by Debra Ann Pawlak ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 2011
A serviceable but flavorless history of early Hollywood.
Pawlak (Farmington and Farmington Hills, 2003) charts the establishment of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization best known for its annual distribution of the Academy Awards.
Unfortunately, Oscar fans will find little here to entice them. The author mostly foregoes any discussion of the fabled ceremonies, instead providing biographical sketches of the Academy’s founders. The result is a useful but dull primer on the movers and shakers of early Hollywood, with the familiar histories of such luminaries as Douglas Fairbanks and Cecil B. DeMille leavened with those of less well-known players, including lawyer Edwin Loeb and early special-effects maven Roy Pomeroy. Pawlak has done her homework—most of the profiles include information on the salient figure’s parents, siblings, employment history, marital status and financial standing—but the cumulative effect of all the data, especially as regards the relatively obscure likes of, say, Fred Niblo or Milton Sills, is ultimately stultifying and frustratingly hard to keep straight. The Academy was founded to help settle disputes, act as an educational repository for advancements in film technology and protect the industry’s image amid scandals and public outrage at the extravagance of the movie-star lifestyle. Pawlak largely neglects to report on the Academy’s activities in the pursuit of these goals. Instead, the author uses the founding of the Academy as a seemingly arbitrary matrix for celebrating the careers of Tinseltown’s pioneering artists, technicians and businessmen. Pawlak’s workmanlike prose and journalistic approach fail to elevate the material beyond an admirably detailed historical survey, but the sheer invention of the first generation of moviemakers inevitably results in appreciation.
A serviceable but flavorless history of early Hollywood.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-60598-137-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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