Whatever Happened To Hollywood?

Lasky, Jesse L.

The son of a motion picture founding father, Lasky has a superior vantage point from which to survey forty years in the industry -- spanning the scene from the time he made his only screen appearance as a camel boy extra on the set of The Thief of Baghdad to his days as a meager story reader ""chewing the cud of mental monotony"" to screenwriting stints under the aegis of Cecil B. De Mille. The dream factory was still a colony when Lasky Senior was making The Covered Wagon and Wings while his son was schooled with ""children of film pioneers"" like Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Joel McCrea. Later as a young story department reader -- who dated Jean Harlow during one of her rifts with William Powell -- Lasky records the coming of age of a Frankensteinian star system which ultimately destroys its master (""Hollywoodites rode to the guillotine in platinum tumbrels""). An integral part of...

See on goodreads | librarything