Otto Friedrich

A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940 S

City of Nets

Tilde C

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theme, personage to personage, you see the trends starting to form, how certain ideas or creators are pushed aside or superceded (Like from Brech to Ayn Rand, what a downgrade!)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.

City of Nets A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940 S

Reviews