CONVERSATIONS WITH CLASSIC FILM STARS

CONVERSATIONS WITH CLASSIC FILM STARS: Interviews from Hollywood's Golden Era. James Bawden and Ron Miller.  University Press of Kentucky; 2016.

I have already posted on the sequel to this book, You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet, which came out the following year. This is Bawden and Miller's first collection of interviews with famous film folk, and frankly, this volume is superior, with some really solid and interesting interviews. There's a funny piece on the ever-eccentric Gloria Swanson in the section on silent film stars; Joseph Cotten and Melvyn Douglas being rather blunt in their pieces in the section on Leading Men; everyone from Anne Baxter to Dorothy Lamour to Anna Lee and Jane Wyman are covered in Leading Ladies; Audrey Totter and Marie Windsor have their say in Queens of the Bs; and we've got the Singing Cowboys, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers; plus a piece on Bob Hope, and a final section  on not-quite-stars like Keye Luke, Harold Russell, Margaret Hamilton, and Diane Varsi (who did Peyton Place and then pretty much disappeared because she rebelled against her studio). Other stars interviewed include Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas and more.

The stars are frequently scathing in their assessment of other actors, with Melyyn Douglas insisting that both Spencer Tracy and Fredric March were "one-dimensional" (!) in Inherit the Wind (Douglas did a TV version). Joan Fontaine comments on her sister Olivia De Havilland ("it takes two to feud"). You'll also learn that Jane Wyman got so sick of former movie goddesses being hired for her series Falcon Crest, that she laid down the law: "No more international harlots!" I didn't know that beautiful Jane Greer was once married to Rudy Vallee nor that Margaret Hamilton was nearly killed playing the witch in The Wizard of Oz and spent some time in the hospital. The book gets across that most self-absorbed movie stars are simply not normal people.

Verdict: Fun, informative book that is hard to put down. ***1/2.  

YOU AIN'T HEARD NOTHIN' YET: INTERVIEWS WITH STARS FROM HOLLYWOOD'S GOLDEN ERA

YOU AIN'T HEARD NOTHIN' YET: Interviews with Stars from Hollywood's Golden Era. James Bawden and Ron Miller. University Press of Kentucky; 2017.

This is a collection of interviews by the two authors (working separately) with a variety of prominent film figures. Some of the interviews are very brief and focused on one particular film -- generally to publicize a TV movie -- but others are a little more in-depth. Interview subjects include Robert Preston, Cornel Wilde, Walter Pidgeon, Robert Young, Bette Davis, Janet Leigh, Patricia Neal, and many others. There are sections on notable movie heavies, child stars, leading ladies, and so on, as well as pieces on Jay Robinson [The Robe] and Hurd Hatfield [The Picture of Dorian Gray], who were in a sense seen as Hollywood causalities but actually had long and busy careers in spite of it. The interview with Victor Buono seems to focus mostly on his weight. Along the way there are some interesting tidbits. For instance, both Patricia Neal and Daniel Massey (who gives one of the longer and more interesting interviews in the book) both think that The Fountainhead was a stinker. Stupid moments include the section in the Anthony Perkins piece where Miller blames Perkins' being a closeted homosexual on the supposed "lack of heat" with his leading ladies (although Rock Hudson had no problem, and Perkins, be he gay or bi, later got married and fathered two children).

Verdict: Entertaining look at Hollywood from an insider's perspective. ***.