Vanity Fair'S' Hollywood - Softcover

Hitchens, Christopher; Graydon, Carter; Friend, David; Carter, Graydon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0500283249 ISBN 13: 9780500283240

Publisher: Gardners Books, 2001

Synopsis

Vanity Fair has, from the start, made Hollywood its stomping ground. For its readers, this star-studded book encapsulates a century of the movie mecca's glory, glamour, and scandal. Garbo and Grant, Tracy and Hepburn, Fairbanks and Pickford, Taylor and Burton, the Gishes and the Barrymores rub shoulders with today's cinemat

About this title

Review:

As everybody who's anybody knows (and the rest of us too), the most exclusive Hollywood party is Vanity Fair magazine's Oscar-night bash. Vanity Fair's Hollywood is like the ultimate movie party--and how inviting it all is! Flip through the thick, glossy pages and greet the greats of all ages. Lillian and Dorothy Gish share a spread with Blythe Danner and Gwyneth Paltrow. Ms. Deneuve, resplendent in scarlet, meet Mr. Valentino, in classy black and white. Claudette Colbert as Cleopatra, meet Liz Taylor as Cleopatra (and if it's not too catty, did you notice Claudette was better dressed?). The stunning photos are cleverly juxtaposed. Julia Roberts, posed naughtily in see-through undies in the water, is followed by a very properly attired Doris Day in a see-through skirt. Day holds six brightly dyed poodles by white leashes; the composition forms a visual rhyme with the six accusing fingers pointed at Peter Lorre in the next picture. The photo captions by Christopher Hitchens are as succinctly clever as Dorothy Parker, encapsulating entire careers in a punning paragraph. Even if you've seen a shot before, you learn things: in the most notorious still ever snapped at a Hollywood party--the one where Sophia Loren ogled Jayne Mansfield's voluminous bosom--Hitchens tells us the object of Loren's appalled regard was "the strategic dabs of makeup on [Jayne's] nipples."

Like any good party, this vast book offers sparkling talk as well as gobs of eye candy. The brilliant Peter Biskind evokes the '70s heyday of superagent Sue Mengers, D.H. Lawrence makes a stab at defining "sex appeal," Patricia Bosworth adds the patented VF dash of scandal in a piece on Lana Turner's gangster boyfriend's murder, and Hitchens gives a quickie history of the fabled Sunset Strip. Not everything rises to the august occasion: Carl Sandburg's poem about Chaplin and Clare Boothe Luce's snooty ode to Garbo are mostly of antiquarian interest. Most of the historic stuff is great (e.g., Fritz Lang directing a crowd scene in Metropolis), and the most austere cineaste should own this book. On practically every page, Vanity Fair's Hollywood dazzles. It's a keeper. --Tim Appelo

About the Author:

Graydon Carter has been editor of Vanity Fair since 1992. David Friend is Vanity Fair's editor of creative development. Christopher Hitchens is an extremely well-known journalist; he joined Vanity Fair as a contributing editor in September 1992.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gardners Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0500283249
• ISBN 13: 9780500283240
• Binding: Paperback