Try To Tell the Story
By David Thomson
Alfred A. Knopf, 224 pages, $23.95
There are two kinds of personalities prone to getting lost in the movies:
1. Those for whom movies are an escape from life.
2. Those for whom movies are a lens through which to examine life—from Read More
Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years
By Cari Beauchamp
Alfred A. Knopf, 512 pages, $35
Joe Kennedy comes down to us as a peculiarly modern figure, a man who formed the mold so comfortably inhabited by Ken Lay and Bernie Madoff. Old Joe was a cold-blooded capitalist carnivore who cared for nobody outside Read More
Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master
By Michael Sragow
Viking, 645 pages, $40
Once upon a time, movie directors had lives before they went into the movies. They fought in wars, they shot down enemy aircraft, they rode with Pancho Villa. They could field-strip a rifle, an engine or a woman, in any order that Read More
A Fortunate Life
By Robert Vaughn
St. Martin’s, 322 pages, $25.95
In 1972, Robert Vaughn wrote a book about the blacklist era called Only Victims. It’s basically his Ph.D. thesis—well structured, even-handed, a bit pedantic, but still invaluable, and I’ve always recommended it to people interested in that period.
It’s taken Mr. Vaughn 36 years Read More
Fred Astaire
By Joseph Epstein
Yale University Press, 198 pages, $22
You know you’re in trouble when the author of a book on a popular artist drags in lofty literary references to justify what he clearly regards as his own intellectual slumming. In this case, Joseph Epstein, the author of Snobbery (2002) and the former Read More
Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art Out of Desperate Times
By Susan Quinn
Walker, 325 pages, $25.99
Imagine a country where the president uses the full faith and credit of the government to put people to work in hard times. Imagine a country where artists are not regarded Read More
ME OF LITTLE FAITH
By Lewis Black
Riverhead, 240 pages, $24.95
LEWIS BLACK IS AN INDIGNANT Paddy Chayefsky character come to screaming, sputtering life, but he has a sneaking admiration for a truly audacious con artist. Jimmy Swaggart won Mr. Black’s heart when the evangelist leaned against his own mother’s tombstone and asked for money, Read More
The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company
By David A. Price
Alfred A. Knopf, 308 pages, $27.95
David Price unerringly puts his finger on the primary problem with The Pixar Touch in his acknowledgments, where he thanks his editor for "taking a chance on a book about business and technology and filmmaking."
It sounds Read More
THE PLACE TO BE: WASHINGTON, CBS, AND THE GLORY DAYS OF TELEVISION NEWS
By Roger Mudd
PublicAffairs, 413 pages, $27.95
Why are journalists’ memoirs dull?
Could it be they’re so studiously trained to keep their own personalities out of their writing that when the time for self-expression comes, they have nothing of Read More
HOME: A MEMOIR OF MY EARLY YEARS
By Julie Andrews
Hyperion, 352 pages, $26.95
My favorite moment in Julie Andrews’ memoir comes after the first New Haven preview of My Fair Lady. Rex Harrison had a pre-performance panic attack, the show ran to an endless three and a half hours, but Julie Andrews Read More
