Kirkus Reviews QR Code
HOLLYWOOD DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE by Robert Parrish

HOLLYWOOD DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

By

Pub Date: Feb. 1st, 1987
Publisher: Little, Brown

Filmmaker Parrish's lighthearted, laugh-out loud memoir, a sequel to his equally charming Growing Up in Hollywood (1976). Parrish, gifted perhaps with total recall, fearlessly rebuilds conversations he once had with Ernest Hemingway, John Ford, Sam Spiegel, Irwin Shaw, Jack Lemmon, Robert Mitchum, Duke Wayne, Irving ""Swifty"" Lazar, and others less limelit. Growing Up in Hollywood turned into a vastly amusing homage to John Ford. Here, Parrish describes, among other things, his duties as a Navy petty officer under Ford's command in the Ford film unit assigned to the Office of Strategic Services during WW II; Parrish is the perfect foil for Ford's blank-faced, towering old-salt witticisms as he directs Parrish in the making of various OSS films. Even more delightful are Parrish's recollections of going with Hemingway to Pamplona for the running of the bulls on Hemingway's first readmission to Spain after WW II--outings on which Hemingway speaks stripped sentences in a kind of pidgin Hemingwayese (attested to by other commentators). Equally larger than life are Parrish's meetings with Promethean spendthrift-producer Spiegel, with Parrish's mighty-midget agent Swifty Lazar, and with. . .John Wayne who. . .speaks broken. . .sentences, like. . .this. Total entertainment.