I am all too aware that I haven’t been posting very much on my site, especially when it comes to film books, which continue to proliferate. I still intend to provide an overview of what is now—and soon to be—available, but in the meantime, here are four important additions to your bookshelf.
BARRYMORE: THE SPECTACULAR, TUMULTOUS LIFE OF AMERICA’S PRINCE OF PLAYERS by Terry Chester Shulman (University Press of Kentucky)
One of the first show-business books I read when I was a boy was Gene Fowler’s Good Night, Sweet Prince, a loving biography of John Barrymore. In it, he spun many stories about the famous actor, all very entertaining but only some of them true. In his welcome new book Terry Chester Shulman has doffed the rose-colored glasses to give us a more honest and detailed portrait of the performer and his legendary family tree. The actor’s surviving daughter has provided access to previously unavailable family correspondence.
Shulman emphasizes the fact that John, or Jack as he was known early on, might never have set foot on a stage or in front of a movie camera. That’s how talented an artist he was; this was no mere hobby. Fabled Hearst editor Arthur Brisbane wrote to him, “If you had stuck to it, you would of course have gone into painting. But not even the Angel Gabriel knows whether you might have in that direction named an even bigger name than you have made in pictures that move.”
I would be remiss if I didn’t make note of the rare photos that illustrate the text. As a lifelong Barrymore buff I was knocked out by these precious images. They would be worth the price of admission all by themselves; as it happens, Shulman’s text is equally worthwhile.
COMEDY IS A GRIM BUSINESS: THE MAKING OF IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD by James Curtis (Emmerac Editions)
Having penned superlative biographies of Preston Sturges, Spencer Tracy and Buster Keaton, among others, James Curtis has turned his attention to the creation and production of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I have never been a fan of this mammoth comedy but I have an abiding interest in how films come to get made, and this one has as interesting a backstory as any. With access to daily production reports and the correspondence of screenwriter William Rose and his wife Tania, the author traces Rose’s ambition—to make “the comedy to end all comedies”—and reveals how this goal was taken up by producer-director Stanley Kramer, who wound up betting his bottom dollar on its financial success.
True to its nature, the saga of Mad World is more of an exercise in the formidable logistics of production than a story of inspiration. Its screenplay, which was always being fine-tuned, gave Kramer a plan of action and a checklist of tasks to be accomplished, from casting to stunt work to an elaborate setup of miniature set pieces photographed in stop-motion, one frame at a time.
It is precisely for this reason that I’ve never cared for the result: to my eyes it’s a film that wasn’t so much created as manufactured, like a fancy automobile. But learning how Kramer gathered his team, one by one, and drove them ever onward makes for good reading, especially in the hands of Curtis, a first-rate wordsmith. I don’t want to indulge in spoilers but I will admit that I never knew makeup genius Dick Smith—not yet the legend he would become—worked on the film and leave it at that.
WELCOME TO WACKYLAND: THE WACKY WORLD OF BOB CLAMPETT By Ruth Clampett and Darrell van Citters (Ruth Clampett)
For decades, animation buffs have read about Bob Clampett’s personal collection of memorabilia, mostly from his years working for Leon Schlesinger but also from his groundbreaking puppet TV show Time for Beany and its animated follow-up, Beany and Cecil. Now his daughter Ruth has written a loving biography of her dad and, with the help of the talented animator and historian Darrell van Citters, provided us with a jaw-dropping array of drawings, photos, and ephemera. Showcased in a horizontal-shaped coffee table volume, these fabulous images and the stories that go with them make this book a must-have for every cartoon aficionado. It is currently being sold by Stuart Ng books: https://stuartngbooks.com/products/welcome-to-wackyland-the-wonderful-world-of-bob-clampett-73400
MAVERICK IN THE MACHINE: ORSON WELLES AND THE BATTLE OVER JOURNEY INTO FEAR by Mark Edlitz
If the devil is in the details, this book is devilishly good. Author Edlitz, who self-published this valuable volume, has combed the archives and libraries of the world to present a blow-by-blow account of the making—and unmaking—of the 1943 thriller Journey Into Fear. A Mercury Production, it was directed by actor-turned-director Norman Foster and co-written by leading man Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, who also costars as a colorful Turkish military officer. Only by quoting from interoffice memos and other day-by-day accounts do we come to understand how and why RKO Radio Pictures, whose president George Schafer, had lured the 23-year-old radio and theater wunderkind to Hollywood… and then cast him adrift before he was able to complete The Magnificent Ambersons and Journey Into Fear. While Ambersons has been the subject of much study and debate, less time and effort has gone into the latter title, which was completed only by an eleventh-hour reprieve from the studio—which had unceremoniously booted Mercury off its Culver City lot. If quibbles about liquor reimbursement and construction costs bore you, this may not be your cup of tea, but I found it absolutely fascinating.
