The definitive book on the Hollywood 10

books:


	• I'd Hate Myself in the Morning Ring Lardner Jr., Victor S. Navasky Nation Books, 2001 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Lardner's Farewell

Ring Lardner, Jr. died shortly after the publication of _I'd Hate Myself in the Morning_ (Thunder's Mouth Press), at the age of eighty-five. He was the last of the famous Hollywood Ten, those who were jailed by the House Un-American Activities Committee for being Communists. He also landed on the blacklist, unable to get the studio work he had previously and lucratively enjoyed with Twentieth Century Fox. He was a hero to many, but his humorous, delightfully self-effacing memoir shows he didn't think he fit that role. He writes, "I try to suggest that we weren't as heroic as people make us out to be. It would be more analytically precise, it seems to me, to say that we did the only thing we could do under the circumstances."

Lardner's time in our nation's history, his membership in the Communist Party, and his work in the movies make this a unique memoir. Those who read his touching recollections will learn about screenwriting in a type of studio system that no longer exists, and about a type of Americanism (and American Communism) that also no longer exists. He writes with grace and amusement about his own mistakes and those of others. The wit that won him Oscars for _Woman of the Year_ in 1942 and _M*A*S*H_ in 1970 is clearly on display, as is a lack of rancor for how his nation and his fellow movie makers treated him. This book is a warm farewell.

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A Quiet Hero

Ring Lardner, Jr. wrote as naturally as others breathe. He was serious about serious issues but uncomplaining, even when he was jailed by American thought police. He is humorous on matters worthy of humor and profound, without being heavy, as he considers age, infirmity and the shortcomings of conventional religion. Like the man himself, this book is nothing short of a gem.

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The definitive book on the Hollywood 10

This is a very, very good book. Yes, it starts a little slow as he sets the stage from his young life. And the chapters on his involvement with communism do not fully explain what his attraction to communism was. But I think after much research and book reading, this book allowed me to get as close as I could to the answer. And the answer is, in the current political environment of my life, you can never fully understand the travesty of the depression and the Spanish issues in the 30s and therefore, we can never totally feel why free Americans would feel so strongly about communism. So, I've finally closed my research on this subject thanks to Ring Lardner, Jr.

This book has some great highlights which should be cherished by the readers. Dalton Trumbo may be the most celebrated of the Hollywood 10 and his humorous attempts to write and get credit for writing are quite interesting during the Blacklist period. The book correctly conveys the lives which were altered or damaged by this horrible period in America freedom.

Another interesting subject is the few movies that are mentioned showing how the screenwriting process changed the movie completely from the original story. For example, I had read the great sports novel, "Semi-tough", by Dan Jenkins. Lardner wrote a screenplay and a new director had it completely rewrote focusing not on football but on mystical self-improvement gurus. I had always wondered how a movie could so butcher a very funny book so it was nice to get closure on a 30 year old question.

Lardner wrote and won an Academy Award for "Mash". This provides more interesting reading on a movie which is still significant in the landscape of American cinema.

The next to last chapter provides a look not at history but directly into the soul of this interesting man. What starts out as a description of growing old turns into an exceptional essay on his beliefs or nonbeliefs in religeon. Regardless of your feelings, this is fascinating chapter that may challenge your own beliefs.

In closing, I believe you will enjoy this read of a man who led a full life suffering through the Hollywood 10 tragedy and early deaths of brothers in Spain and WWII. I recommend this book specifically to readers interested in Hollywood, American history in the 20th century, or biographies of famous writers.

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Spoken Softly, Hard Hitting

Less an autobiography and more a series of reflections, philosophies, and anecdotes, I'd Hate Myself In The Morning is a slender but superb work by one of the most underrated writers America has ever produced. I say underrated because he was not only competing with the legacy of his famous father, but also because of his experiences with the blacklist and his subsequent emergence from that period, all of which Lardner discusses with a candor that is very engaging, honest, and thought-provoking. In noting that he passed away shortly after the book was published, it casts a very eerie, but not creepy, shadow over the last chapter in which he discusses his views on mortality and death. A very quick read and well worth it.

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Ring Lardner, Jr.'s memoir is a pilgrimage through the American century. The son of an immensely popular and influential writer, Lardner grew up swaddled in material and cultural privilege. After a memorable visit to Moscow in 1934, he worked as a reporter in New York before leaving for Hollywood where he served a bizarre apprenticeship with David O. Selznick, and won, at the age of 28, an Academy Award for Woman of the Year, the first on-screen pairing of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. In "irresistibly readable" pages (New Yorker), peopled by a cast including Carole Lombard, Louis B. Mayer, Dalton Trumbo, Marlene Dietrich, Otto Preminger, Darryl F. Zanuck, Bertolt Brecht, Bert Lahr, Robert Altman, and Muhammad Ali, Lardner recalls the strange existence of a contract screenwriter in the vanished age of the studio system?an existence made stranger by membership in the Hollywood branch of the American Communist Party. Lardner retraces the path that led him to a memorable confrontation with the House Un-American Activities Committee and thence to Federal prison and life on the Hollywood blacklist. One of the lucky few who were able to resume their careers, Lardner won his second Oscar for the screenplay to M.A.S.H. in 1970.

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