Customer Reviews

THE DREAM MERCHANTS

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This was Robbins' second novel and there is a marked improvement in the quality of the writing over his first, NEVER LOVE A STRANGER. Robbins appeared to have had a better editor this time around, but more than that, the tone is more even and the narrative more coherent than before.

I've always appreciated the fact that Robbins didn't "dumb down" or spell everything out. The reader is asked to fill in a missing blank now and then. The plot of THE DREAM MERCHANTS is quite complicated, but with complexity comes variety and action, and Robbins was a master at keeping things moving.

THE DREAM MERCHANTS deals with the early Hollywood moguls, the deals they negotiated, the swindles they perpetrated. It treats of movie stars and directors, technicians and PR spokespeople only insofar as they relate directly to the moguls. There is a fairly long subplot involving a spider woman of an actress with whom the protagonist, Johnny Edge, becomes involved. Aside from that, the plot revolves mostly around the Hollywood bigwigs' business deals. But having already read quite a bit about the making of movies from the technical end, I was interested in glimpsing Hollywood from a different perspective this time around.

Bubba

In 1949, Harold Robbins followed up his first novel, Never Love a Stranger, with what would prove to be the first of a loose trilogy he would write on the history of the American film industry. The Dream Merchants covers the pioneer days of the motion picture, depicting the rise of a primarily Jewish owned and operated Independent company that would take on the WASP led motion picture patents combine and rise to become one of the major studios of the 1920's and 30's. Though the studio is called Magnum and headed by Peter Kessler and Johnny Edge, Robbins draws upon the history of Universal Pictures (where he was an executive in the 1940's) and its founder Carl Laemmle and his successor and long time associate Robert Cochrane.

The book is structured between short passages set in 1938 narrated in the first person by Johnny Edge, who has just become the new President of Magnum, but must already contend with a board room power struggle as well as the news that his old friend Peter has suffered a massive stroke, and longer sections flashing back over various time points between 1908 and 1938 depicting the rise of Magnum Studio and the ups and downs of the friendship between Johnny and the members of the Kessler family. In these flashbacks, Johnny and the Kesslers work hard to raise what started out as a simple nickoledon business and transform their venture into a major producer and distributor of movies throughout the world. Over the 30 years, Kessler's children grow up, one of whom, Doris, falls in love with Johnny, and Mark, who becomes a spoiled adult child of Hollywood . A section of the book is also devoted to Johnny's experiences as a soldier in World War I where he suffers an injury that will change his life forever. There also a heaping slice of steamy melodrama in which Johnny becomes involved with an ambitious actress who unbeknownst to him is incestuously involved with a family member, a character that has more than a passing resemblance to "the Great Profile" of American theater and film, John Barrymore.

The Dream Merchants is especially strong in evoking a sense of family and friendship that exists between Johnny, the Kesslers and other people who come into their orbit. You really feel these characters care for each other. Likewise, thanks to his background as a film executive, Robbins realistically evokes the business side of the industry with a number of scenes depicting bargaining, deal making, and executive maneuvering both within a company and between rival studios. Though tame in comparison to some of his later, more sexually explicit books, The Dream Merchants is still an entertaining read. It may not rank up there with What Makes Sammy Run as a Hollywood literary novel, it more than does the job as a good entertainment with plenty of heat, humor, humanity and heart.

What could have been a great epic about the earlier days of filmaking has turned out to be a dreadful, overlong, uninteresting mishmash that even die hard fans will hate. Read THE CARPETBAGGERS instead, which deals with the same subject, and is a far better book.

Story of Johnny Edge from 1908 to 1938 and his partner Peter Kessler. It shows how they get involved in the movie business, build a studio and fight to keep it going. Through the years various characters and situations pop up to challenge them.

This was OK but nothing new. Robbins has done this already with "The Carpetbaggers" a MUCH better book. Like most of his books this is long (I have the 1961 version and its 517 pages with small type). It's not completely uninteresting but some of it is VERY slow and puzzling. When they get incolved with the business, percentages and stocks I got bored and confused. Also the construction of this book is haphazard. It starts out in 1938 then keeps backtracking through the years to explain things. You have to keep track of quite a few characters and situations and it gets annoying. However the various stories DO move pretty rapidly and some of the situations are pretty ridiculous (but amusing). Since this was originally published in 1949 there's no explicit sex but it makes it pretty clear what's going on. It all ends up with a happy ending that I didn't buy for one second. Still it's a quick silly read. Good for summer or vacation time reading...but Robbins has done MUCH better.

The Dream Merchants, are, of course, the lords of Hollywood. Having worked there, this is a favorite subject of Harold's, but this book is not as good as the Carpetbaggers.

It is full of the shenanigans that go on, what you have to do to get into films, to get them made, all that sort of thing, from earlier Hollywood times.

As you can see in this book, the story of Hollywood was the same since it started, if you are a woman and you want to be in the screen, you have to have sex with the directors (Dulcie) if you are a man you have to deceive them (Mark).
Apart of that, the book is really heavy to read because it repeat itself many times when you are reading the story of 1938, that makes the book a little boring. That doesn't mean that the book goes out of the main story but at least I don't like to read twice the same story in a book, no matter if it is written in two lines or in two pages.
The story has ups and downs, is not a bad book but you will take some time reading it, so if you see it at your parents house take it, and before you read it get prepare for a heavy book to read.