Billy Wilder in Hollywood (Limelight) Review

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(More customer reviews)Amidst the flurry of new books by and about Billy Wilder, don't neglect this forgotten gem originally published in the mid-70s.Author Zolotow has an 'Old Hollywood' perspective on Wilder's astonishingly productive careerand acerbic personality--not to be missed.

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"A double delight: a richly entertaining biography of both screenwriter-director Wilder and his milieu - Hollywood... a fascinating montage of a man whose talents and quirks, virtues and faults, are endlessly engrossing. Electrifying opinions of those with whom he has worked and the original casting choices for his films are often surprising: Mae West was his first choice for Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard and Mary Pickford was his second! A first-rate book about a complicated, talented curmudgeon." - After Dark

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Exiles in Hollywood (Limelight) Review

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(More customer reviews)The Germans lose their wars because of arrogance, pride, and over confidence. Among their other traits are their desires to get rid of any of the people they don't like.

The story of the contributions of the atomic scientists is well known. Einstein and Szilard writing the letter to Roosevelt. Bohr and Fermi constructing the atomic pile in Chicago, and many more.

This book, however is on Hollywood. Hollowood got its share of Exiles as well. It consists of chapters on some of the most famous people of the movies from just before World War II until well after: Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock (OK so he wasn't German), Bertolt Brecht, Otto Preminger and many more.

One chapter is on Hedy Lamarr, perhaps the most beautiful actress ever. She was also a German Jew and an electrical engineer, holding the patent on the frequency hopping spread spectrum technology used in a great deal of modern communications devices.

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Fleeing Nazi persecution, half of Europe's creative talents, including screen legend Greta Garbo and composer Igor Stravinsky, were, in Arnold Schoenberg's words, "driven into paradise," settling in Los Angeles. It was the greatest flight of European cultural and intellectual talent in history, and for a time made Los Angeles a cultural capital. Their presence, enabling the evolution of film noir, also changed American movies forever.In Exiles in Hollywood, David Wallace, author of the national bestseller Lost Hollywood and whom columnist Liz Smith has called "the maestro of entertainment history," tells their dramatic stories. His profiles of refugees include filmmaker Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann, the screenwriter Salka Viertel and her controversial relationship with Greta Garbo, the deeply conflicted actor Charles Laughton, and many more. The result is a rich, page-turning look at an era, its triumphs and tragedies, its gossip and hidden facts, and its colorful personalities.

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Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder, A Personal Biography (Applause Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)There is no one wilder in Hollywood than Billy - Billy Wilder, that is.  And the new bio of him, "Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder: A Personal Biography," is as close to the "perfect" non-critical, fun history of a man and his movies. Written by Charlotte Chandler (whose previous works include "I, Fellini" and "Hello, I Must Be Going: Groucho and His Friends"), the tome is based on interviews she conducted with Wilder and his friends over a period of years. The result is a wonderful kaleidoscope of movies, politicians, actors, geniuses and louses. From Sigmund Freud to Louis B. Mayer, from Richard Strauss to Joan Fontaine, from Prince Yussupov to Walter Matthau --- Wilder knew them all. He is the man who put Marilyn Monroe over a subway grate, Jack Lemmon in a dress and Gloria Swanson in the most famous close-up of them all. The great beacon shining through the entire book is, of course, the wit and humor of the man.  Wilder is certainly one of the great comic directors of all time, and his legacy is astounding. By structuring the book around the subject's work in a strictly chronological manner, Chandler creates a picture of Wilder that is at once true and wildly engrossing. The early stories about journalism in pre-war Berlin are as fascinating as the later tales of success in glittering Hollywood. That the last 20 years of his life, arguably the most creative time in an artist's life, were spent without a single film project is the underlying tragedy of this book, and Chandler doesn't exactly dwell on it, but the painful reality is certainly there. We like to think of him as this way: Billy Wilder, Somebody's Perfect. (Submitted by staff member Stephen J. Finn)

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