Customer Reviews

Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies, 15e: The 15th Edition of the Bestselling Encyclopedia of Film, Actors, Directors, Producers, and Writers

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Halliwell's is maddeningly opinionated and uneven. Anyone with a passing knowledge of movies will find much to infuriate him. For example, it dismisses James Cagney with 4 lines and Edward G. Robinson with 3 but squanders 11 lines on Jennifer Aniston and 12 on Winona Ryder. Here's what the author says about Gene Kelly, who just happens to grace the cover of this book: "...his acting and singing abilities were minimal and his 'good guy' characterization wore a little thin." It has a knack for finding the nastiest, cattiest quotes about the victims listed. For example, one actress is called "a vacuum with nipples." It tends to dwell on the more salacious personal details of the actors lives, much of which is of questionable veracity, especially gossip dealing with actors sexuality. Also, I found many problems with the information listed such as the same quote attributed to two different people, no ending date for TV shows long off the air, and incomplete credits trailing off with "etc." It does give helpful lists in the back of the Oscars, BAFTA, and AFI but anyone looking for a straight reference guide with dates, places of birth, complete credits, and unquestionable facts should look elsewhere.

Great reference, but a little unwieldy. Big and heavy for a paperback.

I first purchased "Halliwell'Filmgoers Companion" in 1965 and loved it right off.Mr.Leslie Halliwell write with wit and deep love of films,especially those from the "classic period",his "reviews" of Brute Force and Of Mice and Men(among others)lead me to get hooked into these two films,his writings on John Ford were insightful.Since Mr.Halliwell's death in 1989,with Mr.Walker taking over as editor the quality has steadily declined.The best part of the book are those that retained from Mr.Halliwell's writings.Over the years I have purchased Mr.Halliwell's edition every two years(or so)when a new edition was published,since his death I usually skip an edition before buying a new version.Depite its overall quality decline it is still the movie encyclopedia around.

There is no way, you should limit yourself to just one source, I think this book is a second source book. But, it can be your main source.

That said, It's great for looking up names, about 12,000 names listed. For finding names that may not be household, or the big names as well, such as actors, Directors or producers, and more.

After all, there is no book that has everything, every name, every movie star, if so, it costs 500.00 or the book weighs about 10 pounds.
So, sometimes you need more than one book.

You don't want to buy a library? ok, then, it's good by itself, its fun by itself, to just do browsing.

But, it works well with other book sources, to check, and maybe another source will prove it wrong, or "Who's Who" proves the other book wrong, when double checking.

I didn't find loads of errors in here, a few, the biggest problem (as others mentioned) is very brief or not complete career lists, movies or TV they did is not complete.

It's a great book, it's a great second source book,
a double check or name finder book, for movie and TV stars.

At a fair price, it should be in your collection just for the reasons I mentioned.

Buy it? yes, buy it.