Tag: hollywood

audio, not a book

Not a Book: The Plot Thickens

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Happy Sunday everyone, and I’m back with another podcast recommendation for you today. Regular readers will know that I’m really interested in stories of Old Hollywood and the latest series of The Plot Thickens is a really good one of those from an interesting perspective.

The Plot Thickens is TCM’s official podcast, and is now in its sixth season. In previous series host Ben Mankiewicz has looked at director Peter Bogdanovich, the making of the movie Bonfire of the Vanities, the careers of Lucille Ball, Pam Grier and John Ford. But it’s the sixth and most recent season that I really want to talk about because it’s about the making of the movie Cleopatra. Now the production of Cleopatra was legendarily troubled – with budgets ballooning, timelines expanding and stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s scandalous affair.

So what is different about this look at it I hear you say. Well the difference is that Ben Mankiewicz is the nephew of Joseph L Mankiewicz, the legendary writer and director who directed and co-wrote Cleopatra. Ben Mankiewicz has access to the family archive, including his uncle’s diaries and unheard interviews with cast and crew, as well as interviews with film experts. I’ve read about the production of Cleopatra as it has come up in the books about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton that I’ve read, but they’re not really covering the film production itself, more as the catalyst for their love affair. So I learned loads from this, because as well as the production of the film and the difficulties on set, it looks at how the film affected Joseph Mankiewicz. And as a hint: Ben says early on that the family used to joke that Joe’s brother Herman wrote the best movie of all time (Citizen Kane) while Joe directed the worst. It’s also got a lot about the economics of film production and dying days of the old studio system.

All the parts are out now and as well as finding it on all the usual podcast platforms, it’s on YouTube too. And if you want some of my other recommendations for Old Hollywood, I’ve written about a pair of Liz Taylor documentaries, the Liza Minelli documentary, the podcast You Must Remember This, actor memoirs, Judy Garland, books about Hollywood to name just a few.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

not a book, streaming, tv

Not A Book: Elizabeth Taylor documentaries

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There have been a couple of documentaries recently about Elizabeth Taylor – and I’ve watched them and I have thoughts! Golden Age and Old Hollywood is one of the areas that I’m always interested in reading about (fiction and non fiction) and watching documentaries about and it was interesting that two big productions about the same person popped up so close to each other at a time when there was no obvious anniversary to explain it.

The two documentaries in question are Elizabeth Taylor: the Lost Tapes and Elizabeth Taylor – Rebel Superstar. The former is an HBO documentary, the latter a three part series executive produced by Kim Kardashian. And given that they’re both about the same person, who only had one life (duh) they both cover fairly similar ground.

Rebel Superstar has more about her later business career and it also has the better talking heads – among them Taylor’s son Chris and granddaughter Naomi, Sharon Stone, Margaret O’Brien, Kim K herself and Paris Jackson (Michael’s daughter) and Joan Collins. And oh my it needs Joan Collins – she’s the only sharp voice in a documentary that is working hard to gloss over a few things and is basically a hagiography, such is the lack of critical voices and mention of less than flattering aspects of Taylor’s personal life.

The Lost Tapes has the advantage of recordings of Liz herself, made in the mid 1960s, which means that this focuses on that era and the time leading up to it and not later. You only get a very short section at the end on everything else – addiction and later marriages are skipped over, although her work in Aids activism at a time when there was a huge amount of stigma is given more of its due. You also get cine footage filmed on set with her by Roddie McDowell where you see her with James Dean, Montgomery Clift and Rock Hudson. But the interviewer doesn’t give her a lot of pushback or press her on what she’s saying in the tapes, and again we’re in haigography territory.

Neither of these would have got me writing about them on their own, because it’s not really a recommendation – both lack a bite in slightly different ways. If you’re only going to watch one, I’d make it the Lost Tapes – because it has those recordings of Elizabeth talking about her life and the lovely home movie footage, but neither of them give you the full picture of Taylor’s life. If you go in not knowing anything about her, you could come out missing some of the details – like the fact that both Burton and Taylor were married to other people when they started their relationship, or the entirity of her marriage to Larry Fortensky. But if you’re interested in Hollywood history then they’re worth a watch, but if you are a newbie who wants a more complete picture, you’re probably better with a book – or even her Wikipedia!

If you’re in the UK, Rebel Superstar is on the BBC iPlayer and The Lost Tapes was shown on Sky Documentaries and is now on Now. If you’re elsewhere you’ll have to have a dig around and see which platform or streamer has bought them up.

Have a great Sunday.

audio, not a book

Not a Book: You Must Remember This

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Here we are, another Sunday and I have a podcast recommendation for you this week.

I’ve mentioned Karina Longworth before – her book was a BotW pick back in 2019 and I mentioned this podcast in passing then as well as in my post about Glass Onion. But the podcast has just turned ten and so I thought it deserves a proper post. Over the course of the last ten years Longworth has worked her way through what she calls the “secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century”.

In practice what that means is seasons about the Blacklist, Joan Crawford, the rise and fall of Louis B Mayer and the portrayal of sex in movies in the 80s and 90s and many more. I think I have now listened to every episode except this remastered first episode. It’s one of the podcasts that I used to save for when I was out running, except that I played Him Indoors one of the Erotic 80s episodes on holidays and suddenly it was our holiday podcast. Karina has a very deliberate style of delivery, which is based on radio announcers and voice overs from that Hollywood golden era which can grate a bit for some people – and in the early episodes she’s editing her own voice which is hard and she does too much. So it’s not a podcast I would say to start from the beginning – but pick a series that interests you and go from there. That’s what I did – I actually left the series about Charles Manson til quite late on because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to cope with the murdery aspect of it – and when I did it certainly made me run faster!

If you’re interested in classic Hollywood (which you know I am) it’s a really good listen. You can find You Must Rmemver this wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have any other podcasts in a similar area of interest please do hit me up in the comments.

Happy Sunday everyone!

film, not a book

Not a Book: Singin’ in the Rain

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I have series of films that I always watch at this time of year, so I thought I’d feature them here too. And as I kicked off my Christmas by watching this last weekend, we’re starting with the immortal classic: Singin’ in the Rain.

In case you’ve never watched it, it’s the story of a Hollywood leading man as the movie business transforms from silent films to talkies. Don Lockwood is an ex-Vaudeville song and dance man who got his start as a stunt man who then got paired up with a glamorous leading leafy, Lena Lamont. Lockwood and Lamont have been a marquee double act ever since. The problem is that Don can’t stand Lena – and now the bigger problem is that Lena’s voice is… not suitable for the talkies. Early in the film Don meets Cathy Seldon, a hopeful actress with a great singing voice, searching for her big break. And it all goes from there.

This has a great cast – Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor – a great story and some of the best song and dance numbers you’ll see – and not just from Gene Kelly.

And the final sequence – starting with Lena’s attempts to take over the studio (I will never tire of Jean Hagen as Lena saying “detrimental and deleterious”) all the way through to the end is just *chef kiss*. And like many of these old Hollywood movies, you can dig into the making of it and the stories behind it and it just gets more fascinating. I’m not going to say any more here though – because I know some people think that spoils the magic.

It’ll definitely be on TV at least once over the next month, but you can rent it from all the usual places too

Enjoy!

film, not a book

Not a Book: Judy Garland

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Friday marked 100 years since the birth of Judy Garland, so I’m going all Hollywood again here today.. When we went to Wicked earlier in the year, I had a moment as it started where I wasn’t sure if our nieces had seen the Wizard of Oz – but when I checked at the internal they had, so I think it’s still impossible not to have seen a little of her work.

And although you might first encounter her as a child in The Wizard of Oz, if as you grow up you start wandering into Hollywood history (or maybe even if you don’t!) you soon discover the troubled life – the child star whose life was wrecked by her fame and career. She’s not the first troubled child star, but she’s the one who everyone remembers – the drugs she got hooked on after the studio gave them to her to keep her thin, give her energy to work or get her to sleep after work, the troubled personal life, the early death. It all over shadows the actual talent. I’ve put the Get Happy clip in here as well as the Wizard of Oz trailer because people forget that she did upbeat.

And of course there’s so much Garland-related media to consume. Rufus Wainwright is doing his Judy show again this week for the anniversary – I’m still hopeful that one day I will manage to see him do it live, but I’ve listened to the CD to death (yes, I’ve had it that long).

Then of course there’s the plays and movies. I still haven’t watched Renee Zelwegger in Judy, but I did see Tracie Bennett in End of the Rainbow when that was touring and it was really quite something. The clip from the Tony Awards really doesn’t do it justice at all.

And then I was in the Royal Albert Hall for the John Wilson Movie Musical Prom where Caroline O’Connor did this amazing version of The Man That Got Away.

I’ve only watched the 1954 Star is Born once – because as we all know I’m all about the upbeat, but Garland is amazing in it and I still don’t know how she didn’t win the Oscar – and the story about the cameras coming to her hospital room (she’d just given birth) to film her in case she won breaks my heart every time. And The Man That Got Away lost the best song prize too – to a song I’ve never heard off. What a swizz.

In terms of reading material – after all this is a book blog – I read Get Happy by Gerald Clarke more than a decade ago and it’s still considered to be the definitive one so that’s worth a look if you’re interested. But if you don’t want 500 whole pages, she’s Chapter 10 in Anne Helen Petersen’s Scandals of Classic Hollywood as part of the Broken by the System section. And she gets a few mentions (as an example) in Helen O’Hara’s Women vs Hollywood too if you want to read about the bigger picture of Hollywood being awful to women.

But let’s end on the woman herself performing and not on the sadness. I’ve picked the Trolley Song from Meet Me In St Louis, because it’s upbeat and because Judy said that this film, directed by Vincente Minnelli who she went on to marry, was the first time she had ever felt beautiful. Which is sad, but she does look amazing in this film and I’m glad she could see it.

Book of the Week, non-fiction

Book of the Week: Seduction

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June’s stats coming up tomorrow, but first, this week’s Book of the Week – where we’re still firmly in non-fiction (that’s three BotW posts in a row now!) and in a different part of my historical sweet spot: classic Hollywood.

Cover of Seduction

As the subtitle suggests, this is an examination of the machinations of movie mogul Howard Hughes.  A controversial and massively famous figure in his day, if you’re not into Hollywood history you’ve probably still seen Howard Hughes references in all sorts of stuff – like the episode of The Simpsons where gambling is legalised and Mr Burns turns weird, or Willard Whyte in Diamonds are Forever or the fact that Stan Lee cited him as an inspiration for Tony Stark.  And of course there’s the Martin Scorsese film The Aviator in which he’s played by Leonardo DiCaprio.  But like Hallie Rubenhold in The Five last week, Karina Longworth is coming at this from the perspective of the women in the case – and there were a lot of them – she examines what Hughes’s obsessions with sex, power and publicity meant for the women in his orbit and how it affected them. Hint: he was a real piece of work, even more than you might already be thinking.

This was where the majority of my commute reading time went last week (five of my six train journeys) because although it’s fascinating it’s also super long. I’m a recent* convert to Longworth’s podcast, You Must Remember This, and was a little bit worried that this was going to be covering some of the same ground that that has already covered, but actually that’s not a problem. Some of the stuff has been touched on, but this is much more in depth and with more space to develop an overarching theme and narrative.

Obviously #MeToo has been much in the news over the last few years and if you want an illustration of what powerful men in Hollywood have been getting away with since the silent era then this is it. It would also serve as a great starting off point for a wider journey into Hollywood lore – I know there’s a few more lives I want to explore and a couple of books off the bibliography that I’ll be keeping an eye open for.

My copy of Seduction came from the library, but it’s out now in hardback, Kindle and Kobo as well as audiobook read by Longworth. NB: if you haven’t listened to her podcast, she’s got a very particular way of talking which can take a bit of getting used to and I know doesn’t work for everyone.  I’m not sure how easy it’s going to be to find in bookstores – it’s available to buy from Waterstones’ website, but not on click and collect – ditto Foyles.

Happy Reading!

*as in a couple of series ago.