Product Description

An account of Hollywood in the 1950s - arguably America's most flamboyant, prosperous, yet paranoid decade. Its typical publication was "Confidential" magazine, "the most scandalous scandal magazine in the history of the world" whose lens on Hollywood was the window to America's collective fears and fantasies: race, communism, sex, homosexuality, criminality and mistrust of most basic institutions. Hollywood in the 1950s was a bizarre juxtaposition of high and low culture, a place where the sublime paid tribute to the ridiculous. Yet for all their seeming banality, mainstream Hollywood films also dealt with challenging issues such as race ("The Defiant Ones", "Imitation of Life", "Baby Doll"), sex ("Some Like It Hot", "Rebel Without a Cause"), anti-Semitism ("Crossfire"), drug abuse ("The Man With the Golden Arm"), mental illness ("Cobweb", "Lust for Life"), and the possibility of nuclear annihilation ("On the Beach", "Kiss Me Deadly"). This book explores the decade that helped shape the Hollywood of today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #233500 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Review
* 'A wonderful compendium of sleaze and gossip, The Bad and the Beautiful makes clear that many of the stars were far more interesting off screen than on screen' - JG Ballard, New Statesman

About the Author
Sam Kashner is a teacher and much-acclaimed biographer and critic. This is Jennifer MacNair's first book.

Customer Reviews

1950s subject, 1950s attitude
There's something about this book that makes it difficult to read - maybe it's the way that the narrative keeps repeating little details about the subjects, almost as if it has been cut and pasted from many different drafts and they didn't have the willpower to sift through it all to remove repetition, or maybe because they're worried that you might have forgtten some of the stuff they told you earlier. Either way, I found that it 'woke me up' to the fact that I was reading a text instead of settling down and just letting myself visualise the things I was being told about - I became too aware of the process of writing rather than the end result.


A large chunk of the book is spent describing the rise and fall of 'Confidential' magazine - this is quite telling, because the same ghoulish love of prying into other people's problems seems to keep this book going. It's full of scandal and gossip, but because we live in an age where scandal is everywhere and celebrity is an everyday thing, none of it really seems to have the impact it once did. The book seems to regard its subjects with a perspective based on the prevailing attitude of the time, rather than looking at things with the benefir of our modern, jaded hindsight.

It all feels a bit like getting stuck in a lift with an obsessive compulsive Emmerdale Farm fan after a while.

If you're REALLY into stars of the 1950s you may find this slightly more interesting. I've seen most of the filmstars in various flicks from the era, but I didn't grow up with them so I may be detatched slightly because of this.