Hollywood: The Oral History

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The real story of Hollywood as told by such luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Harold Lloyd, and nearly four hundred others, assembled from the American Film Institute’s treasure trove of interviews, reveals a fresh history of the American movie industry from its beginnings to today. 

From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly three thousand interviews, involving four hundred voices from the industry, Hollywood: The Oral History, lets a reader “listen in” on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera—Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd—to the biggest behind it—Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele, as well as the lesser known individuals that shaped what was heard and seen on screen: musicians, costumers, art directors, cinematographers, writers, sound men, editors, make-up artists, and even script timers, messengers, and publicists. The result is like a conversation among the gods and goddesses of film: lively, funny, insightful, historically accurate and, for the first time, authentically honest in its portrait of Hollywood. It’s the insider’s story. 

 Legendary film scholar Jeanine Basinger and New York Times bestselling author Sam Wasson, both acclaimed storytellers in their own right, have undertaken the monumental task of digesting these tens of thousands of hours of talk and weaving it into a definitive portrait of workaday Hollywood.   

Our Top Reviews

Reviewer: Mark McDonough
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: This is an incredible read if you’re interested in the classic era of Hollywood
Review: I took this along for night time reading on a recent visit to Los Angeles and it was a perfect companion. It’s compiled from a series of interviews done by the American Film Institute starting the in the early 1960s, so the earlier interviewees had memories going back into the earliest days of American film.What struck me most about the book is how it illuminates film as a collaborative art. You hear from actors and directors and studio executives, but also from costume and set designers and other members of the craft unions. You would think this might be a little boring – but it isn’t. It gave me more of an understanding for the positive side of the “factory system” of film production perfected by MGM and practiced by all the “majors.” Yes, most of the products of the system were horribly mediocre – but most products of any system are horribly mediocre. And when everything fell into place, you got a masterpiece – with great sets, great costumes, dialogue coaching, dance instruction…This is definitely a “must read” for any film fan – plus it’s fun!

Reviewer: Michael A. Willhoite
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Ideal taken in small doses or large gulps
Review: I’ve been reading this glorious tome for a few weeks, and admire everything about it. I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m reluctant to do so, as it’s both informative and fun. Some have decried the lack of an index, but if one had been provided I’d be spending even more time in it, flipping back and forth. The coverage of all periods and subjects dealing with the movies make it an invaluable resource. The best and longest part covers stars, but even the technical and cultural discussions are riveting. Jeanine Basinger has long been a great authority on film and this volume burnishes her high reputation to a glow. I have stacks and stacks of books I’m burning to read, but I know I’ll come back to this for a re-read.

Reviewer: Robert May
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Massive, easily readable and entertaining book
Review: In their massive, easily readable and entertaining book, Hollywood: The Oral History, film historians Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson have imaginatively woven together excerpts of some 3,000 transcripts from the American Film Institute’s archive of industry interviews.

Reviewer: Robert N. Jenkins
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Better than any double feature
Review: This is a book for everyone — we have all been to the movies, right?And we probably have an immediate reaction when we hear that one magic word, Hollywood.This volume, and it is indeed voluminous, lets the people who labor behind the cameras, and a few who worked in front of them, tell you what the motion picture industry really is like.The authors, each a noted movie historian, have selected portions of more than 3,000 oral histories to try to explain how the industry came to be. The people who were there relate how “movies” developed from a storefront amusement lasting just a few seconds through unimagined technological advances — moving cameras, sound, color, super widescreen, 3D, video, computer-enhancements.And all of it told through first-person recollections, with resultant jokes, profanity, contradictions. Sometimes self-serving, sometimes revealing jealousies, these are brief commentaries from the famous and as well as from people whose names we would otherwise never know — technicians, costumers, makeup and hair artists, script writers, cinematographers, agents.Gathered here, this is the real Hollywood (and Burbank, Culver City …)

Reviewer: ReBecca Ortman
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Mixed feelings
Review: I am going to enjoy this book. It’s unfortunate that the editors were too cowardly to include an index.

Reviewer: Jerry
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: From Silent Films to iPhone
Review: This is the real deal. Having read hundreds of books on film, this is probably the best introduction for a beginning student and a master refererence for those with more knowledge. Every aspect of filmmaking, from makeup and costuming to financing and distribution, and how they have all changed in the last 120 years is described by the people who actually made the movies. Household names like Capra, Hitchcock, Spielberg, Hanks and hundreds of others. If you only read one book, make it this one. If you have any curiosity, it will not be the last. A great jumping off point.

Reviewer: MT Schowengerdt
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Best Book On The History of Hollywood
Review: I really enjoy oral histories and first-person memoirs as opposed to biographies written by historians and could’ve kept reading this even if it was another 1,000 pages long.

Reviewer: enubrius
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Marvelous! Stupendous! With a cast of thousands!
Review: There are any number of books out there on moviemaking historySome are(to use the scientific term) BLECHHHH!Many are decent and fun and/or informativeA few achieve greatness (a good guide to many of these is checking for the names Basinger or Wasson on the cover)And then there’s this one!Get it!Read it!Treasure it!You will not find it’s like again!(and if they could add PICTURES! Oy!)

Reviewer: Andy B
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Brilliantly written and totally engaging. Based on thousands of hours of oral history, including interviews from the past and present if you love Hollywood, you will appreciate this great book.

Reviewer: TL
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Oral History by those who made the industry great, edited into a surprisingly coherent picture. Highly entertaining and in depth coverage of many aspects of filmmaking.

Reviewer: Robert ‘Bob’ Macespera
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This is an excellent book, in great measure because of its originality: telling the Hollywood story through direct accounts made by its participants. From the very early days of DW Griffith and Mark Sennett, through the era of the studio moguls (Thalberg, Mayer, Goldwyn) to the great directors, Wyler, Wilder, Cukor, Hitchcock, etc., and then to the “author” sixties. Thankfully, the bulk of the book (around 500 pages) deals with the beginnings and the studio system and only a last (and mercifully short) section tells the post-Stars War period.The authors have had the good sense to count with the stories not only of the stars and the well-known names (all those mentioned above and then some more) but also with a myriad of other talented men and women that, literally, made Hollywood. These are the composers, art directors, tailors and film editors, largely represented here, and deservedly so.The book’s great originality becomes at points its risk and the fact that there’s no narrator, rather the tale is made by the said participants, can be confusing at some point: we read, for instance, “L. B. Mayer was a tyrant” by one actor and then “Mayer was the sweetest person” by another one, and the reader often doesn’t know what to make of this.Another flaw perhaps could be that the cinema reviewers are unrepresented here – only Andrew Sarris gets an entry, but nothing by the greatest of them all: Kael and Thomson, which could have graced considerably the book.In the end, a mammoth of a book that at over 700 pages is a true delight and an endless source of anecdotes for good cinema lovers.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Lo único que echo de menos son fotos

Reviewer: Gary David Miller
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Great read and photos

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