Customer Reviews

Alice Faye: A Bio-Bibliography (Bio-Bibliographies in the Performing Arts)

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To anyone looking at this book for information it is quite impressive. People giving these rave reviews aaasume the information in the book is correct. Anyone who knows about Alice Faye would know that the information in this book is unreliable. There is a mistake of some kind on almost every page. The author was given a wealth of information/corrections to work with but he and the publisher were more interested in getting it done now than getting it done right. It's a shame that people refer to these so-called "reference books", assume what their reading is fact, and the mistakes get copied over and over. To sum it up - opportunity lost. A big let-down for people who love Alice Faye. The book to find, although not as broad in scope, is "The Alice Faye Movie Book" (aka "The Films of Alice Faye"). It was written by someone who actually saw every film.

I've owned the Alice Faye book for several years, and consider it a very useful, and even affectionate, look at Faye's career. The author clearly admires the star, and in the filmography chapter he does print contemporary reviews that prove how highly Faye was regarded. The bibliography alone encompasses an enormous amount of material that has been written about Faye, and even the complete log of her radio show with husband Phil Harris is accounted for. The volume even includes information I previously had no knowledge of-- such as Faye's post-Hollywood career as a representative for a pharmaceutical firm. I appreciate that a reference book as this has been done--there are some excellent photographs too.

Greenwood Press offers yet another example of it's policy of publishing something... anything... just because it's not yet in their cataloge. Those seeking an overview of Alice Faye's career will find all the basic facts (many of them wrong) in this work, which resembles nothing so much as xeroxed pages stapled together. In no instance do we get any feeling for the performer as a person, just a rundown of "and then she did..." or "and then she recorded..." etc. Such a long lived and important career deserves far, far better than this overpriced rubbish.

Theses Bio-bibliographies vary in quality. This is not one of the better ones. The volume is full of inaccuracies and VERY expensive but it certainly captures the breadth of Alice Faye's career and for anyone who thinks of her only as a film actress, it is a revelation.

However, the errors and sloppy editing could have been avoided because the author had access to all the corrections but did not bother. Sadly, this perpetuates the errors so that the uninformed just does not know what is correct and what is not.

The references to articles about Faye and interviews with her are particularly useful for those who wish to learn more.