Skip to content 
I’m very aware that I haven’t been posting much on my site, especially when it comes to the movie books that keep popping up. I’m still going to review what’s out now and coming soon, but in the meantime, here are four essential additions to your bookshelf.
Barrymore: The Spectacular, Thrilling Life of America’s Prince of Players By Terry Chester Shulman (University of Kentucky Press)
One of the first show business books I read when I was a boy was by Gene Fowler Good night, sweet princeA loving biography of John Barrymore. In it, he spun many stories about the famous actor, all very entertaining, but only some of them were true. In his welcome new book, Terry Chester Shulman takes off the rose-colored glasses to give us a more honest and detailed portrait of the artist and his legendary family tree. The actor’s surviving daughter provided access to previously unavailable family correspondence.
Shulman emphasizes the fact that John, or Jack as he was formerly known, may never have set foot on a stage or in front of a movie camera. That’s how talented an artist he was; It was not just a hobby. Arthur Brisbane, the editor of Fabled Hearst, wrote to him: “If you had followed it, you would certainly have gone into painting. But even the angel Gabriel does not know if a greater name could be made in that direction than you have done in painting.”
I would be remiss if I didn’t include the rare photos that accompany the text. As a lifelong fan of Barrymore, these precious pictures won me over. They were worth the price of admission on their own; As it happens, Shulman’s text is equally valuable.
Comedy is a scary business: a mad, mad, mad, mad world by James Curtis (Emmerac Editions)
After writing excellent biographies of Preston Sturges, Spencer Tracy and Buster Keaton, among others, James Curtis turned his attention to creating and producing. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world. I’ve never been a fan of this mammoth comedy, but I have an abiding interest in how movies are made, and this movie has as interesting a story as any. With access to daily production reports and correspondence between screenwriter William Rose and his wife Tanya, the author traces Rose’s ambition to make “the comedy to end all comedies” and reveals how producer-director Stanley Kramer, who bet on his financial success, achieved this goal.
True to his nature, Saga crazy world It’s more of an exercise in big production logistics than a story of inspiration. His script, always perfect, gave Kramer a plan of action and a checklist of tasks to complete, from casting to stunt work to the elaborate installation of miniature sets, shot in stop-motion, one frame at a time.
For exactly this reason, I never cared about the outcome: to my eyes, it’s a movie that’s not so much made as produced as a beautiful car. But learning how Kramer rallied his team one by one and pushed them forward is a good read, especially in the hands of Curtis, a first-rate wordsmith. I don’t want to get into spoilers, but I’ll admit that I never knew makeup genius Dick Smith — not yet the legend he’d become — was working on the film, and I left it at that.
Welcome to WACKYLAND: The Weird World of Bob Clampett Ruth Clampett and Darrell Van Zitters (Ruth Clampett)
For decades, animation fans have pored over Bob Clampett’s personal collection of memorabilia, mostly from his years working with Leon Schlesinger, as well as his groundbreaking puppet television show. It’s time for the apartment and its animated sequel, Bean and Cecil. Now his daughter Ruth has written a loving biography of her father and, with the help of talented animator and historian Darrell Van Zitters, has provided us with an amazing array of drawings, photographs and ephemera. Displayed in horizontal coffee table size, these fabulous images and the stories that go with them make this book a must for all cartoon lovers. It is currently sold by Stuart Ng Books:
Maverick in the Car: Orson Welles and the Battle of Fear on a Journey By Mark Edlitz
If the devil is in the details, this book is devilishly good. Author Edlitz, who self-published this valuable volume, has tapped the archives and libraries of the world to present the stories of the making and undoing of the 1943 thriller. A journey through fear. The Mercury Production was directed by actor Norman Foster and co-written by Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, who also stars as a colorful Turkish military officer. Only by quoting from interoffice memos and other day-to-day accounts do we come to understand how and why RKO Radio Pictures, whose president, George Shaffer, brought the 23-year-old radio and theater wunderkind to Hollywood … and then dumped him before he finished. The Glorious Ambersons and A journey through fear. while Amberson The subject of much study and debate, less time and effort was spent on the latter title, which ended only with an eleventh hour break from the studio – which unceremoniously dropped Mercury from its Culver City lot. If you’re worried about wrangling over booze fees and construction costs, this might not be your cup of tea, but I found it absolutely fascinating.
