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Scandals Of Classic Hollywood: Sex, Deviance, And Drama From The Golden Age Of American Cinema (2014)

by Anne Helen Petersen(Favorite Author)

3.57 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

014218067X (ISBN13: 9780142180679)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Plume

review 1: I hate to give this book such a poor review, but as an avid reader of Anne Helen Petersen's blog, and her columns on sites such as The Hairpin, this book was a HUGE letdown. For someone with little to no knowledge of the star system and old hollywood, "Scandals" is possibly a three star read. As a primer however, you are likely to learn more from reading wikipedia. For those of us classic hollywood junkies there is nothing here to interest you. There literally are dozens of books on these actors and the star system that created them/covered up scandals that go much deeper in depth than anything Petersen has written about here. For meticulously researched, and juicy hollywood history with legit historical analysis, check out anything written by Wesleyan University Film Hist... moreorian Jeanine Basinger, she won't disappoint. Lastly, there are some painfully obvious errors that someone with a "PhD in Celebrity Gossip", should not have overlooked; such as her statements on Evelyn Nesbit and Montgomery Clift. Are we really still questioning whether Clift and Liz Taylor had a romantic relationship in 2014? Taylor herself has long cleared up that they were strictly platonic. After waiting with anticipation for this book to be released I was surprised how amateur it was.
review 2: I got this book from goodreads first reads. It was a very good book - it managed to be both witty and fun but it also took pop culture history seriously. This book made its historical examples more approachable by referencing modern day norms that nearly everyone would be familiar with if they didn't live under a rock. Unfortunate, although this was much appreciated, this technique is going to seriously date the book as we get further and further from its publication date and modern day touchstone moments. There was an occasional tendency to use old slang terms from the era that weren't defined for those that weren't familiar with them and often time magazine columnists weren't identified leaving me with a "why should I care about what this person said about the situation" feeling - again this is my own ignorance of the eras the book talked about showing. I could have done with a closing/summary chapter. Major kudos to the hidden endnotes at the back and further reading suggestions...even though this was billed as not an academic book standing by these standards made the book seem very much in charge of its subject matter. All and all well worth reading. less

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