Customer Reviews

Vanity Fair's Tales of Hollywood: Rebels, Reds, and Graduates and the Wild Stories Behind the Making of 13 IconicFilms

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This is a perfect book to read if you love movies, and it's too cold out to go to one! Culled from Vanity Fair's vast output of movie exposes, this compilation, from different staff writers, focuses on 13 titles. Classics like Rebel Without a Cause, All About Eve, Reds, and Midnight Cowboy are included, along with such legendary disasters like Cleopatra and Myra Breckenridge. The behind-the-scenes trivia is fun and the stories are generally well written with amusing observations from the (surviving) cast and crew of each film. Among those things I learned: Burt Lancaster was hardly a Prince among men, and Debbie Reynolds was among those considered for the heroine in "Rebel." The chapter on "Eve" subsequently became an entire book from that writer. Includes a foreword from present-day editor Graydon Carter.

Vanity Fair's peek into the behind the scenes making of thirteen iconic films is well worth the price of admission and then some. I've always been curious about how All About Eve, and Rebel Without A Cause came about. Who knew that Mel Brooks originally envisioned The Producers as a novel tentatively called "Springtime for Hitler?"
Readers may be unaware that Midnight Cowboy was based on a novel by James Leo Herlihy and that the script for Saturday Night Fever evolved from a magazine article published in New York magazine entitled "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night." The fascinating back stories of these films may well pique readers interest in searching out the original source material.
Lengthy essays on the making of Cleopatra, The Graduate, and Tommy sheds new light on films that were milestones in their heyday. The only disappointment was the chapter on Myra Breckinridge. There wasn't nearly enough dish on Mae West's role in the film, and what scant facts are offered, are erroneous. West did not live in the penthouse of the Ravenswood apartment, but in suite 611, of the seven floor building. As well, she never owned the building as stated. She was much too savvy in that matter, knowing it would be the perfect opportunity for fans within the building to disturb her over mundane maintenance matters.
This is the kind of book so heavily laced with fascinating detail that you will want to revisit it again to glean what you missed on the first reading. Highly recommended.

Those who are enamored with Hollywood mythmaking are served well by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter's collection of behind-the-scenes accounts of thirteen renowned films - many true classics, others simply notorious - even if some of these stories have already made it to print before. However, the quality of the film has less bearing on these accounts than the storytelling skill displayed by the likes of James Wolcott, Peter Biskind, and Vanity Fair contributing editor Sam Kashner, who contributes five pieces. Spanning Orson Welles' bastardized 1942 follow-up to Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, to Warren Beatty's 1981 epic about John Reed, Reds, just about every account proves how an idiosyncratic blend of fragile egos, runaway budgets and studio politics still cannot avert the role of fate in making these movies memorable.

There is plenty of good gossip in the book, much of it already turned into established Hollywood lore, and the pieces may just alter your perspective on these films once you see them again. A good example is David Kamp's account of the ludicrously elongated filming of Cleopatra, which starred the multi-married Elizabeth Taylor in her own high voltage melodrama replete with adultery, absurdly large pieces of jewelry, and sympathy-inducing medical emergencies. Kamp also covers the sad story behind "The Magnificent Ambersons", a period piece which was edited without Welles' knowledge. His editor, Robert Wise (later a distinguished filmmaker in his own right), remembered sending the director's cut to Welles in Brazil and did not remember getting it back. Always perceived to be a lost masterpiece, the film may just be a case of a disappointment which the director distanced himself from by taking a government gig to make a failed South American documentary.

Studio ignorance plays a big role in several of these movies. There were high expectations for Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge, the novel of which summoned a price tag of $900,000 for the film rights in 1970. Yet, a neophyte writer-director named Michael Sarne was given the task of commandeering the big-budget production (featuring Farrah Fawcett in her big-screen debut) based on one modest film. However, the same gamble was placed on Mike Nichols directing The Graduate and Mel Brooks stumbling through The Producers, even though Brooks had no idea where to place the camera amid escalating tensions with star Zero Mostel. On "The Graduate", casting decisions proved crucial when one considers the fact that Doris Day and Robert Redford were the first choices to play Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin Braddock. There are equally memorable stories about classics as diverse as All About Eve, Rebel Without a Cause, Sweet Smell of Success, and Saturday Night Fever. This is a must-read for cineastes. All others have been forewarned.

There are several keepers among the essays collected from the pages on Vanity Fair on the backstory or gossip surrounding 13 essays. The hands down best is "All About Eve." Close seconds are looks back to "The Graduate" and "The Producers." New York City receives heavy play, as does Dustin Hoffman. Warren Beatty and Bette Davis compete with Hoffman for being the most self-centered, but Beatty emerges in the chapter on "Reds" as the undisputed narracisic king of Hollywood.

This is a great book for movie buffs! I espcially enjoyed the chapter about "All About Eve", one of my alltime favorites. Imagine, they thought Marilyn Monroe wasn't photogenic enough! What a riot and a very interesting insider story. This book is a really fun read and you can just read 1 chapter at a time.
Dustin Hoffman did'nt want to try out for "The Grauate". He thought he was too jewish, until Mike Nichols told him "Maybe the character is jewish inside?"
There are so many facts about how some of our most iconic movies were made and cast.
If you love movies, you'll LOVE this book! Have fun, one chapter at a time.

This book is excellent and maybe one of the best historical representations
of the hollywood filmmaking process. The essays are informative and
sometimes shocking in their revelations .

This is a riveting and absorbing look at the backstory of and circumstances surrounding a wide array of films, from marred classics such as "Magnificent Ambersons" to legendary flops like "Cleopatra" to triumphs like "The Graduate."
This book is recommended for movie buffs.

Gossip, gossip, glorious gossip. Vanity Fair has always been like The National Enquirer, but with class. Some of the world's best journalists dish out the dirt. Not the usual mud and stones--but caviar on golden plates. Those who enjoy an inside look on the madness of movie making will delight in these articles. As always VP's articles are wonderfully written and briskly edited, psychologically revealing and worth repeating. True or not they make wonderful dinner table anecdotes,

This book is a terrific handbook for the classic movie fan. The stories are best read following a recent viewing of the movie discussed in each chapter. Great inside stories.

Learned a lot, some of which I would rather not have known, yet the stories
were intriguing. Wish some of the phrasing and language had been softened
and some stuff left untold.