28 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Deeply Dishonest, September 15, 2008
This review is from: Reagan: The Hollywood Years (Hardcover)
I have just completed Marc Eliot's biography of Ronald Reagan and the Hollywood years. Frankly I wish I hadn't bothered. It was a wast of time. Mr. Eliot has nothing good to say about most of the people in the book. He disparages Mr. Reagan at every opportunity, denegrating him as an actor constantly, and when he is forced to admit that Reagan did pretty good as an actor in KINGS ROW and KNUTE ROCKNE, it is with the sly suggestion that it was an accident and had nothing to do with talent.
Mr. Eliot contradicts himself from page to page. As he is denegrating Reagan's abilities, at the same time he points out that Reagan was the first Hollywood star to sign a Million doller contract.
They don't give Million doller contracts to actors that can't deliver.
I would suggest that Mr. Eliot knows nothing about acting or the actual process of making movies. He talks about YANKEE DOODLE DANDY and the last shot of that film, the one where Cagney joins the soldiers marching past the White House singing "Over There". He seems to suggest that the "scenery falls away and somehow becomes the place that the songs are singing about"....HUNH?? He further states that the "scene looks less real that it is".
I have no idea what he's talking about.
In the same section he talks about the "aging Irving Berlin" being involved in THIS IS THE ARMY. Berlin was 55 in 1943. Apparently Mr. Eliot thinks this is a crime.
He calls LAWRENCE OF ARABIA a "Hollywood picture" It wasn't. It was Produced by indipendent producer Sam Spiegel who was Austrian and Directed by David Lean who was English and the only American actors of note in the picture were Anthony Quinn and Arthur Kennedy.
He suggests that THE YEARLING, book by Marjeory Kenyon Rawlings and the subsiquent film, was suggested by Walt Disneys BAMBI! - Apparently Mr. Eliot never read Miss Rawlings autobiography, CROSS CREEK. If he had he would know that the story of the Yearling (a deer) was an incident Miss Rawlings was witness to in Florida in the early years of the 20th century. Disney and BAMBI had nothing to do with it!
In the early part of the book he establishes that Mr. Reagan has poor eyesight and needded glasses. Yet on page 208 he denegrate's Mr. Reagan for wearing glasses to a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Commission ,"He wore.....thick glasses, ...they were less an aid than a prop to make himself look more sincere..."
Lets see now...I wear glasses so I can see, and read, and not bump into things. Is there any chance Reagan wore them for the same reason? ...Hmmm, I wonder...
This book has been poorly researched with no apparent thought to fact checking. Page 230 he tells the tale of Nancy Davis going to New York to be an actor and using family connections through Spencer Tracy to get a contract at MGM. He states Tracy was in New York at the time in a play called THE RAGGED TRUTH......Less than one minute on the Internet Broadway Data Base would have reveilled the actual name of the play to be THE RUGGED PATH, directed by Garson Kanin, which Kanin talks about in his book TRACY AND HEPBURN.
He denegrats John Wayne calling TRUE GRIT "cartoonish". He suggests that James Stewart, David Niven, Clark Gable and others had trouble re-starting their careers after World War II.
Really?
James Stewart did another 70 pictures including IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE in 1946, immideatly after the war. He went on to do such great pictures as WINCHESTER '73, HARVEY, REAR WINDOW, SPIRIT OF ST. LOUS and ANATOMY OF A MURDER....David Niven received an Academy Award for SEAPERATE TABLES and did GUNS OF NAVARONE, THE PINK PANTHER, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS and 80 more pictures before his death.
This book is very poorly edited. There is a half-page quote from actor Arthur Kennedy on page 165. I read it 5 times and still don't know what it means or why it's their. It contribuited nothing to the narrative that I could see.
He states that When Reagan and Davis got married they honeymooned at the.... "Old Mission Inn in Riverside, a small, coountryfied upscale motel". I spent a month at the Mission Inn making a picture and it is NOT a motel! Suits go for $600-800 a night and the place is huge. A mix of French Chateau/English Mannor House/Italian/Oriental archeture. The entire film company stayed there for a month with plenty of room left over for the ordinary guest.
He suggests that in 1953 Henry Fonda's career had "fallen off a ledge" In 1953 Fonda was starring on Broadway in MR. ROBERTS.
I have saved the two most outrageous statements for last. He suggests that during WWII no Hollywood star ever had to worry about being in the line of fire. If they were still alive this would come as a big suprise to Henry Fonda who found himself under fire by Japan off Saipan and was awarded the Bronze Star, Eddie Albet was shelled at Tarawa, Robert Montgomery saw action not only in the Solomons in the Pacific but was off Cherborg on D-Day and received a Bronze star with V device for Valor,Wayne Morris (I admit, not a big star) was an ace in WWII winning 3 DFC's and 2 Air Medals. And then there is Brig. General James Stewert who led B-17 bombers over Germany.....
I think the greatest flight of fancy in this book is when the author suggests that it was the "Mob" that got Frank Sinatra the part in FROM HERE TO ETERNERY. In her own words, Ava Gardner in her book AVA, says that she got with Harry Cohn's wife Joan and the two them nagged Harry into giving Frank a test. Eli Wallich had been cast but could not do it and so Frank was cast. This is confirmed in the book KING COHN. The "Mob" had nothing to do with it and the Author's further assertion that Reagan was the model for Johnny Fontain in THE GODFATHER is so absurd as to be laughabile! It's ridiculas and the author offer's not a shred of proof but wild conjecture.
This book is a mishmash of conjecture, arm chair psychology, and bad research. I belive the author has an political agenda to denegrate Reagan at every opportunity through inundo and suggestion. It is a dishonesy book and if I could get my money back I would.
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Inaccuracies Abound, September 29, 2008
This review is from: Reagan: The Hollywood Years (Hardcover)
The small inaccuracies pile up one upon another until the reader is compelled to conclude that either Mr. Eliot did not do much worthwhile research or was in such a hurry to publish that he did not care whether the reader might know the difference between fact and inaccuracy. To a film buff, the gaffs are, at first, comical, and then annoying. Several instances: at one point he actually identifies Billy Wilder as Lew Ayres in a photo caption...did he ever look at a photo of Ayres? Or Wilder? And Jimmy Stewart was not an eligible bachelor but already married to Gloria when Ronald and Nancy were married. Further, "The Yearling" is not about a little girl but a little boy, for goodness sake. Brings into question his opinions (which occur throughout the book) on people and events.
Mr. Eliot really does not like his subjects and seems to go out of his way to place them in an unfavorable and insulting light. Don't bother to purchase the book. In our troubled economic times, save your money instead.
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