The Bad & the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties

Sam Kashner, Jennifer MacNair

W. W. Norton & Company, 2003 - Performing Arts - 380 pages

With "fresh emphasis on little-known stories [and] an impressive number of eyewitnesses" (Chicago Tribune), Sam Kashner and Jennifer MacNair present "a revealing,...ever fascinating glimpse into the shadowy reality and hidden mores of Hollywood in what was popularly considered a decade of innocence" (Suzanne Finstad). "[S]urprisingly vivid accounts" (People) of such public icons as Lana Turner, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, and Mae West explore the private scandals exploited by tabloids such as Confidential. Highlighting Hollywood's curious religious revival with The Robe, the film industry's exploitation of the potboiler Peyton Place, and the life of anarchic director Nick Ray of the enduring classic Rebel without a Cause, the authors "[give] a compelling sense" (Kirkus Reviews) of the unique obsessions of the era and the city's attempts to reinvent the magic and mystery of its past glories. Guided by the authors' historical savvy and intimate storytelling, we discover a city at a crossroads, attempting to reinvent the magic and mystery of its past glories. Tragic, irreverent, and always entertaining, The Bad and the Beautiful reveals the underground history of this turbulent decade in American film.

What people are saying

THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL: Hollywood in the Fifties

User Review  - Kirkus

Anecdotal account of the world of 1950s cinema and the forces that helped destroy the studio system and reshape Hollywood.Journalists Kashner and MacNair depict a Hollywood struggling against the ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - soliloquies - LibraryThing

I admit that I love these books because they are pure escapism - but this one just didn't hit the mark. The stories themselves were entertaining, but the writing style was too dry.

Contents

• Confidential Magazine: 17
• Bill Tilden Lizabeth Scott: 47
• Alvah Bessies Dream: 64
• Manny Robinson: 81
• Nicholas Ray: 99
• Hollywoods Religious Revival: 123
• Douglas Sirk: 139
• Expats Artists and Oscar Levant: 156
• A Place in the Sun and The Night: 176
• Kim Novak: 196
• Sweet Smell of Success: 217
• Imitation of Life: 264
• Lovella Parsons Hedda Hopper and Sheilah Graham: 275
• William Inges American Dreams: 308
• Mae West Gloria Swanson and Sunset Boulevard: 327
• Coda: 349
• Acknowledgments: 355
• Bibliography: 357
• Index: 365

Popular passages

Page 310 - I keep tellin' myself, is the last. Something'll happen. Then nothing ever does — except I get a little crazier all the time. HOWARD (Hopelessly) Well . . . ROSEMARY A well's a hole in the ground, Howard. Be careful you don't fall in. HOWARD I wasn't tryin' to be funny. ROSEMARY . . . and all this time you just been leadin‎

Page 15 - ... herself of this information), not to the Catholic Church which is at best an oversolemn introduction to cosmic entertainment, not to the American Legion, which hates everybody, but to you, glorious Silver Screen, tragic Technicolor, amorous Cinemascope, stretching Vistavision and startling Stereophonic Sound, with all your heavenly dimensions and reverberations and iconoclasms! To Richard Barthelmess as the "tol'able...‎

Page 74 - Passport Division of the State Department. Mr. KEARNEY. Mr. Chairman, I also believe that in justice to any individual who comes before this committee, it should be noted in the record whether or not the committee has any information that the individual is a Communist. Mr. WALTER. Well, actually, this committee has never had any evidence presented to indicate that you were anything more than a very choice sucker. I think you are No. 1 on every sucker list in the country.‎

Page 14 - Fitzgerald said of his novel, into "a lavish, romantic past that perhaps will not come again into our time." Selznick, speaking to Ben Hecht, compared Hollywood to Egypt ("full of crumbled pyramids"), but he was not making a casual analogy — or if he was, he spoke truer than he thought. For Hollywood was Egypt, and Rome, and Jerusalem. The ancient world of the epics was a huge, many-faceted metaphor for Hollywood itself, because even when shot on location or in studios in Italy and Spain, these...‎

Page 244 - Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay.‎

Page 144 - And trash that contains the element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.‎

Page 15 - You have disgraced the industry that made you and fed you! You should be tarred and feathered and run out of Hollywood!‎

Page 247 - To a tourist these towns look as peaceful as a postcard picture, but if you go beneath that picture, it's like turning over a rock with your foot! All kinds of strange things crawl out.‎

About the author

Sam Kashner and his wife Nancy Schoenberger are creative writing teachers at William and Mary College. They have written entertainment industry biographies, including Talent for Genius: The Life and Times of Oscar Levant and Hollywood Kryptonite: The Bulldog, the Lady and the Death of Superman, which explores the death of George Reeves. Kashner has also written three books of poetry on his own.

Jennifer MacNair, a graduate of Columbia University's School of Journalism, is a contributor to the online edition of PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Bad & the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties
• Authors: Sam Kashner, Jennifer MacNair
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003
• ISBN: 0393324362, 9780393324365
• Length: 380 pages
• Subjects: Performing Arts / Film / General; Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism