About book City Of Nets: A Portrait Of Hollywood In The 1940s (1997)
Friedrich's City of Nets is a weird amalgam of oral and scholarly history, and thus perfectly matched to its subject: Hollywood, in its last and best Golden Age. Page after page is both well-documented and more-than-likely fictitious, and Friedrich would be the first to acknowledge it. In fact, he repeats an anecdote with minor variations just to say, "There is no 'true' version, just this version or that version." But we've all heard that one before, right? Fortunately, Friedrich has another trick up his sleeve. The book is divided into chapters covering the individual years between 1939 and 1950, with each year representing a "theme" ("expulsions," "treachery," "welcome," etc.). Because Friedrich has freed himself of the need to establish what is absolutely true, he is able to turn the individual stories that make up the face of each chapter to a single theme, like a Chuck Close painting in narrative. Sometimes, he may falter a bit-- if he is not establishing A Truth, he is at least working from memoirs and biographies, never inventing anything himself-- there are occasional gaps, made all the more obvious by Friedrich's otherwise smooth transitions throughout. And yet one never gets the feeling that this is a selective, and thus incomplete, picture of Hollywood in the 1940s. Indeed, most would find that there is simply too much here to take in in one read. It is an incredibly thick, dense 450 pages. Friedrich's book is an ever-unfurling red carpet of surprising and beautiful connections. In just the first four or five pages, Friedrich moves from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum to Brecht's "Mahagonny" and the founding of Los Angeles to Nathanael West and then on to David O. Selznick's burning of (simulacrum) Atlanta (actually the remains of several sets that would have had to be torn down anyway). Though the chapter is titled "Welcome," false fronts, dummies, and the light from the apocalypse come through in every anecdote. And the chapter is, in the end, a perfect introduction to Hollywood, built, as it is, on the confluence of light, theatre, and the self-delusions brought on by greed.The rest of the book is nearly eclipsed by this fantastic chapter, but Friedrich has many, many more surprises in store. Quite aside from his astonishing facility in assembling his stories, Friedrich has an ear for the telling anecdote, and the ability to squeeze meaning out of gossip that rivals the great Mike Davis (whose Ecology of Fear makes a perfect companion to this book). In the end, it simply doesn't make any difference whether the history thus assembled is true or false. It is real.Hollywood could not ask for a better biography (although Christopher Silvester's Grove Book of Hollywood is pretty damn great, too).
A fine book about Hollywood in the important decade of the 40s, which began with Andy Hardy and ended with noir. Friedrich is more honest than most; he can almost bring himself to admit that the Hollywood Ten were, in fact, Communists. (Which is not to say they should have gone to jail for the absurd crime of "contempt of Congress.") I would have liked more detailed coverage of the Paramount antitrust suit. It was the most important event for Hollywood in the period, the one that broke up the studio system for good. Friedrich retails, with a few caveats and misgivings, the usual stories about the moguls, in which they nearly always come off as sneaky, grasping, cowardly, witless, and ignorant about the world in general and the movie business in particular. Yet these same cowardly and ignorant men created an entire industry out of sand and scrub brush. They are known today almost entirely through the eyes of the writers they employed. I suspect they get a worse rap than just about anyone who ever lived.
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Si uno tuviera que elegir un solo libro para leer en la vida y poder entender el significado de la palabra "Hollywood", este es el libro. Los que amamos el cine ya hemos leído muchos ensayos, memorias, recuerdos y entrevistas sobre este inagotable tópico. Pareciera que todo el que alguna vez puso un pie en esa ciudad tuvo algo que decir al respecto sobre las películas o sobre quienes las hacían. ¿Y entonces? Friedrich leyó durante buena parte de su vida adulta cerca de un millar de libros sobre el tema, y en un denodado esfuerzo de síntesis se propuso comprenderlos, interpretarlos y combinarlos.Son 12 capítulos (uno por año, entre 1939 y 1950) que arrancan en el momento de máximo apogeo y culminan con la caída del studio system. En el interín una guerra mundial, la masiva inmigración intelectual europea a las playas de California, feroces luchas entre sindicatos comunistas y de los otros, antisemitismo a ultranza en una industria dominada por judíos, la guita de los gangster que va y viene, conformismo y rebeldía, sexo al por mayor, drogas a la enésima potencia, macarthismo, listas negras y películas, muchas películas para entretener o sacudir a los 100 millones de norteamericanos que acudían semanalmente al cine.Todo lo que Ud. quiso saber sobre Warner, Mayer, Selznick, Thalberg, Bergman, Welles, Houston, Bogart, Davis, Scott Fitzgerald, Flynn, Hitchcock, Hayworth, Brech, Chaplin, Faulkner, Mitchum, Huston, Wilder, Gable, Schoneberg, Hughes, Hemingway, etc., etc. etc. Incluye 20 páginas con la sabrosa bibliografía consultada y un índice onomástico.Fue esta la principal fuente consultada por los Coen Bros. a la hora de escribir las múltiples tramas de "Barton Fink".En una palabra: fundamental.
—Ricardo
The perfect accompaniment to James Ellroy’s Perfidia. This is a series of vignettes about not only the motion picture industry but also about the political and cultural life of Los Angeles (the better title is City of Nets: A Portrait of Los Angeles in the 1940s). There is extensive space given to who served in World War Two (short answer: almost everybody, no big time actor failed to serve, most of them saw combat), the Hollywood Ten and Communism, and especially the fate of the European intellectuals who escaped Germany and ended up in LA. This included Thomas Mann, Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenbaum and Bertold Brecht among others. The Los Angeles Police Department and their adventures during the war, particularly with relation to the Japanese-American population are of great relevance in regard to Perfidia.
—Keith
Though City of Nets is dated in some ways (referring to women not as individuals but by their marital status, the faint distaste for "fussy"--i.e. gay--men), this is due to both the author's and the book's age. These sour notes aside, Friedrich provides a near-exhaustive look at the underlying ethics and morality, both personal and professional*, during the central decade of Hollywood's Golden Age. It's not for the casual movie fan; you have to be familiar with not only Bogart, Cooper, Hayworth and Bergman, but Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Brecht and Dreiser. *For instance, our 40th President was a rat from the start: at the height of his Hollywood career, he was an FBI informant during the second Red Scare.
—Rebecca
