What are you reading?

[MissGoddess]

I've started reading Simon Louvish's biography of Cecil B. DeMille.

So far, it is rather odd. DeMille comes across as a very shadowy figure, and the book is far more of a career overview than a biography. (For example, Louvish supposes that the death of DeMille's father when Cecil was 12 and the fact that Cecil had to attend a girls' school run by his mother to save money had some affect on the teenage Cecil, but he says this in about as many words as I did just now.)

Still, I guess the book will be useful, because it shows that DeMille was more than the "Biblical spectacular" director. However, so far (and I have gotten up to "Carmen" in 1915) it is far less satisfactory than Louvish's work on W. C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, and Laurel and Hardy.

Hi Mike! FYI, Scott Eyman is working on a biography (an authorized one) of DeMille and based on his previous books, I think it will be the definitive one and an entertaining read. It may be out this Fall.

[charliechaplinfan]

I've still not got very far with The Star Machine but that is due to time constraints rather than anything else. She does tantilisingly drop names into her narrative and I hope fuller explanations will come up later on.

Her book on Silent Stars was the book that got me interested in Silents. It was her description of the stars and also the movies they were in that really whetted my appetite.

I've since read two books by Kevin Brownlow and they are perfect film books to me. I only really tend to read in depth when I'm on holiday. Something like The Star Machine is ideal to me at the moment because I can dip in and out of it and easily pick up where I've left off.

If think in a few years when 'nappy brain' has completely cleared away I'll be back into more serious works. Until then....

I used to read classic literature for pleasure, since having kids I've been lucky to read a cereal packet I know there's hope somewhere....

[ken123]

I am still reading non - film related books. Today, via UPS, I received NIXONLAND by Rick Perlstein and JFK and the Unspeakable -Why He Died & Why Its Matters by James W. Douglas.

[Synnove]

I am very interested in reading Jeanine Basinger's new book The Star Machine. It's a pretty interesting topic, how stars were manufactured by the studios and how they responded to that.

I'm reading Lotte Eisner's book The Haunted Screen, about German silent cinema... only I've lost it. I need to find it again, because it might possibly be one of the best film books I've read.

[MikeBSG]

I have gotten deeper into Louvish's biography of DeMille (about 1935), and now that I am used to it, I am enjoying it more.

Louvish wins me over with his amazement at the baroque turns of DeMille's plots. No wonder DeMille suffered when talkies came in, apart from the technical issues, because plot twists like a blind man living with a woman he believes to be somebody else seems unthinkable in a talkie. Also, it interested me that so many of DeMille's silents used a kind of mysticism/supernaturalism, particularly reincarnation, something I don't usually associate with his work.

Also, it interests me that apart from a handful of films with Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson, the vast bulk of DeMille's silents were made with people who have no resonance with me. It is almost shocking to get to "The Sign of the Cross" and find DeMille working with Charles Laughton and Claudette Colbert, performers I've actually heard of.

[charliechaplinfan]

I've been looking at that book by Lotte Eisner, let me know how you get on when you've found it again

[Synnove]

Certainly I will. Now where is it??!

[CharlieT]

Finished Tyrannasaur Canyon and am getting ready to start The Source by James A. Michener.

[charliechaplinfan]

I finished The Star Machine by Jeanine Basinger. We have a thread on it under film literature if anyone is interested.

I've also read a book I picked up secondhand called Jean Howard's Hollywood. Jean Howard was a starlet who married the agent Charlie Feldman and became a photographer to the stars. This book is packed with photos that she took over a forty year period most are candid shots taken at parties and get togethers.

It was quite good for a peruse but I wouldn't have paid the cover price of $25.

[feaito]

I've been reading some of the actresses profiles included in William Drew's "At The Center of the Frame".

I finished reading "En Busca de la Edad de Oro" (In Search of the Golden Age) by Spanish author Javier Sierra.

Currently I'm "devouring" Thomas Greanias' engrossing "Raising Atlantis" one of the best novels I've read lately.

[ken123]

I am reading The Sistine Secrets:Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican by Rabbi Benjamin Brech and Roy Dolinger. Very interesting, it seems Michelangelo was very conversant in Kabbalistic lore.

[MissGoddess]

I am reading The Sistine Secrets:Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican by Rabbi Benjamin Brech and Roy Dolinger. Very interesting, it seems Michelangelo was very conversant in Kabbalistic lore.

Michaelangelo was the most extraordinary artist ever to live. I took dozens of pictures of his glorious Moses on my trip. It's my favorite sculpture, I like it even more than David.

[Synnove]

I picked up The Parade's Gone By... at a used bookstore. I'm very happy I found it here in the states, since I had tried to order it before but it never arrived. It's a wonderful collection of different interviews and and descriptions about movie making in the silent era.

I also bought Melvin Stokes's book about The Birth of a Nation, and I have read about 130 pages of it so far. If you're interested in the film and the controversy surrounding it, this book is a must-have, I think, judging from what I've read. I have read a lot of other books that deal with the movie in one or a couple of chapters before, but not an engrossing, all-encompassing "biography" of it like this one.

I found The Haunted Screen again weeks ago, and that one's also recommended.

[charliechaplinfan]

I can guarantee you'll love Parades. It really is the companion book to the Hollywood series. He managed to speak to so many surviving stars of the age. He tells the whole story of film, not just the story from the stars perspective.

I've read both William Everson's American silent film and Movies inthe Age of Innocence by Edward Wagenknacht they're good but Parade's IMO is head and shoulder above both.

[Synnove]

Yes, the analysis in The Parade is very good indeed. He doesn't just take their word for it, he puts their reminiscences within context. I particularly liked what he wrote about Griffith, and the interview with Mary Pickford.

American Silent Film was one of the first silent film books I read. It has a dryer tone than The Parade's Gone By but it's a very good, thorough book.