This Was Hollywood: Forgotten Stars and Stories (Turner Classic Movies)
Book by Carla Valderrama
DETAILS
Publisher : Running Press Adult (November 17, 2020) Language : English Hardcover : 240 pages ISBN-10 : 0762495863 ISBN-13 : 978-0762495863 Item Weight : 1.92 pounds Dimensions : 7.5 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches Best Sellers Rank: #11,863 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #5 in Movie Guides & Reviews #14 in Movie History & Criticism #137 in Actor & Entertainer Biographies , In this one-of-a-kind Hollywood history, the creator of Instagram's celebrated @ThisWasHollywood reveals the forgotten past of the film world in a dazzling visual package modeled on the classic fan magazines of yesteryear. From former screen legends who have faded into obscurity to new revelations about the biggest movie stars, Valderrama unearths the most fascinating little-known tales from the birth of Hollywood through its Golden Age. The shocking fate of the world's first movie star. Clark Gable's secret love child. The film that nearly ended Paul Newman's career. A former child star who, at ninety-three, reveals her #metoo story for the first time. Valderrama unfolds these stories, and many more, in a volume that is by turns riveting, maddening, hilarious, and shocking. Drawing on new interviews, archival research, and an exhaustive library of photographs, This Was Hollywood is a compelling and visually stunning catalogue of the lost history of the movies. Read more
REVIEW
Carla Valderrama has written a very interesting take on the history of the Hollywood of the Golden Era beginning with the Silent Screen period and ending with the beginning of Paul Newman’s career in the 1950s. This Was Hollywood: Forgotten Stars & Stories is a compendium of vignettes detailing the good, bad, and the ugly of Hollywood’s checkered history. Some of the “forgotten stars” are perhaps better-known than others, for example Rin Tin Tin (“the dog who saved Warner Bros.”), Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, John Garfield, and Rita Hayworth, as opposed to Florence Lawrence, Sessue Hayakawa, Lois Weber, Cora Sue Collins, Eleanor Powell, and Susan Peters. Nonetheless, the stories author Valderrama tells of these “forgotten” actors, dancers, singers, and directors are quite revealing about what life was like for the people who were attracted to the glitz and the glamour of American cinema during the period from the 1920s to the 1950s. These are the decades of cinematic history in which I am more interested than those that coincide with the decades of my adulthood. So, I appreciate a chance to read about the careers of fabulous dancers such as the Nicholas Brothers, Eleanor Powell, and Vera-Ellen, all of whom should be remembered as just as skilled, if not more so, than the better remembered Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. I also am reminded of the sad tale of John Garfield, whose career and life were destroyed by the ugly activities of the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) and the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover in the early 1950s. Another of my memories is connected to a talented songstress, Marni Nixon, whose singing career was designed to be forgotten as it was transpiring, since she is best remembered for having ghost-sung for the likes of Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood, and Audrey Hepburn. A telling reminder of the back-door treatment given the beautiful and talented Lena Horne during her life is perhaps unconsciously emulated by the author in the two-page inset showing off, strangely enough, how well Ms. Horne could decorate clothing of the 1940s. At least, a lengthier treatment is given the superbly talented Nicholas Brothers, who could dance rings around the much better remembered (and white) Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, and whose contributions to Hollywood’s dance history largely consisted of acrobatic dance masterpieces that, so unfortunately, could be easily excised from a film when distributed to the racist South. Talk about ugly Hollywood history. Fortunately, one can appreciate the abilities of both Ms. Horne and the two brothers in a film like Stormy Weather (1943). This Was Hollywood, published under the imprimatur of Turner Classic Movies, can be highly recommended to readers today who are interested to learn more about the blacker aspects of Hollywood cinematic history ranging, if you will, from the black-listing of John Garfield during the HUAC disgrace to another form of black-listing to which performers of color were subjected who made the mistake of being born the wrong color. Of course, I do not have to read history books to find out what that means, since all I have to do is to watch today’s news.
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