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A review by lckrgr
Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood by William J. Mann
2.0
So I won a copy of this book as a goodreads giveaway... however I never received the book. I think someone stole it off my doorstep. Regardless, I managed to get a copy for the library and so here's a review.
This book felt like a slog to get through. While I am interested in the old Hollywood, my knowledge of the silent era is fairly limited so I thought this would be an enlightening read, especially as I remembered reading something about the unsolved Taylor murder and Mary Miles Minter (I think I read King Vidor's book way back in middle school).
Anyway, I think this book suffered from the same issues I often find in Erik Larsen's books. Namely, the narrative structure is off-putting. Here at least Mann cycled through more closely related stories, but the constant switching between Zukor, Mable, Mary, and Gibby, was tiring and got repetitive after awhile. I know that this is a style of organization that seems popular for these types of books, which I guess means I should not be reading books of this vein.
Despite the narrative structure, I did learn a lot about the silent era and how it later affected the 1930s production code system. It's good to know that calls for censorship and moral righteousness never seem to change. It's laughable that despite acquittal the films of Arbuckle, Normand, and Minter were banned just by association with a crime, yet today there is little-to-no outcry, or at least nothing consistent, against celebrities with known records of abuse and other crimes. Sigh.
Regardless of all that, I do have to say Mann made me really admire Mabel Normand. I'll have to keep an eye out on TCM for her movies.
This book felt like a slog to get through. While I am interested in the old Hollywood, my knowledge of the silent era is fairly limited so I thought this would be an enlightening read, especially as I remembered reading something about the unsolved Taylor murder and Mary Miles Minter (I think I read King Vidor's book way back in middle school).
Anyway, I think this book suffered from the same issues I often find in Erik Larsen's books. Namely, the narrative structure is off-putting. Here at least Mann cycled through more closely related stories, but the constant switching between Zukor, Mable, Mary, and Gibby, was tiring and got repetitive after awhile. I know that this is a style of organization that seems popular for these types of books, which I guess means I should not be reading books of this vein.
Despite the narrative structure, I did learn a lot about the silent era and how it later affected the 1930s production code system. It's good to know that calls for censorship and moral righteousness never seem to change. It's laughable that despite acquittal the films of Arbuckle, Normand, and Minter were banned just by association with a crime, yet today there is little-to-no outcry, or at least nothing consistent, against celebrities with known records of abuse and other crimes. Sigh.
Regardless of all that, I do have to say Mann made me really admire Mabel Normand. I'll have to keep an eye out on TCM for her movies.