sound like Nintendo”s Mario! He was born in Chicago! Only one of many narration blunders!
Great book regardless!
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- Kindle Customer
- 04-04-23
Tedious
The first third was great, despite the narrator mispronoucing many names. Don't they have an editor who listens to the audio before it's released? The book became so tedious inches last third, I couldn't finish it.
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- Anonymous User
- 05-28-23
An important documentary work, limited by its general purpose
As a student and teacher of film history, this book is quite valuable and important. As a piece of entertainment, it might not hold enough excitement for a casually interested reader.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Kevin Mcgue
- 03-14-23
Many mispronounced names
I thought the narrators did a great job to bring this material to life, The performance is marred by mispronounced names, such as Charles Loft-ton and Vin-cent-tay Minelli. Somehow, Edmund Goulding becomes "Edie".
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- Terry McAteer
- 03-05-23
Fine history, but...
Hollywood: The Oral History provides a valuable service by bringing forward the attitudes of people who worked in American film during the glory years, prior to the 1950s when things went south. It provides a fine picture of how many of the people working there thought and felt about the system and its product. What the reader/listener thinks about these things is not the book's concern. Nor should it be. The performance, however, is marred by the persistent mispronunciation of many of the people's names. It may seem a small thing, but it is disrespectful. Lastly, the title should refer to "An Oral History," not "The." Still, as this is about the golden years of Hollywood for which hyperbole was a primary food source, the title's exaggeration of its books importance should be expected.
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