This Oscars history mixes all the expected glitz and glamour with enough industry intrigue to power an award-winning drama.
Behind the scenes at the Academy Awards.
Regardless of your interest in Hollywood and awards season, this rich, deeply reported history has plenty to teach. New Yorker writer Schulman, author of Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep, looks at the awards through a variety of lenses, including artistic, business, political, and cultural. “The Oscars are a battlefield where cultural forces collide and where the victors aren’t always as clear as the names drawn from the envelopes,” he writes. The author illuminates these battles with compelling insider stories. His explanation of 1989’s “Worst Oscars Ever”—infamous for the raucous opening featuring Snow White and Rob Lowe—reveals the micromanaging influence of producer Allan Carr. Schulman also demonstrates Carr’s influence on other parts of the ceremony that continue today—e.g., announcing winners with “And the Oscar goes to…” and creating a fashion event where designers battle to get starlets to wear their gowns. The author shines brightest in his firsthand accounts. His coverage of the entire #OscarsSoWhite controversy, and changes that came with it, focuses on Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs and her decision-making. His reporting on the Moonlight/La La Land best picture mix-up definitively explains the hand movements that caused an accountant to give presenter Warren Beatty the envelope for best actress by mistake. Even when he seems like he’s gone too far, such as titling the chapter on Black Oscar winners “Tokens,” Schulman’s incisive reporting backs up his hypothesis. “For McDaniel, for Poitier, for Berry, the Oscar came to symbolize not progress but false promise—a chance for Hollywood to congratulate itself and then go back to business as usual while the winner was left isolated and open to public attack,” he explains. And yes, Will Smith’s slap of Chris Rock makes it into the book but only in the afterword.
This Oscars history mixes all the expected glitz and glamour with enough industry intrigue to power an award-winning drama.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780062859013
Page Count: 608
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
An old-school Hollywood tell-all with all the trimmings, traumas, and bold-face names.
A great American character claims her double legacy of genius and addiction.
Calling herself “the original nepo-baby,” the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli offers a raw and revealing look at a life shaped by fame and personal struggle. At the heart of Minnelli’s story is her fraught relationship with her volatile mother. While stressing that “our love was what mattered,” life with Judy was no picnic. The night before her fifth birthday, she accidentally kicked her mother in the head while watching TV, permanently scarred by lesson that “if Mama got angry, she was the most terrifying person in my life.” Garland’s addictions made her unstable and unreliable, forcing her daughter to take on adult responsibilities at a very young age. A veteran performer by the time she was in double digits, she won the first star in her EGOT crown (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards) at age 19 for her role in the musical Flora the Red Menace. This was also her first work with John Kander and Fred Ebb, musical collaborators in her most iconic successes: Cabaret, Liza With a “Z,” and New York, New York. Minnelli describes taking her first Valium in 1969 at the time of her mother’s death from an overdose, unwittingly assuming the mantle of addictions that would mar her public and private life for decades. In and out of the Betty Ford Center, she finally achieved sobriety in 2015, on the eve of her 70th birthday. As the title suggests, she has great stories, and, with the help of her dear friend Feinstein and co-writers Getlin and Evans, she leaves out none of the juice. From her torrid, cocaine-fueled romance with Martin Scorsese (both were married at the time, and she cheated on both husband and lover with Mikhail Baryshnikov) to her falling-out with Lady Gaga at the Oscars in 2022, she spares neither herself nor anyone else and, in the process, reclaims her once very tattered dignity in a moving and remarkable way.
An old-school Hollywood tell-all with all the trimmings, traumas, and bold-face names.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781538773666
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
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