Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Trivia calamity., September 23, 2000
I'm so ashamed of myself. I yield to temptation and bought a horrible, terrible book "I was a fugitive from a Hollywood trivia factory"(A book of Hollywood lists) by Aubrey Dillon Malone. After reading it I felt in the same league of celebrities biographies readers, whose favorites books are the bios of Monica Lewinski, Princess Di and the Royal family of Monaco. Why did I spent 16 hard earned dollars in this kind of trash? Because the title and the cover fooled me, and I thougth that I was buying a book written in a similar pulp style of my beloved film directors: Tim Burton and John Waters. Boy, was I wrong! What I found was a book superficial, unimaginative and full of errors. The author is like a grandmother who likes to repeat the same stories over and over again: How Woody Allen left poor Mia for her adoptive daughter; how Robert De Niro won 60 pounds for his role in Raging Bull. Most of the trivia facts in this book are really boring and the author makes mistakes as writing Anjelica Huston name in one page with an j and in other with a g. Dillon Malone makes unforgetable omissions as not including Clint Eastwood's Oscar winner film "Unforgiven"(1992) in her list of 10 westerns nominated for best picture at the Oscar. Let's not be totally negative, Dillon Malone book "Stranger than Fiction", a book of literary lists is a lot better, maybe because literature hasn't been as overexposed as movies.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Naughty Author Should Know Better, March 19, 2007
When a collection of information about movies is put together, folks assume that because it's in a book, especially a hardbound, it's accurate, and soon that information is spread--and in this case, spread inaccurately. While the cover design for this book is a luring delight, the text is riddled with inaccuracies, misquotes and misspellings. As a few examples: Butterfly McQueen did not win an Oscar for Gone With The Wind (that was Hattie McDaniel); the child Judy Garland never auditioned for the TV Version of Our Gang (TV wasn't around when Judy was a tot); John Gilbert was never, ever married to Marlene Dietrich (she was only married once to Rudolf Sieber and never divorced); one could go on. Even quotes, which could be easily checked, are given inaccurate readings--Bogie never said "The problems of three people don't amount to a hill of beans..." It's "three little people," a big difference! Cary Grant's original name was Leach, not Leech, Roy Rogers was Slye, not Syle, Cyd Charisse's middle name was Ellice, not Elice. If you've decided to be a trivia authority, then you should check your facts, your sources, your manuscript! While clad in a lovely format, with a quality binding and nice paper, this book should be avoided if the reader is looking for any kind of accuracy and more than a silly giggle.
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