![]() ![]() ![]() The book follows Selznick's trajectory from expansive creator to suspicious negotiator preoccupied with a fear of failure. Thomson, a novelist and author of A Biographical Dictionary of Film, has written a scintillating bio that includes glimpses of Garbo, Hepburn, Gable, Olivier, Dietrich, Graham Greene, Alfred Hitchcock and dozens of others. The self-educated high-school dropout produced Anna Karenina, David Copperfield, Dinner at Eight, Gone with the Wind and King Kong. A walking contradiction, the highly sexed mogul made a pass at nearly every woman he employed but shied away from the erotic on screen. In his entertaining, prodigiously researched biography, Thomson characterizes Selznick as an arrogant manipulator, a megalomaniac hooked on Benzedrine, a brash charmer who believed he was pursuing perfection as a noble aim neglected by Hollywood. ![]() ![]() Bent on fame, wealth and publicity, the precocious son who had served his domineering father as a sorcerer's apprentice would actually surpass his father. David Selznick (1902-1965) was 20 when his father, a high-rolling silent film producer/distributor, went bankrupt. Oversize double weight photograph of screenwriter Ben Hecht standing with his boss, producer and mogul extraordinaire David O. An absolutely magnificant coffee table book, portraying the scope of the American movie industry through the lens of one. ![]()
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