City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s

by Otto Friedrich

HARDCOVER OCTAVO

Genres: Film, History, Nonfiction, Media Tie In, Art, Pop Culture, American History

495 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Otto Friedrich was born in Boston and graduated from Harvard, where his father was a political science professor. He took a while to find his literary stride. His career took him from the copy desk at Stars and Stripes to a top writing job at Time, with stops in between with the United Press in London and Paris and with The Daily News and Newsweek in New York.

But it was the seven years he spent with The Saturday Evening Post, including four as its last managing editor, that established Mr. Friedrich as a writer to be reckoned with.

When the venerable magazine folded in 1969, Mr. Friedrich, who had seen the end coming and kept meticulous notes, delineated its demise in a book, 'Decline and Fall," which was published by Harper & Row the next year. Widely hailed as both an engaging and definitive account of corporate myopia, the book, which won a George Polk Memorial Award, is still used as a textbook by both journalism and business schools, his daughter said.

From then on, Mr. Friedrich, who had tried his hand as a novelist in the 1950's and 60's and written a series of children's books with his wife, Priscilla Broughton, wrote nonfiction, turning out an average of one book every two years.

They include "Clover: A Love Story," a 1979 biography of Mrs. Henry Adams; "City of Nets: Hollywood in the 1940's" (1986); "Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations," (1989); "Olympia: Paris in the Age of Manet," (1992), and "Blood and Iron," a study of the Von Moltke family of Germany that is being published this fall.

He wrote his books, as well as reams of freelance articles and book reviews, while holding down a full-time job with Time that required him to write in a distinct style far different from the one he used at home.

Mr. Friedrich, who joined Time as a senior editor in 1971 and retired in 1990 after a decade as a senior writer, wrote 40 major cover stories, the magazine said yesterday, as well as hundreds of shorter pieces, all of them produced on an old-fashioned Royal typewriter that he was given special dispensation to continue using long after the magazine converted to computers.

Mrs. Lucas, portraying her father as a New England moralist whose life and literary interests reflected his disenchantment with much of 20th-century culture, noted that his aptitude for anachronism did not end with typewriters. "We have five rotary telephones in this house," she said.

In addition to pursuing his eclectic interests into print, Mr. Friedrich also had a knack for turning his own life into art. When he tried to grow roses, the record of his failure became a book, "The Rose Garden" (1972). When relatives were stricken with schizophrenia, his frustration drove him to produce an exhaustive study of insanity, "Going Crazy" (1976).

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you were going to have only one book on Hollywood, this is it. Beyond essential. Beyond ... well anything. Any book that combines the Marx Brothers with Thomas Mann with Howard Hughes with Brecht with Sam Goldwyn with ... It just goes on and it's one great story after another.

The key thing is that every major European Artist came to Los Angeles to either escape the War situation in Europe or to work in the film business - or more likely both. Most had no choice but to come to Los Angeles.

So in a nutshell, this is the history of Hollywood from 1939 to 1949 and it deals with the fear of the Reds to studio problems at the time to Brecht working with Fritz Lang and beyond. Truly a great book.

[Chris D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a long book that examines the German diaspora during the late 1930's and the 1940's in Southern California. It is not really a history of Hollywood during the decade of the 40's. The author does tell many stories about those who make the movies, but he is more interested in those who wrote the movies. Many anecdotes are related which are entertaining even though some of the anecdotes are then contradicted by the facts.

Friedrich does seem more interested in telling stories that put the studio heads in the worst light, and he does not seem to like the actors as well. He really does not like politicians, especially Franklin Roosevelt, however he has many nice things to say about Ronald Reagan. This book was published in 1986 which might explain the latter item. He calls this a portrait of Hollywood in the forties, but it certainly was not a comprehensive history of the era despite it being over 600 pages long.

[Carla Remy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very casual,conversational book about Hollywood and its history.
It made me sad to read about Nathaniel West (born Nate Weinstein ). I knew that he had died in a car accident at age 36. I guess I never thought how much Hollywood would have hated his fourth novel, which was about it, the Day of the Locust.
I don’t really believe in heaven or ghosts. I mean, I don’t know what happens after you’re dead.
It is just awful to read about a writer dying and not knowing that 40 years later everyone would love their book and make a great movie out of it.

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prior to this, Friedrich wrote a very good popular history of Weimar Berlin, Before the Deluge..., but this tantalizing, compulsively readable panorama of Hollywood in its fabled glory years is his masterpiece.

It makes a good companion piece to Kenneth Anger's scurrilous and spurious but delectably trashy Hollywood Babylon, because both books are not really much different in subject matter and objective.

Here is the titillating underbelly side of Tinseltown, and Friedrich's prose is scintillating. He is thought-provoking without over analyzing. And perhaps most importantly, he knows which stories to tell in forming this eclectic kaleidoscope of the movie capital. This is a must-read for anyone interested in classic Hollywood, and what made it all tick. I need to read this one again sometime.

(Kr@Ky, with amendments in 2016)

[Sketchbook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Born in Minsk, Russia, the semi-literate Louis B Mayer, who first bought a former burlesque theatre when he was 22 and became a monarch of Hollywood until he was toppled in 1951, was quivering w rage when his 2d-in command Dore Schary started to eclipse him. "Sit down," Mayer snarled, "You little kike...." L.B. loved to spit out the word when he was pissed off. Some things in LaLa Land never change; they even get worse: Burped Lewis Selznick, father of David, "Less brains are necessary in the motion picture industry than any other." Ok, that's obvious. We see it clearly today as the manipulators of American kultur, or what passes for it, focus on big screen bugs, spiders, hulks, bats and other "action" dimwits - once the butter of poverty row studios - but now reign supreme.

In his social history of those who made and controlled the movies from 1940-50, the author gives an unsparing view of the radicals, gangsters, writers, execs, stars who became the conquering heroes of the US's eleventh-largest industry. Author Friedrich, a superior reporter, collides a series of dazzling anecdotes in a knockout cinematic fashion. There's the remodeling of a teenager named Margarita Cansino, a chubette from Queens, N.Y., who became Rita Hayworth; the loving couple, Phyllis Isley Walker & Robert Walker w two baby sons, who had a brutal tear when David O Selznick "made" her a star -- and her soon ex-husband became an alcoholic, dead at age 31 in 1951; the blacklist which both Chaplin and Brecht escaped by decamping to Europe, with Brecht opening a Swiss bank account and announcing his support for Stalin; fiercely independent Raymond Chandler claiming that not a word of his sc was used in "Strangers on a Train" (Pauline Kael makes a loud fart saying his script gave the film distinction); mobster Bugsy Siegel getting the kiss of death from Meyer Lansky; and William Faulkner appealing to his publisher at Random House to help end his contract at Warner's. Howard Hughes is designing a bra for Jane Russell and announcing that Ingrid Bergman is w child from Rossellini; and Ronald Reagan, his career going nowhere, begins to hone his speechmaking skills. Here's a portrait of a horrific dream factory that created, asserts the author, "much of what Americans today regard as reality."

[Glenn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not finish this book. When I first took it up, I was under the impression that it concentrated on the German intellectual diaspora to L.A. in the '30s and '40s, and hence might make a good companion piece to "Fin de Siècle Vienna" by Carl Schorske, which I liked very much indeed. Anyway, it is not that. Every fifty pages or so Friedrich, an absolutely insufferable snob, throws in some lament about how little work Bertolt Brecht got in Los Angeles, and then continues his condescending sniffing at the venalities of the U.S. movie business with which I've already well and long familiarized myself. He's particularly quick to point out female performers having "no talent." He says of Preston Sturges that "he could make even Veronica Lake funny." (Rene Clair could too, and Lake could maybe be funny all on her own, at one point, before awful men in an awful indutry ground her down.) He makes a snide unsupported remark about teenage Ava Gardner signing a contract including a morals clause "with fingers crossed." I'm not a worshipper of either Hammett or Chandler but to read Friedrich on them you'd think they were less gifted prose writers than James Patterson. He says of Adorno and Horkheimer that they "never accomplished anything substantial." I mean, it never ends. I finally threw in the towel at his pronouncement that "To Have And Have Not" "wasn't a particularly good movie." He doesn't think much of "Blood and Sand" either. So long, Tom Milne and Robin Wood, nice knowing you.

Friedrich is long dead and it would not be proper to speak ill of him but...never mind. Here's some advice. For a more humane but hardly rose-colored portrait of Hollywood from that time, from the point of view of a European refugee, read Salka Viertel's "The Kindness of Strangers." Friedrich borrows her account of Arnold Schoenberg's tragicomic tangles with movie studio philistines, but in her account, angry as she was at the mistreatment of her friend, there's compassion and even empathy extended to his ignorant tormentors. And for a good portrait of Brecht immediately before his Hollywood sojourn, check out "The Aesthetics of Resistance, Vol. 2," by Peter Weiss, a monumental book all around.

[N.N. Heaven · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been in love with Hollywood, the classic Hollywood, ever since I was a little girl. Films of that era appealed to my HEA obsession and fed my imagination. City of Nets takes us deep into the dark side of Hollywood, it's decline and struggle to remain relevant in American society. I found the rich historical narration fascinating. Friedrich did his research and presents it without giving off any prejudice. Highly recommend!

My Rating: 5 stars

[Ian Laird · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an enthralling account of Hollywood in the forties.

1939 is generally regarded as Hollywood’s greatest year, with the release of Gone with the Wind, The Grapes of Wrath, The Wizard of Oz, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach and Wuthering Heights, among others.

The thirties good times continued into the early forties: all the long-time moguls were still in place and wartime cinema attendance remained high. But post war history is a different story. By 1950 the studios and the industry generally were being assailed by multiple challenges: a sharp decline in post war cinema attendance; the concomitant breathtaking rise in the number of television sets in homes across the country; the increasing independence of actors and producers aided by the cumulative impact of successive challenges to indentured contracts by stars such as Olivia de Havilland; the breakup of studio control of distribution networks and the increasing interest of HUAC in weeding out communist influence in the film industry, read Hollywood.

The author, a long time journalist, editor and writer of non-fiction, novels and children’s books, takes a refreshingly novel approach by examining each year of the decade in turn, while sometimes going back into the past and into the future. He also has a unique take on source material which I will come to.

In the main he chooses a biographical approach to the lives of the stars, producers, directors and especially studio heads. He nevertheless pursues a number of themes which he revisits through several years, notably industrial activity, demonstrably corrupt and usually fractious; the impact of the war on Hollywood, especially the mute reaction of the mostly Jewish studio executives to the treatment of Jews by the Germans; and the efforts of Congress, especially HUAC, to rid the town of communists or at least gain political capital from seeming to do so.

Friedrich gives full coverage to film production, providing copious detail of the work of individual filmmakers which is usually unflattering: from L B Mayer, he of the enormous all-white office to the habitually inebriated Raymond Chandler to the cynical Billy Wilder, the politically savvy Ronald Reagan, bombastic Orson Welles and European refugees like Michael Curtiz (“you think I know fuck nothing. Well, I tell you I know fuck all!’), Thomas Mann, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky and Berthold Brecht. The refugee writers and composers contain an unusually high proportion of square pegs obliged to fit round holes.

What is remarkably refreshing is that Friedrich eschewed interviews relying almost exclusively on secondary sources. He does use some primary material, notably the hearing transcripts of several congressional committees, particularly HUAC. Thus he is neither beholden to any of his subjects nor swayed by any personal charisma of protagonists who might have been still around (the book was published in 1986). He tells the story like it is; or at least an accepted version of the truth. I recognised accounts of events from books with which I am familiar, for example, Robert Mitchum’s marijuana bust, Edward G Robinson’s plight with HUAC; Raymond Chandler’s drinking, especially the way he wrote the Blue Dahlia, in a constant state of non-sobriety; and L B Mayer’s histrionics.

But Friedrich puts this all together convincingly cross referencing his material to keep the stories consistent. I have never read anything about these days in Hollywood as broad in scope and so successfully managed. A look at Friedrich’s sources tells us a great deal: his bibliography runs for 13 pages, more than 550 volumes of biography, autobiography, congressional hearings, history and some fiction by writers who also worked in Hollywood in the forties. Pretty impressive. Highly recommended.

[Still · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting for the entries on Nathanael West, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain.

[Andrew]

I consider myself something of a film nerd, and from the era of classic Hollywood, I've expressed plenty of admiration for the work of Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and John Ford. And yet -- other than the lurid, mostly fictionalized scandal-sheet tales of onetime child star, later avant-porn director Kenneth Anger, written for an audience that still considered the word "lesbian" to be a slander -- I hadn't read too much into the goings-on of classic Hollywood. Yes, I knew about the mass relocation of the Mitteleuropa intelligentsia to LA, and I knew about the fallout of HUAC and the blacklist. But I didn't know quite so much about the complete crash and burn of capital, ideology, and personal vendetta in '40s Hollywood. And like some of the best commentators on our culture, Otto Friedrich knows how to school you on Marxist theater, contemporary classical music, and American refugee policy in this wildly entertaining way. Pack this one in your beach basket, but be prepared to come out a whole lot smarter.

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting look at Hollywood during a time of transition in America....the war, its effects on film making, and the rise of the two greatest threats to the industry......the Red scare and television. Each year is discussed separately and filled with anecdotes about actors, directors, the studios, writers and all the things that made Hollywood the center of film entertainment. A fun read but also somewhat disturbing as much of the inner workings of the studios were not what they appeared. Its a book that can be read at leisure as each chapter stands alone. If you enjoy the Hollywood of yesteryear, this book is recommended.

[fonz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entretenidísimo, informativo y divertido relato de Hollywood durante la década de los cuarenta, los años en que los estudios forjaron el relato mítico sobre sí mismos que perdura hasta hoy. El libro se estructura en un capítulo por año de la década de los cuarenta, lo que al principio genera una sensación de anecdotario sin mucha cohesión, sensación que va desapareciendo a medida que uno avanza en la lectura, convirtiéndose en una crónica coral hilada por varios personajes que aparecen intermitentemente a lo largo del relato (Louis B. Mayer, Selznick, Chaplin, Hughes, Brecht, los hermanos Mann, Ingrid Bergman, Ronald Reagan...) en el que Friedrich mantiene con mucha habilidad el equilibrio entre contexto político-económico-social, anecdotario, cotilleo, historias personales, relatos de rodajes, funcionamiento de la industria, condiciones laborales, actores, directores, músicos y escritores. Se presta especial atención al choque entre baja y alta cultura personalizado en las peripecias de luminarias norteamericanas y europeas de la Alta Cultura como Igor Stravinsky, Faulkner o Bertolt Brecht enfrentados a la fábrica de fantasías populares que era Hollywood (no es que ellos salgan demasiado bien parados). Friedrich emplea un ingenioso sarcasmo a la hora de escribir que a ratos resulta hilarante, las páginas dedicadas a Howard Hugues o los primeros años de un Orson Welles post-Hollywood son simplemente descacharrantes. En fin, el libro es muy largo y a veces trata temas que no me han interesado demasiado (el fascinante mundo de la Mafia en los sindicatZzzzzz) pero me leería muy feliz otros tantos tochos como éste sobre la historia de Hollywood, uno por década del siglo XX.

[Aaron Haspel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine book about Hollywood in the important decade of the 40s, which began with Andy Hardy and ended with noir. Friedrich is more honest than most; he can almost bring himself to admit that the Hollywood Ten were, in fact, Communists. (Which is not to say they should have gone to jail for the absurd crime of "contempt of Congress.") I would have liked more detailed coverage of the Paramount antitrust suit. It was the most important event for Hollywood in the period, the one that broke up the studio system for good.

Friedrich retails, with a few caveats and misgivings, the usual stories about the moguls, in which they nearly always come off as sneaky, grasping, cowardly, witless, and ignorant about the world in general and the movie business in particular. Yet these same cowardly and ignorant men created an entire industry out of sand and scrub brush. They are known today almost entirely through the eyes of the writers they employed. I suspect they get a worse rap than just about anyone who ever lived.

[Susan Liston · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is everything you've ever wanted to know about Hollywood in the forties and THEN some and it's quite strangely written. It's as if the author was so loaded up with stories he just starts to blither them out non-stop in random order. The subject changes constantly, often on the same page, as with one that begins with Bugsy Siegel's murder and ends with Rita Hayworth filing for divorce from Orson Welles. So if you are reading something that doesn't especially grab your interest, drop your eyes down an inch or two and you might find something that does.

[Andrewh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is really a series of anecdotes and vignettes about the golden age of Hollywood, beautifully written with a wry detachment by Otto Friedrich, who notes the bad and the beautiful. The author focuses much attention on the high-cultured European emigres in Hollywood, such as the Mann brothers, Brecht, and Stravinsky, as well as other interlopers such as Raymond Chandler and William Faulkner, all of whom were gobbled up and spat out by the dream machine. Other 'outsiders' treated here include the great Hollywood moguls such as Sam Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg and Darryl F. Zanuck. These were the guys (and excepting the frail boy genius Thalberg they were very guy-ish) who made the studio system tick, rather than the famous directors (also ex-pats often, such as Billy Wilder, Michael Curtiz and Van Sternberg), and managed to make some great and popular movies in doing so. The dark side is also explored, with the rise of McCarthyism and the HUAC committees and the Red Scare - this would eventually drive Charlie Chaplin out of America, and wrecked the careers of many writers. Excellent overall, if containing rather too many well-worn anecdotes. It leaves you wanting more.

[Leonard Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific book about the movie industry in the 1940s, combining hard facts and analysis with some of the juiciest anecdotes you'll find anywhere. Worth a read.

[Lucy Draper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant!

[Tom Stamper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I decided halfway through that City of Nets was the best history ever written about 1940s Hollywood. It's not a thorough history, but the subjects he tackles are handled in depth. You'll come away understanding the partnership of Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett and why they eventually had enough of each other. You get plenty of the moguls. Louis B. Mayer gets the most ink, but Jack Warner is spread liberally, and David Selznick bounces in and out. You see the novelists F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain make a good living without ever enjoying the work. Faulkner gets to adapt Hemingway. Chandler improves upon Cain.

For some strange reason Friedrich dubs young Orson Welles as handsome. I have never heard that one before. Maybe he is trying to understand what Rita Hayworth saw in him. I didn't know that Welles times at RKO was due to Nelson Rockefeller's substantial holding in the company and therefore Welles was tossed out because Rockefeller sold his holdings. Welles is good segue into Charlie Chaplin that turned a Welles idea into his own film Monsieur Verdoux, the oddly compelling Bluebeard story that only James Agee seemed to appreciate at the time.

Much is written here about HUAC and the Hollywood Ten, but I think Friedrich might have had a more rounded understanding if he had talked more to Ten alum, Edward Dmytryk, Dmytryk better explains why the stars flew to DC to support the witnesses and how the strategy agreed upon by the witnesses led to their alienation. Friedrich has an interesting story or two about how those witnesses fared in jail.

You'll get a dose of Ingrid Bergman and Rosilini, some Bogart and Bacall, but very little Cary Grant or James Stewart or John Wayne. I suppose if he gave every big star equal treatment the book would have been 2,700 pages.

[Ricardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Si uno tuviera que elegir un solo libro para leer en la vida y poder entender el significado de la palabra "Hollywood", este es el libro. Los que amamos el cine ya hemos leído muchos ensayos, memorias, recuerdos y entrevistas sobre este inagotable tópico. Pareciera que todo el que alguna vez puso un pie en esa ciudad tuvo algo que decir al respecto sobre las películas o sobre quienes las hacían. ¿Y entonces? Friedrich leyó durante buena parte de su vida adulta cerca de un millar de libros sobre el tema, y en un denodado esfuerzo de síntesis se propuso comprenderlos, interpretarlos y combinarlos.

Son 12 capítulos (uno por año, entre 1939 y 1950) que arrancan en el momento de máximo apogeo y culminan con la caída del studio system. En el interín una guerra mundial, la masiva inmigración intelectual europea a las playas de California, feroces luchas entre sindicatos comunistas y de los otros, antisemitismo a ultranza en una industria dominada por judíos, la guita de los gangster que va y viene, conformismo y rebeldía, sexo al por mayor, drogas a la enésima potencia, macarthismo, listas negras y películas, muchas películas para entretener o sacudir a los 100 millones de norteamericanos que acudían semanalmente al cine.

Todo lo que Ud. quiso saber sobre Warner, Mayer, Selznick, Thalberg, Bergman, Welles, Houston, Bogart, Davis, Scott Fitzgerald, Flynn, Hitchcock, Hayworth, Brech, Chaplin, Faulkner, Mitchum, Huston, Wilder, Gable, Schoneberg, Hughes, Hemingway, etc., etc. etc. Incluye 20 páginas con la sabrosa bibliografía consultada y un índice onomástico.

Fue esta la principal fuente consultada por los Coen Bros. a la hora de escribir las múltiples tramas de "Barton Fink".

En una palabra: fundamental.

[Rick Burin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A personal history of ‘40s Hollywood, which for this author means Thomas Mann, Berthold Brecht, Arnold Schoenberg, labour unions and anti-semitism, as much as Gene Tierney, Rita Hayworth and Louis B. Mayer (and much more than Cary Grant, whose conflicted, confused and confusing existence is bizarrely consigned to the ‘boring’ pile). Friedrich shapes secondary sources into a narrative that at its best is panoramic and at worst somewhat bitty, but always elegantly written and highly readable. Some of the stories he tells have since been debunked and others are over-familiar (at least to massive Old Hollywood nerds), but there’s plenty that was new to me, and his contextualising is first-rate, as he explains how Hollywood got its water, America got racist and Bugsy Siegel got shot.

Depending on your tastes, though, Friedrich’s endless sneering may begin to pall – aside from Double Indemnity, he is dismissive of just about everything and everybody, deriding most books and films and recordings as bad or brainless or embarrassing, and thinking the worst of almost everyone he encounters. In Brechtian fashion, he seems to take a particular delight in debunking heroism: toppling or dismantling those ‘40s figures that (left-leaning) history has since judged as stoic and virtuous – among them, John Garfield – an agenda which arguably undermines his objectivity, and is also really fucking depressing. I enjoyed it when he did it to Ronald Reagan, though, which just shows the double-standard I operate under.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, written in the 1980s, is chock full of anecdotes, rumors, stories, and political machinations about, as the subtitle says, Hollywood in the 1940s. Each long chapter covers a full year (with side trips to set up history and occasionally mention what would happen later.) It's not just about the movie studios, or the actors and writers and musicians, though it's largely about them.

I mean, how much thought have you given to Arnold Schoenberg in his years spent in Hollywood - I would personally love to have seen Schoenberg's meeting with Louis B. Mayer about potentially scoring a film. Or how about Bertolt Brecht? Other German emigres include Thomas Mann and his brother Heinrich, and of course Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder.

Sometimes Friedrich talks about specific films, usually with lots of stories about the efforts to get the script right (or wrong, depending on whether he's talking abut the studio heads or the writers), and to find the right actors and director. He spends a lot of time talking about the slowly unfolding Justice Department investigations into studio monopoly which led to the disbursement of their theaters near the end of the decade, and about the House Unamerican Activities Committee in congress which eventually unfairly imprisoned ten Hollywood writers. I knew a little about the latter, but Friedrich adds a lot of context and detail - it turns out Humphrey Bogart, who always looks so cool in footage of the actors who went to Washington to support the writers, felt used by the organizers of the actors. That was disappointing.

Friedrich admits that not every story he tells is likely to be true, and he even tells different versions of the same ones a couple times. But his cynical takes on the people he'd admired as a teen at the time and his dry sense of humor makes every page entertaining and fun to read. (Well, less entertaining and fun when he talks about racism and anti-Semitism, which could not be ignored when looking at this period.)

[Tilde C · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a deep dive, and how intricate it all is! It's so easy for books about Hollywood to center the actors, but Friedrich makes a point of including a very wide cross section of the people who inhabited or influenced Tinseltown: Directors and gangsters and writers and composers and politicians. Some we revisit through the ten-year scope of the book (I was particularly enthralled following the ill-fated attempts of Bertolt Brecht to make it in the business).

The year-specific chapters give a fascinating insight into the changing environment these men and women worked in: From patriotic and idealistic wartime to the paranoia and persecution of the HCUA era. Even as the book jumps from theme to theme, personage to personage, you see the trends starting to form, how certain ideas or creators are pushed aside or superceded (Like from Brech to Ayn Rand, what a downgrade!)

Still, my favourite part of this book is probably how unabashedly opinionated and witty Friedrich's writing is. It's not just a dry collection of "this happened, that happened, this person said this while that person said that" -- Friedrich lays out all the facts as he knows them, but even the play-by-plays show by word choice and comparisons exactly what he feels about this or that event or movie or person. When Fredrich enjoys a movie he REALLY enjoys it, when he hates it he picks it mercilessly apart, and he does the same with the people involved. There's an almost morbid, teeth-gritting wit to even the horrible aspects, the racism or antisemitism or injustices, and Fredrich makes it very clear just how low he thinks those people involved are. I don't always agree with his assessments but there's a real personality to this book, a real voice. And I had great fun reading this massive tome.

[Tripp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite enjoyable, but also quite possibly too much. This is a discursive history of Hollywood, which means it covers actors, directors, producers, films, film production, economic history, labor relations and politics. Written in the 80s when many of the principals (of which there are dozens) were still alive and at least familiar, it can require some quick Wikipedia/IMDB reminders of who he is discussing. I loved long portions and was bored by others. Well worth it, but be aware it will be a true fan who loves it all

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Invaluable portrait of Hollywood’s glorious 40s, which turned out not to be as glorious nor as stable as presented nostalgically. You don’t have to be a TCM devotee to learn a lot, from the basal insecurity of studio heads to be considered “American” that they became vulnerable to HUAC and the Hays Office (they always went to great lengths to strike-bust.) Particularly strong on the German and Austrian emigres who breathed new life into LA, including Brecht, Mann, Lemarr and Schoenberg. Terrific side profile on Bugsy’s rise and fall.

[Melanie Guerra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book full of so much more than Hollywood history! The first half of the 20th century and anything Hollywood touched in that time is discussed in one way or another. An incredible read, one I will likely reference for a long time to come.

[Elias · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. It chronicles life in Hollywood in the 40s with crazy and scandalous stories including the Mob, lots of cheating and Bert Brecht.

[Julesreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best film books a boy (or girl; or person) could ever ask for. Appropriately cynical, surprisingly macabre, anecdotal, rich, and complete. Luv—ed—it.

[Henry Wade · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, but too long and way too detailed. But I learned a lot. To enjoy this book, you have to really have an interest in old-timey Hollywood, which I do. This is not a gossipy book, i.e., not a lot of lurid facts about stars...

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an easy to read, though lengthy, and somewhat meandering book about Hollywood's golden age of the 1940s, told in an interconnected anecdotal way, with one story leading to another, and back stories supplied, so that the time period covered in the book actually reaches back to the beginnings of movies in the time of Edison and "the trust" and forward to discuss the latter years of some of the major personalities (producers, actors, writers, directors) that survived into the last decades of the 20th century. It was eye-opening and mostly generally pleasant to read, although various scandals were often the pegs upon which discussions of personalities were based; after a while this narrative pattern was predictable, almost like the expectation of a punchline to a humorous story or joke. The reader though does get a sense of how the business flourished, and became so wildly profitable, up until television began to erode the enormous profits generated by the movies. I found out how the government eventually had the courts dismantle the vertically integrated industry because it decided the major studios were a criminal conspiracy, given that they controlled not only the studios in which pictures were created, and the actors and writers by means of contractual agreements, but also chains of movie theaters, and could therefore compel movie theater managers to accept, sometimes sight unseen, packages of movies. The major studios had to exit the movie theater side of the business - which was another factor leading to the end of their rather dictatorial power in the world of movies. The book also explained the rise of Hollywood unions - including the intricacies of competing unions - and detailed the famous movie industry strikes in the 1940s, similar (except for the violence) to the current strike by writers in Hollywood these days. There was a link between organized crime and Hollywood unions, a link between some of the Hollywood unions and studio owners, as well as a link between studio funding and organized crime figures, such as Bugsy Siegel, who was also once a friend of George Raft. The book consists of inter-connected meanderings seemingly going off on tangents but in the end, the fascinating excursions make the reader want to keep going, keep turning the pages, because of the wealth of information conveyed in the writer's rather entertaining style. Also, for anyone who is familiar with the movies of the era, as you read you can always envision the actors, even some of the films cited and so the book seems to supply an added dimension to classic movies of the era with the additional background information about particular landmark movies, some quite notable such as "Casablanca" and insight, sometimes quirky or unexpectedly obscure, into the lives of actors such as Lauren Bacall, John Garfield, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Charlie Chaplin and many others. This was the perfect book for me to read at this time because although I had never been much of a film buff, I became more interested in movies, especially those of the golden era of Hollywood, over the pandemic, which meant more time was spent at home (hiding from the virus). The movies of this prior, rather morally simpler era, could provide a welcome respite from the fears of infection and death and moral ambiguities of the present era. So for the past few years, I would say I have become more of a movie viewer than ever before, and even check out information on line about movies I like, which is something I never did before the pandemic. Movies, especially those of golden era Hollywood, in some ways are fairy-tales for grown ups, such that the viewer reassuringly knows that despite the hardships and dangers, in the end, the good guy and love will triumph, and the bad guy and evil will end up crushed. Actually, this moralistic schematic ever-repeating pattern was not always exactly in effect in Hollywood - there was a time when there could be much more cynical movies, but eventually various government and religious organization stepped in to call for a code, probably the same people who pushed Prohibition, and then Hollywood began to self-censor itself so that in general, in the movies the bad guys always get their comeuppance while the good guys prevail. Going to the movies means knowing that no matter how scary the story is, no matter what travails the leading man and lady have to go through, they will eventually prevail and be united. Good always triumphs over evil in the movies. In this sense, the movies of golden era Hollywood were a kind of collective moralizing ritual that millions once paid to experience on a weekly basis. I think this was the key to their popularity from the beginning of the mass popularization of the medium. The shows in general offered a specific rather unvarying arc of moral redemption and triumph - which exactly matched the viewer's prior religious/educational conditioning. This is why people couldn't get enough of them - they reinforced and illustrated again and again a story of good triumphing over evil. And if you appreciated these stories, as most people would, then your own identity as a good person was likewise somehow reinforced. The movies functioned as a means of social integration, which was why a code had to be followed, at least up until the 1960s or so, when iconoclasm and the youth-quake triumphed in a kind of cultural revolution so that the prior standards/framework of upstanding morality embodied in the code faded, and rather abruptly at that. These golden era movies may appear charmingly anachronistic, old-fashioned today, but no doubt there are still probably many people who watch them, still listen to show-tunes by stars such as Bing Crosby such as "White Christmas," because they productions embody a simpler time that decades later has been burnished into a golden memory of upstanding morality. Interestingly, one of the major themes of the book is the fate of Hollywood personalities who were caught up in the HUAC hearings, including that of the talented writers and directors, such as Trumbo and Dmytryk, who refused to comply and were handed prison terms for contempt. Some of these persecuted individuals whose professional lives were ruined, wrote or directed many of the movies that we recall as golden era treasures - conforming to the film code just like the movies that were written or directed by non-leftists. The discussion of the politics in Hollywood at that time, as well as the trends in the USA and Hollywood leading up to the controversial House hearings and subsequent clamp-down by the studios, is rather illuminating; I for one didn't realize how intense the paranoia was at the time, and the measures taken by studios to exclude leftists or make them sign loyalty declarations and so forth. The golden patina of tradition and morality that was the trademark of the Hollywood movies of the period actually was a superficial veneer covering quite a lot of hypocrisy, bare-knuckle bullying, and so forth. The reason for the studios bending over backward to comply with the dictates of HUAC is said to be the influence of the New York banks that backed the studios financially, such as J.P. Morgan, and so forth. The banks in turn were inter-related with corporate entities that needed the US government to ensure that they could get favorable terms and suitable shares of the market around the world; that would not be possible if country after country were to fall to communism. Hence, the intensity of the Cold War covertly and overtly from the end of the Second World War to the end of the Soviet Union. On one level it was all about ensuring market access and favorable trade agreements - or at least, the continuation of trade under the generally accepted definition of capitalism. Even liberal activism might be suspect if it seemed to support an alternative socioeconomic system implicitly or explicitly.

I would recommend this book - albeit quite lengthy - to anyone interested in Hollywood social and movie history of the golden era.

Here are a few quotes:

"In 1903, an Edison Company cameraman named Edwin S. Porter created a completely different kind of motion picture. Instead of simply filming an event, he created events to be filmed."

"While the rest of the country wallowed along through the remnants of the Depression, Hollywood kept making more and more money."

"...[Louis B. Mayer's] patriarchal authority was such that he refused to allow his own daughters to go to college because their morals might be corrupted there."

"...that Hollywood [labor union] struggle can only be understood within the framework of Los Angeles as a whole, which had been for more than half a century the capital of the open shop, and thus of the open labor market and thus of low wages. Indeed, Los Angeles' officially organized resistance to unions was one of the major reasons why it overtook San Francisco as the great metropolis of California."

"About thirty thousand [Japanese] had been brought to Hawaii as contract laborers on the sugar plantations...and after Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Japanese began moving from Hawaii to California."

"...the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924...imposed ethnic quotas to favor the British and other Northern Europeans at the expense of Russian Jews, Italians, Greeks. Only one people received an immigration quota of zero: the Japanese."

"From being the nations's seventh-largest manufacturing center in 1939, Los Angeles during the war became second only to Detroit."

"The armed forces [during the Second World War] had...become Hollywood's biggest customer. Never before had there been such a captive audience as the twelve million servicemen, most of them idle and bored."

"What [Preston] Sturges failed to realize was that the studio authorities considered it less important to make successful movies -- much less good movies-- than to maintain their grip on power. To relax that grip would have implied, ultimately, that they themselves were unnecessary."

"When his two daughters grew old enough to go to college, [Louis B.] Mayer forbade it; he didn't want their minds or morals corrupted."

"It is difficult to prove instances of the IRS acting for political reasons, but President Roosevelt had long since inaugurated a policy of asking the Treasury to investigate the taxes of anyone he felt like harassing, a list of victims that ranged from Father Coughlin to Mo Annenberg to the New York Times. President Truman's concern for civil liberties was not notably superior to that of his predecessor, and it was remarkable how consistently the tax investigators concentrated their attentions on outspoken liberals."

"[In the late 1940s, in the era of HUAC-related paranoia/Cold War hysteria, Thomas Mann, in a letter, wrote:] This land of pioneers and liberty is at present supporting the old, worn-out, rotten and corrupt forces throughout the world."

[Kathy]

Part history, parts anecdotes and gossip, and mostly enjoyable