Still, these crystalline snapshots of a long-gone Hollywood should please most cinéastes.
A well-constructed anthology that provides satisfying meditations on film scandals both notorious and obscure.
McLean (Film Studies/Univ. of Texas) and Cook (A History of Narrative Film, not reviewed) assemble a cast of contributors who examine the “enormously potent and diverse historical, cultural, and ideological meanings” of such star scandals as Fatty Arbuckle’s manslaughter trial and Wallace Reid’s narcotics addiction. Sam Stoloff takes a novel approach to understanding Arbuckle (arguably the first mediated cinema scandal) by juxtaposing his moralized, melodramatic fall from grace with the concurrent Chicago White Sox scandal, noting how each resulted in self-imposed autocratic controls upon the respective industries. Mark Anderson sensitively traces how overworked early star Reid succumbed to the nascent film colony’s accessible drug scene, and how his demise was shamelessly exploited in campaigns to criminalize addiction. Nancy Cook resurrects a fascinating obscurity from Hollywood’s long-tortured relationship with race: the tale of Long Lance, a celebrated Ojibwa Indian who in 1928 starred in an “all-Indian” melodrama The Silent Enemy and was subsequently ruined by accusations (from other cast members) that he was, in fact, Negro. An important chapter by Cynthia Baron concerns the 1948 Red-baiting of the Actors’ Laboratory (a prominent theater company and school); its members were all blacklisted in a pungent prelude to McCarthyism. Other significant discussions concern the role of 1950s magazines like Confidential in “systematizing” scandal, and the travails encountered by pioneers of sexual independence (such as Hedy Lamarr, Ingrid Bergman, Rita Hayworth, and Jane Fonda). These are lively and culturally novel explorations; unfortunately, most of the writers fall back at points upon abstruse and alienating academic prose.
Still, these crystalline snapshots of a long-gone Hollywood should please most cinéastes.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8135-2885-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Rutgers Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
