The Genius of the System
Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era
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Narrated by:
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Paul Boehmer
About this listen
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. This book lays to rest the persistent myth that businesspeople and producers stifle artistic talent and reveals instead the genius of a system of collaboration and conflict. 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.
©1988 Thomas Schatz; Preface copyright 1996 by Steven Bach (P)2021 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Pictures at a Revolution
- Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
- By: Mark Harris
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967 - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Dolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde - and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood and America forever.
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Would It Be Too Much To Ask?
- By Casey Keller on 12-31-08
By: Mark Harris
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The Devil’s Candy
- The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco
- By: Julie Salamon
- Narrated by: Julie Salamon
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Brian De Palma agreed to allow Julie Salamon unlimited access to the film production of Tom Wolfe's best-selling book The Bonfire of the Vanities, both director and journalist must have felt like they were on to something big. How could it lose? But instead Salamon got a front-row seat at the Hollywood disaster of the decade.
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WHAT A GEM!!!
- By Momofour on 07-04-21
By: Julie Salamon
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This Was Hollywood: Forgotten Stars and Stories
- Turner Classic Movies
- By: Carla Valderrama
- Narrated by: Carla Valderrama
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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From former screen legends who have faded into obscurity to new revelations about the biggest movie stars, Valderrama unearths the most fascinating little-known tales from the birth of Hollywood through its Golden Age. The shocking fate of the world's first movie star. Clark Gable's secret love child. The film that nearly ended Paul Newman's career. A former child star who, at 93, reveals her #metoo story for the first time. Valderrama unfolds these stories, and many more, in a volume that is by turns riveting, maddening, hilarious, and shocking.
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Hollywood Fun
- By Ernie D. Casciato on 01-06-21
By: Carla Valderrama
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Shock Value
- How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror
- By: Jason Zinoman
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Much has been written about the storied New Hollywood of the 1970s, but while Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola were making their first classic movies, a parallel universe of directors gave birth to the modern horror film - aggressive, raw, and utterly original. Based on unprecedented access to the genre's major players, New York Times critic Jason Zinoman's Shock Value delivers the first definitive account of horror's golden age.
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A good listen, but narrow in scope
- By Billy on 01-31-13
By: Jason Zinoman
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Confidential Confidential
- The Inside Story of Hollywood's Notorious Scandal Magazine
- By: Samantha Barbas
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
In the 1950s, Confidential magazine, America's first celebrity scandal magazine, revealed Hollywood stars' secrets, misdeeds, and transgressions in gritty, unvarnished detail. Deploying a vast network of tipsters to root out stars' sexual affairs, drug use, and sexuality, publisher Robert Harrison destroyed celebrities' carefully constructed images and built a media empire. Confidential became the best-selling magazine on American newsstands in the 1950s, surpassing Time, Life, and the Saturday Evening Post. Confidential's spectacular rise was followed by an equally spectacular fall.
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Fascinating! Painstaking Research & Documentation
- By A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. on 05-22-19
By: Samantha Barbas
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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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Pictures at a Revolution
- Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
- By: Mark Harris
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967 - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Dolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde - and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood and America forever.
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Would It Be Too Much To Ask?
- By Casey Keller on 12-31-08
By: Mark Harris
-
The Devil’s Candy
- The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco
- By: Julie Salamon
- Narrated by: Julie Salamon
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Brian De Palma agreed to allow Julie Salamon unlimited access to the film production of Tom Wolfe's best-selling book The Bonfire of the Vanities, both director and journalist must have felt like they were on to something big. How could it lose? But instead Salamon got a front-row seat at the Hollywood disaster of the decade.
-
-
WHAT A GEM!!!
- By Momofour on 07-04-21
By: Julie Salamon
-
This Was Hollywood: Forgotten Stars and Stories
- Turner Classic Movies
- By: Carla Valderrama
- Narrated by: Carla Valderrama
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From former screen legends who have faded into obscurity to new revelations about the biggest movie stars, Valderrama unearths the most fascinating little-known tales from the birth of Hollywood through its Golden Age. The shocking fate of the world's first movie star. Clark Gable's secret love child. The film that nearly ended Paul Newman's career. A former child star who, at 93, reveals her #metoo story for the first time. Valderrama unfolds these stories, and many more, in a volume that is by turns riveting, maddening, hilarious, and shocking.
-
-
Hollywood Fun
- By Ernie D. Casciato on 01-06-21
By: Carla Valderrama
-
Shock Value
- How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror
- By: Jason Zinoman
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Much has been written about the storied New Hollywood of the 1970s, but while Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola were making their first classic movies, a parallel universe of directors gave birth to the modern horror film - aggressive, raw, and utterly original. Based on unprecedented access to the genre's major players, New York Times critic Jason Zinoman's Shock Value delivers the first definitive account of horror's golden age.
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A good listen, but narrow in scope
- By Billy on 01-31-13
By: Jason Zinoman
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Confidential Confidential
- The Inside Story of Hollywood's Notorious Scandal Magazine
- By: Samantha Barbas
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1950s, Confidential magazine, America's first celebrity scandal magazine, revealed Hollywood stars' secrets, misdeeds, and transgressions in gritty, unvarnished detail. Deploying a vast network of tipsters to root out stars' sexual affairs, drug use, and sexuality, publisher Robert Harrison destroyed celebrities' carefully constructed images and built a media empire. Confidential became the best-selling magazine on American newsstands in the 1950s, surpassing Time, Life, and the Saturday Evening Post. Confidential's spectacular rise was followed by an equally spectacular fall.
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Fascinating! Painstaking Research & Documentation
- By A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. on 05-22-19
By: Samantha Barbas
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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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Hollywood: The Oral History
- By: Jeanine Basinger, Sam Wasson
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon, Marni Penning
- Length: 28 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Picky, Picky!
- By Patrick on 12-22-22
By: Jeanine Basinger, and others
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Making Movies
- By: Sidney Lumet
- Narrated by: Richard M. Davidson
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the greatest directors of all time, Sidney Lumet has made movies that have been nominated for more than 50 Academy Awards. Making Movies is an honest and unflinching look at the business and craft of movie making. Lumet's book reveals the ingredients for the potion that brings movie magic to life and assures one thing: you will never look at movies the same way again.
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Clearly a genius but material dates
- By M. Rogers on 08-31-19
By: Sidney Lumet
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Hollywood Horrors
- Murders, Scandals, and Cover-Ups from Tinseltown
- By: Andrea Van Landingham
- Narrated by: Cindy Piller
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The name “Hollywood” conjures up fantastical images of bright lights, glamorous dreams, and impossible riches. From its humble beginnings as a ranch sprawling northwest of Los Angeles in the late 1800s, Hollywood has spanned lifetimes as a factory of dreams, a dazzling place where all things are possible.
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Review
- By Rhinoguy3000 on 08-11-22
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Hank and Jim
- The Fifty-Year Friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart
- By: Scott Eyman
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Henry Fonda and James Stewart were two of the biggest stars in Hollywood for 40 years. They became friends and then roommates as stage actors in New York, and when they began making films in Hollywood, they roomed together again. Between them they made such memorable films as The Grapes of Wrath, Mister Roberts, Twelve Angry Men, and On Golden Pond; and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Destry Rides Again, The Philadelphia Story, It's a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, and Rear Window.
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Fascinating look into these two actors' lives
- By MPAMIN on 06-25-18
By: Scott Eyman
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Scandals of Classic Hollywood
- Sex, Deviance, and Drama from the Golden Age of American Cinema
- By: Anne Helen Peterson
- Narrated by: Romy Nordlinger
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Believe it or not, America's fascination with celebrity culture was thriving well before the days of TMZ, Perez Hilton, Charlie Sheen's breakdown, and allegations against Woody Allen. And the stars of yesteryear? They weren't always the saints that we make them out to be. Part biography, part cultural history, the stories contained in this book cover the stuff that films are made of: love, sex, drugs, illegitimate children, illicit affairs, and botched cover-ups.
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Riveting journey
- By Jennifer on 10-07-14
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Harlow in Hollywood
- The Blonde Bombshell in the Glamour Capital, 1928-1937
- By: Darrell Rooney, Mark A. Vieira
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In her short decade in Hollywood, Jean Harlow created a new genre of movie star - her fans idolized her for her peerless image, her beautiful body, and her gorgeous façade. Harlow in Hollywood is the story of how a town and an industry created her, a story that's never been told before. In this book, renowned Harlow expert Darrell Rooney and Hollywood historian Mark Vieira team up to present the most beautiful - and accurate - book on Harlow ever produced.
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A quick listen
- By Michelle on 07-26-22
By: Darrell Rooney, and others
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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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Michael Curtiz
- A Life in Film
- By: Alan K. Rode
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 25 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Academy Award-winning director Michael Curtiz—whose best-known films include Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Mildred Pierce, and White Christmas—was in many ways the anti-auteur. During his 27-year tenure at Warner Bros., he directed swashbuckling adventures, Westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. In the first biography of this colorful, instinctual artist, Alan K. Rode illuminates the life and work of one of the film industry's most complex figures.
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Comprehensive
- By MikeEC on 04-28-22
By: Alan K. Rode
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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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Marlene Dietrich
- The Life
- By: Maria Riva
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 33 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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With intimate detail, author Maria Riva reveals the rich life of her mother, Marlene Dietrich, the charismatic star of stage and screen whose career spanned much of the 20th century. Opening with Dietrich's childhood in Schöneberg, Riva's biography introduces us to an energetic, disciplined, and ambitious young actress whose own mother equated show business with a world of vagabonds and thieves.
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Wow
- By Tabitha McIntyre on 10-03-20
By: Maria Riva
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Steve McQueen
- A Biography
- By: Marc Eliot
- Narrated by: Marc Eliot
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and '70s with now-classics such as The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Thomas Crown Affair, and Bullit, Steve McQueen is renowned as one of the most exciting actors ever to come out of Hollywood. Now, in Steve McQueen: A Biography, best-selling author Marc Eliot gives unique insight into McQueen's life, from his films to his three marriages, many affairs, and struggles with addictions.
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Snooze
- By Cill on 10-27-11
By: Marc Eliot
What listeners say about The Genius of the System
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Andrew Darlow
- 02-17-24
A fascinating and extensive look at Old Hollywood
I really enjoyed this book. There was so much interesting information about different movies over the years from about 1920-1960.
I especially like how they explained how some movies were developed, marketed and how they performed at the box office.
Since reading this, I watched a few classics and have been enjoying them very much.
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- Norm
- 08-25-23
Tightly Packed
At 24 1/2 hr, I was a little hesitant starting this book, thinking it would stretch out endlessly. But I wish it never ended. So many details of classic films, directors, stars, producers and screenwriters, all brilliantly woven into the studios, economies, successes and failures of the golden era. The intimidating length of the book flew by without a lull. It is probably my favorite of all my books on Hollywood. It has so much information that I already look forward to revisiting. I highly recommend it for anyone who loves this sort of information
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1 person found this helpful
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- P. Roth
- 01-21-23
Couldn’t Stop Listening
I wish this book went on for hours more! It was so interesting and informative.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Charlie Morton
- 05-26-23
A Textbook on Old Hollywood
I knew some of the people who lived and worked in old Hollywood and they were far more entertaining than this book. It is solid, but it is covering so many people, films, and studios it can't do justice to any of them. But if you don't know anything about Hollywood before 1960 this is a good introduction. If you are knowledgeable you will pickup a lot of tidbits and probably fill in some gaps, but still this was about the blandest coverage ever written of John Ford, Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, and Veronica Lake.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Jonathan S
- 01-12-25
Great book especially for TCM fans
Great book on the history and evolution of Hollywood as it transitions from silent to sound to TV. Highly recommended.
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