
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 PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Dangerous Rhythms
- Jazz and the Underworld
- By: T. J. English
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Dangerous Rhythms tells the symbiotic story of jazz and the underworld: a relationship fostered in some of 20th century America’s most notorious vice districts. For the first half of the century mobsters and musicians enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership. By offering artists like Louis Armstrong, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald a stage, the mob, including major players Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, and Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, provided opportunities that would not otherwise have existed.
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Keep your YouTube handy
- By Vikon on 09-12-22
By: T. J. English
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Elizabeth Taylor
- The Grit & Glamour of an Icon
- By: Kate Andersen Brower
- Narrated by: Eleanor Caudill
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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No celebrity rivals Elizabeth Taylor’s glamour and guts or her level of fame. She was the last major star to come out of the old Hollywood studio system and she is a legend known for her beauty and her magnetic screen presence in a career that spanned most of the twentieth century and nearly sixty films. But her private life was even more compelling than her Oscar-winning on-screen performances. During her seventy-nine years of rapid-fire love and loss she was married eight times to seven different men.
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Factually Incorrect in So Many Respects
- By Trudgette on 01-16-23
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Garbo
- Her Life, Her Films
- By: Robert Gottlieb
- Narrated by: Maria Tucci
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Strikingly glamorous and famously inscrutable, Greta Garbo managed, in 16 short years, to infiltrate America’s subconscious; her decision to suddenly end her film career at the age of 36 only made her more irresistible. Garbo appeared in only 24 movies, yet her impact on the world was rivaled only by Marilyn Monroe. She was a phenomenon, a Sphinx, a myth, but also a Swedish peasant girl, uneducated, naïve, and always on her guard. Acclaimed critic and editor Robert Gottlieb attempts to capture the ever-elusive essence of Garbo through the eyes of others.
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Very good and very not good
- By Pennypie on 12-18-21
By: Robert Gottlieb
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The Hollywood Studios
- House Style in the Golden Age of the Movies
- By: Ethan Mordden
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Hollywood in the years between 1929 and 1948 was a town of moviemaking empires. The great studios were estates of talent: sprawling, dense, diverse. It was the Golden Age of the Movies, and each studio made its distinctive contribution. But how did the studios, "growing up" in the same time and place, develop so differently? What combinations of talents and temperaments gave them their signature styles?
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The reader falls quite short of the book
- By Eleanor on 07-20-09
By: Ethan Mordden
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The Club
- Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.
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Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch
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George V
- Never a Dull Moment
- By: Jane Ridley
- Narrated by: Joanna David
- Length: 22 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II, King George V reigned over the British Empire from 1910 to 1936, a period of unprecedented international turbulence. Yet no one could deny that as a young man, George seemed uninspired. As his biographer Harold Nicolson famously put it, "he did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps.” The contrast between him and his flamboyant, hedonistic, playboy father Edward VII could hardly have been greater.
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great but long listen
- By aleks r on 02-23-22
By: Jane Ridley
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The Genius of the System
- Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era
- By: Thomas Schatz, Steven Bach - preface
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 24 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time when the studio is making a stunning comeback, film historian Thomas Schatz provides an indispensable account of Hollywood's traditional blend of business and art. Working from industry documents, Schatz traces the development of house styles, the rise and fall of careers, and the making - and unmaking - of movies, from Frankenstein to Spellbound to Grand Hotel. The Genius of the System gives the definitive view of the workings of the Old Hollywood and the foundations of the New.
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A Textbook on Old Hollywood
- By Charlie Morton on 05-26-23
By: Thomas Schatz, and others
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Oscar Wars
- A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears
- By: Michael Schulman
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs
- Unabridged
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In Oscar Wars, Michael Schulman chronicles the remarkable, sprawling history of the Academy Awards and the personal dramas—some iconic, others never-before-revealed—that have played out on the stage and off camera. Unlike other books on the subject, each chapter takes a deep dive into a particular year, conflict, or even category that tells a larger story of cultural change, from Louis B. Mayer to Moonlight. Schulman examines how the red carpet runs through contested turf, and the victors aren't always as clear as the names drawn from envelopes.
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Fascinating and FUN
- By Peter Riley on 06-11-23
By: Michael Schulman
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Tinseltown
- Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood
- By: William J. Mann
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence; yet Hollywood's glittering ascendancy was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies - including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.
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Everybody's a dreamer...
- By Steven on 01-08-15
By: William J. Mann
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The Abyss
- Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962
- By: Max Hastings
- Narrated by: Max Hastings, John Hopkins
- Length: 19 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Bestselling author Max Hastings offers a welcome re-evaluation of one of the most gripping and tense international events in modern history—the Cuban Missile Crisis—providing a people-focused narrative that explores the attitudes and conduct of Russians, Cubans, Americans, and a terrified world that followed each moment as it unfolded.
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Good book, but has some issues
- By Mike From Mesa on 11-10-22
By: Max Hastings
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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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Captivating from start to finish
- By Steve C. on 02-01-25
By: Foster Hirsch
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Five Families
- The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires
- By: Selwyn Raab
- Narrated by: Paul Costanzo
- Length: 33 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Genovese, Gambino, Bonnano, Colombo, and Lucchese. For decades these Five Families ruled New York and built the American Mafia (or Cosa Nostra) into an underworld empire. Today, the Mafia is an endangered species, battered and beleaguered by aggressive investigators, incompetent leadership, betrayals, and generational changes that produced violent, unreliable leaders and recruits.
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7326451
- By Mark on 10-13-16
By: Selwyn Raab
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The House of Rothschild, Volume 1
- Money's Prophets: 1798-1848
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrated by: Alexander Adams
- Length: 28 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In his rich and nuanced portrait of the remarkable, elusive Rothschild family, Niall Ferguson uncovers the secrets behind the family's phenomenal economic success. He reveals for the first time the details of the family's vast political network, which gave it access to and influence over many of the greatest statesmen of the age. And he tells a family saga, tracing the importance of unity and the profound role of Judaism in the lives of a dynasty that rose from the confines of the Frankfurt ghetto and later used its influence to assist oppressed Jews throughout Europe.
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Fascinating
- By Jean on 06-26-19
By: Niall Ferguson
What listeners say about Hollywood: The Oral History
Highly rated for:
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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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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6 people found this helpful
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- James Litsios
- 11-18-22
Insider view of the Hollywood film industry; A mini-MBA lesson in corporate thinking
I loved the intimate atmosphere created by all these personal quotes. I love the insights into all parts of the film making process and the business. The overview of the different “phases” of film industry is great value to understand other industries going through changes.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Jerry
- 01-18-23
Good oral history-poor reading
The information is interesting if not exactly insightful. Too much of it is eyewitnesses of the era saying how great everyone was and weren’t we lucky. We needed some curmudgeons as well! The anecdotes themselves barely muster interest because no one seems to have any personality. Thus, the readers (male and female) have to try to make the dialogue interesting when they really have nothing to play. And even if they did, they are all wrong for the reading. The male had a bland sweet voice and the female has a touch of the irritating vocal rhythms and timbre of contemporary young women. If you’re going to act it, act it. If you’re going to just read, just read. But you need to study how people spoke back then. Americans in that circle of Hollywood spoke in distinctive styles so familiar from old movies.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Kyler Adams
- 06-24-23
Transitions
It was a great book just harder to follow since there weren’t really well-marked transitions between one topic to another. Other than that I absolutely loved it!!
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- angelheart
- 01-08-24
Found this to be incredibly informative and a fascinating listen!
A great way to learn about the world of Hollywood.
( not clear why some are so negative about the narrators…. I found them very easy to listen to)
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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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13 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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1 person found this helpful
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- Kevin Gibbons
- 01-21-23
10 times more than I expected or hoped for
this really is American history. this book reflects who we are as a people what our history has been for the last 100 years. it speaks to our soul. it's an examination of the good the bad the ugly. and it's funny
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2 people found this helpful
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- Elliott Wolfe, M.D.
- 12-28-22
Hollywood Insider
Opinions about all aspects of Hollywood movies from those within. Loaded with facts and stories. Not a narrative history. It’s all there from the first silents to today based on personal interviews. A unique book.
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- Steve from Tucson
- 01-24-23
Complete Hollywood Conversation
Excellent interview of AFI stars from the silent era through Michael Ovitz. It is a once in a lifetime experience. If you’re a real fan then Tia is the one book for you.
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