Rating: 
Summary: Celebrity Skin
Review: You can tell from the cover photo of 50s beach icon Tab Hunter, still beautiful after all these years, that this book is something special. When you open to the frontispiece of sweetly innocent Sal Mineo, then turn to the double-page title spread picturing heart-stopping Johnathan Schaech suggestively straddling a Harley, you know you're in for quite a treat. Donald F. Reuter, author of Heartthrob: A Hundred Years of Beautiful Men, has done it again. He has, in fact, outdone himself.There is something almost fetishist in our attraction to celebrities and our fascination with their beauty. Hollywood knows this and caters to it at every available opportunity. What better and more direct way to our wallets is there than through our collective libido? For proof of this, we need look no further than the past few seasons' crops of teen-dream flicks, all attempting to capitalize on our lust. From "Titanic" to "I Know What You Did Last Summer" to "Here On Earth" to "Dude, Where's My Car?" we are inundated with images of the faces and bodies of beautiful men-all to get us to plant our butts in theater seats and separate us from eight bucks. And it works...sometimes with huge success, others less so. For the purposes of this volume, Reuter divides our celebrity history into decades, the Thirties through the Nineties, prefaced by a section on silent film stars. These photos of pre-Hayes Code film actors showing off their best assets are especially noteworthy. Bevies of beautiful men from each decade are featured in all their bare-chested glory. In the accompanying enjoyable and often catty commentary, Reuter examines the appeal of each celebrity hunk and analyzes changes in society and in our attitudes toward objectification and worship of the male body. Over the course of 150+ pages, over 160 film and television icons are presented for our enjoyment and edification. The photos are glorious and often rare, some from the author's personal collection. There is truly something for everyone. Although Shirtless! is ambitious in scope and completely successful in its achievement, no book of finite size can be infinite in scope, and everyone is bound to have a favorite celebrity who escaped inclusion. Where are Keanu Reeves, Scott Wolf, Simon Rex? Don't let the impossibility of including every movie and television star who ever took off his shirt deter you from adding this book to your personal library. After all, there are always Scott Baio, Jimmy McNichol, and Matt Dillon!
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