Hollywood Confidential

Mike Rothmiller, a former LAPD detective and the co-author of the true crime book, Bombshell: The Night Bobby Kennedy Killed Marilyn Monroe (Ad Lib Publishers, 2021), said on a nationally broadcast radio talk show that the vice squad of the LAPD in the 1940s and 1950s kept detailed dossiers on Hollywood movie stars and others in the movie capital by order of the police chief. Those files, it would be safe to assume, probably surpassed anything Kenneth Anger revealed in his gossip-filled books, Hollywood Babylon and Hollywood Babylon II. Let's hope those dossiers (which probably included photographs) weren't destroyed because they would be of immense interest to historians, biographers, and movie fans. 

Scotty Bowers, Pimp To The Stars

I first learned of Scotty Bowers and his memoir, Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars (Grove Press, 2012) while browsing the Summer Movie Preview double issue of Entertainment Weekly (April 27/May 4, 2018) and found out that a documentary based on the book will be released in late July. The film is called Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood.

I immediately obtained a copy of this fascinating tell-all book and I hope to see the documentary version when it is screened in theatres this summer.

Bowers, now 94 years old, was in the Marine Corps during World War II and later became a matchmaker and trick to many famous names in Hollywood in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

Penelope Cruz Is Not A Non-White Actress

Wendy McClellan Anderson, of Altadena, California, is a self-described "Angeleno, white woman and film fan.

In her letter that was published online by the Los Angeles Times (December 29, 2017), Ms. Anderson complained that she "was deeply upset to see only white women grace the cover of your latest issue and be interviewed as leading actresses of Hollywood."

She goes on to name non-white women who were snubbed by the paper such as Mary J. Blige, Tessa Thompson, and "[t]he entire cast of 'Girls Trip,' the biggest comedy of the year."

Included in the list was Penelope Cruz. Obviously Ms. Anderson thinks anyone with a Spanish surname is automatically non-white and probably from Latin America.

In fact, Penelope Cruz is a white woman, from Madrid, Spain, a European city and country.

A Book On The Making of "Thelma & Louise"

I enjoy reading books that take the reader behind the scenes of classic Hollywood movies, especially movies I have seen and thoroughly enjoyed. So far I have read books on the making of Network, Rebel Without a Cause, Psycho, and Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Now, according to Entertainment Weekly magazine (July 7, 2017), a book about the making of the 1991 classic Thelma & Louise has been published. The book, by Becky Aikman, is called Off the Cliff. Anyone who has seen the movie knows the significance of the title. Unfortunately, the title and the front cover photograph are spoilers.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading it.

A Hollywood Dream Job

How would you like this as a dream job: scrapbooker for a Hollywood celebrity?

According to the August 14, 2006 issue of Time magazine, action-movie actor Bruce Willis "hired a childhood friend to be his personal scrapbooker," a job that involved "organizing treasured photos, videos and memorabilia in exchange for free room and board" at the actor's home in Los Angeles. A good deal, right?

Here's the unfortunate part. Willis ended up suing his childhood friend, also named Bruce, reported Time, "for $1 million."

Why? Because his friend, continued the magazine,"threatened to sell Willis' personal effects and write a tell-all book...unless Willis paid him $100,000 and bought him a car." A great show of gratitude and friendship, right?

It would be interesting to learn, eleven years later, the outcome of Bruce Willis's lawsuit. And whether or not he hired someone else for the scrapbooker job. He might have decided to do the scrapbooking himself or hire a family member.

A Bad Movie's Tell-Tale Sign

You can usually tell that a movie is a real turkey when print ads quote critics you've never heard of representing publications you've never heard of.

A Movie Studio Grows In The South Bronx

On December 27, 2012, I posted on this blog an unpublished letter-to-the-editor that I wrote in July 1977 in which I suggested that the abandoned buildings in the South Bronx be torn down and replaced by "a huge television and motion picture sound stage."

Forty years later, that sound stage in the South Bronx has come into existence and is called Silvercup Studios North.

My suggestion was way ahead of its time.

A Gay Gossip Columnist

One book I plan to read for the second time is Mike Connolly and the Manly Art of Hollywood Gossip by Val Holley (McFarland & Co., 2003).

Connolly, a columnist for the Hollywood Reporter in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, was a political conservative and a staunch anti-Communist. He was also a gay man.

It's been a few years since I last read the book but I vaguely recall the author depicting Connolly as closeted and homophobic towards other gay men, especially those in Hollywood who were in the public eye like actor Rock Hudson and director George Cukor. Those traits would not be too far off the mark for a gay man living and working during those extremely closeted and homophobic times.

I would love to see a documentary film  made about the life and times of Mike Connolly. It would give us a behind-the-scenes look at gay Hollywood back then, warts and all, told from many different points of view, gay and straight.

A Real-Life Hollywood Murder Mystery

 I received from HarperCollins a review copy of  William J. Mann's latest nonfiction book, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood. It's about the unsolved 1922 murder of film director William Desmond Taylor. I already own a copy of  A Cast of Killers, Sidney D. Kirkpatrick's 1986 book about the same case. Unfortunately, I never got around to reading it. Mann's book will  be an incentive. After reading both books back to back to see how they compare and contrast, I will write a double review. Mann is an excellent writer whose previous books I have read.  So I am looking forward to reading Tinseltown.

Has Technology Improved The Quality Of Movies?

"It must not be forgotten that advances in technology do not, by definition, result in advances in artistry. The history of movies is a history of change: from silent to sound, from black and white to color, and so on. Can anyone truly argue that, overall, today's movies, at their current peak of technological sophistication, are markedly superior to the general run of films from earlier eras? The invention of the personal computer did not result in greater writers. A similar analogy, I think, holds true in the film world as well."--Peter Rainer, film critic, The Christian Science Monitor Weekly, September 17, 2012.

Hollywood In The South Bronx

Voice of the People
New York Daily News
220 East 42nd Street
New York, NY 10017
July 5, 1977

Dear Editor:

If the city had torn down some of the abandoned buildings in the South Bronx and replaced them with a huge television and motion picture sound stage, it would have helped the city's financial situation enormously. New jobs would have been created, companies providing goods and services would have benefited, and it would have given Hollywood some tough competition.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith

The above letter was not published.

Note: There are today film studios in Brooklyn and Queens.

What Is Pure Cinema?

"Pure cinema for [Alfred] Hitchcock meant communicating through pictures. Give the audience something that only the movies can give you. You can get words from radio and books. You can get music from records and CDs and orchestras. You can get all those things somewhere else. But only the movies can give you moving pictures."--David Sterritt, film critic, from "Pure Cinema: Through the Eyes of the Master," a bonus feature on Rear Window (1954) DVD.

Hooray For Hollywood and Its Screenwriters

In Hollywood, movies are considered a director's medium and so screenwriters are given second-class treatment. Newspapers and magazines, taking their cue from the suits at movie studios, have followed their example, ignoring the contributions of the writer and lionizing the director. It is refreshing to see that Entertainment Weekly in its Fall Movie Preview Special Double Issue (August 21-28, 2009) gives credit that's long overdue by including the names of those who have written the scripts for movies slated to be released in September, October, November, and December (including movies written and directed by the same person). Unfortunately, the movie reviews by Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum in the same issue neglect to give the writing credits of the movies under discussion.
While going over the fall movies, one story came to mind: a screenwriter, tired of being treated like the low man on a totem pole and knowing that without a script there is no movie, throws a handful of blank pages at a director, telling him: "Now let's see you try to direct that."