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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beauties from the Golden Age of Hollywood,
By Miss Dunaway (Islamabad, Pakistan) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hollywood Beauties (Hardcover)
It seems James Parish churns out far too many books. However, his series of books dealing with films and stars of the Golden period of Hollywood are absolutely indispensible for movie buffs.
Anyone old enough to remember the old (now defunct) film magazine, ''Films in Review'', will recall the magazine's monthly career article on stars which covered their films in detail. The article was followed by a filmography and many photos. The Hollywood Beauties is in similar vein. It covers the careers of female stars renowned for their beauty - stars like Dolores Del Rio, Kay Francis, Ava Gardner, Jean Harlow, Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor and Lana Turner. The great thing about this book is that all of the stars' films are covered in detail along with details about their personal lives (each chapter is like a mini book). At the end is a detailed filmography and a section on photos. Anyone interested in old stars should immediately add this great book to their library.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Lovely Valentine to Seven Alluring Sirens!!!,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Hollywood Beauties (Hardcover)
James Robert Parish has put his astounding research
qualities to the test and come up with "Hollywood Beauties" - a lovely valentine to seven of the screen's most alluring sirens. There is not a lot that is new and in the case of Grace Kelly, a lot of questions are unanswered - why did she suddenly decide to marry Prince Rainier and give up what would have been a memorable life in film. She was the most enigmatic of them all - she was originally a model but from the start was determined to make it as an actress and according to people in the know had the talent to be the best. The other beauties - Dolores Del Rio was beautiful but extremely ambitious (the callousness toward her first husband was, I thought, shocking) and not above using her beauty as a flirtatious way to further her career. Parish claims everything was "above board" but why was she given such star treatment at Warners during the making of "Wonder Bar" when Kay Francis, at the time Warner's biggest star, was left out in the cold? Kay Francis - To me the most beautiful and alluring but was really in movies for the money and the nice holidays she could afford. She didn't think about career longevity and her career suffered when more astute actresses like Bette Davis and Olivia DeHavilland came along. Jean Harlow - the most beloved and yet the most exploited, especially by her mother, her step father and her awful agent. Ava Gardner - sensual and down to earth but according to Humphrey Bogart the most self centred actress he had ever met. She had a fear of her face being marked, so what did she do - she got drunk, rode a horse (she had never ridden before) and charged a bull, which then kicked her!!! She later became a recluse. Elizabeth Taylor was another who I think needed a deeper apraisal. So beautiful and supposedly so intelligent and with an Oscar for her shocking portrayal in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (she also won another for "Butterfield 8" a film she was not proud of) she seemed to become a victim of her own wealth and beauty, with self indulgent performances in "Reflections in a Golden Eye", "Boom" and "Doctor Faustus". Lana Turner, perhaps the saddest of all, whose erratic childhood must have been the cause of her undisiplined life. At the end of her chapter she went on a "Legendary Ladies" tour and among the inevitable questions were "would she change her life", her answer was "No No No!!". I immediately thought of her poor little daughter and that awful murder, Lana must have forgotten about that!! More insight would have been nice instead of a "and then she starred in" but the book was written in the late 70s when most of the beauties were still alive,so people had to be considered.
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