10/21/2023
The recent publication and promotion of The Hollywood Reporter’s “100 Greatest Film Books of All Time,” has, unsurprisingly, agitated the blood of those (like me) who’ve been immersed in the world of film books, in one way or another, for most of our lives. Like any such survey-based “100 Greatest” list (in any category), it’s virtually an open invitation for readers to “take issue” with it, to discuss and debate, and to express their disappointment, disdain, and occasional disbelief at the inclusion or exclusion of this or that tome. I have my own opinions along those lines, but that’s not what I’m here to do.
Instead, I thought it would just be interesting to bring a little historical perspective to the discussion. A regular part of Sight & Sound’s decennial “Greatest Films of All Time” critics’ poll (the most obvious analogue), after all, is the comparison with the previous list: a gleeful (or outraged) analysis of who’s up/down/in/out, compared with ten years before. It’s irresistible, energizing, and loads of fun . . . even if a few people inevitably take it a little too seriously.
Anyway, the S&S poll/list has been going on since 1952, and has a worldwide reach – but I wonder how many people are aware that THR’s stab at creating a “100 Best Film Books” has its own antecedent?
Back in 1993, a group called the Book Collectors Club of Los Angeles published a little booklet called “100 Books on Hollywood & the Movies.” Designed by the renowned L.A. book designer and printer Ward Ritchie, it was issued in a limited, numbered edition of just 500 copies, and quickly became a “collector’s collector’s item” – which is to say that, like many such specialized bibliographies, it came to a serve as a kind of shopping list for serious collectors in its subject area. (I know at least one collector personally who was fiercely dedicated to assembling a full set of the “Hollywood 100" books in collectable condition – with the original dust jackets, of course – and one still sees the bibliography cited in some booksellers’ catalogues and online listings.) Unlike the current THR enterprise, though, it wasn’t derived from some massive survey of hundreds of folks – in fact, it seems to have been primarily the work of three guys, one of whom, I’m delighted to say, is my buddy Kenneth Turan, the now-retired L.A. Times film critic. The other two were the late Andy Dowdy, whose wonderful little shop Other Times Books was a fixture on Pico Blvd. for more than 30 years, and the late Julian (Bud) Lesser, producer and the son of film pioneer Sol Lesser. There were quite likely additional “uncredited” consultants on the final list, but even if those three (all of whom I’m glad to be, or have been, acquainted with) did the whole thing, I could hardly think of a more qualified crew. And I’m pleased to note that Kenny Turan is also one of the 322 surveyed for the new list – possibly the only person who’s had a hand in both selections.
(I also happen to be acquainted, to one degree or another, with a pretty fair number of the other 321 jury members, which is one reason I’m avoiding taking my own “issues” with the current list: I just don’t want to get up in anybody’s business about their choices, or risk having a martini thrown in my face the next time I’m in Musso’s. Like I said above, some people take these lists way too seriously. I will, however, venture this somewhat scattershot comment, and hope it doesn’t hit anybody TOO directly who might otherwise think kindly of me: anybody who voted to put “Hollywood Babylon” on this list ought to be ashamed of themselves. You know who you are – all 58 of you – and I respectfully suggest that you do a little research, and educate yourself about the dozens of reputations which that execrable book has tainted or destroyed – posthumously, of course, because as Kenneth Anger DAMN well knew, The Dead Can’t Sue.)
Anyway, to get do the point (and I do have one) I thought it would be interesting to do a book-by-book comparison between the current THR list and the 1993 “Hollywood 100" list, to see what the changing times (and thirty more years of publication activity) have wrought. So I did, and below present some of my findings.
(1) Of the 100 books tapped by The Book Collectors in 1993, only 30 have survived and made it onto the 2023 THR list. Some of this attrition is inevitable and completely understandable, given that during the 30 years that have passed there’s been an ever-increasing flow of new books in the field – more histories, more critical analyses, more genre studies, more memoirs and biographies, more interview collections, more making-of accounts, you name it. But interestingly, although the carry-overs comprise just 30% of the full list, they make up 65% (13 of 20) of the top 20 vote-getters. While I might want to quibble with some of the (in my opinion) questionable selections from the more recently-published books, my takeaway from this is generally positive: that despite the march of time, there is still a healthy respect in the land for the “classics” of the genre. Real quality endures.
(2) As an aficionado of Hollywood-themed fiction (the “Hollywood novel,” in particular), I was sorry to see that the representation of that genre, writ large (including not just novels but also short stories, plays, and screenplays) has dropped considerably: from 14 examples on the 1993 list to just 7 today. The predictable (albeit worthy) survivors from the earlier list – West’s “The Day of the Locust,” Schulberg’s “What Makes Sammy Run?” and Fitzgerald’s “The Last Tycoon” – have at least been joined by some equally worthy titles that didn’t make the 1993 list despite having been eligible, notably “Play It as It Lays” and “Valley of the Dolls.” (A shout-out here to my friend Stephen Rebello for his vigorous championing of the latter and its notoriously awful-yet-beloved movie version, via his book “Dolls! Dolls! Dolls!”
(3) This piece is already long enough without me adding on a full list of the 70 books that didn’t make the cut, so to speak, between 1993 and 2023, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention at least a few personal favorites – if only because it might spur anyone who’s bothered to read this far to seek out some of these books. They’ll all be worth your while.
*I Lost My Girlish Laughter, by “Jane Allen” (pseud.) – a 1938 novel co-authored by Silvia Schulman (the future Mrs. Ring Lardner Jr.), presenting a thinly-veiled portrait of David O. Selznick, for whom she had toiled as a secretary; recently reprinted, and readily available.
*In Pictures, by Will Connell – a satirical photo-survey of Hollywood published in 1937, the text of which is a purported “story conference” transcript involving some of the wittiest screenwriters of the day, among them Gene Fowler, Nunnally Johnson, and Grover Jones.
*Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema 1927-1973, by Richard Corliss – partially a riposte to Andrew Sarris’s “The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968" (still on the list, as it should be), but also an extremely important and influential work in its own right; this is one omission from the new list at which I am frankly shocked.
*Kings of the Bs, by Todd McCarthy and Charles Flynn – an entertaining and enlightening 1975 survey of B-movies and some of their greatest (and awfulest) makers.
*The “Backstory” series of interviews with screenwriters, all by Patrick McGilligan, of which there have been four volumes, published between 1986 and 2006.
*Hollywood: the Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (1941), by Leo C. Rosten – an early, and highly readable, sociological analysis of how “this town” operated, back in the day.
*Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life (1981), by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of the Disney studios famed “Nine Old Men.”
If you want a full accounting of the 70 books from the 1993 publication that weren’t included on the 2023 list, you have two options: (1) seek out a copy of the original booklet (the editor’s name was Charles Heiskell, if that will help you search); it’s long out of print, but there are still a few copies floating around out there (but be prepared to spend $100 or more); or (2) ask me and I’ll email it to you. Because you deserve SOME reward for having read this far.
THR’s list of must-read tomes — determined by a jury of more than 300 Hollywood heavyweights including Steven Spielberg, David Zaslav, Liza Minnelli and Ava DuVernay — proves there’s one topic the supposedly reading-averse industry can’t get enough of: itself.
