The Parade's Gone by ...

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Summary: An essential book for silent fans
Review: We all have a few books that we plan to read every few years for the rest of our lives: this is one of mine. Brownlow's elegiac oralhistory of the days of silent film was done at the perfect time, when the battles were over but while there were still enough living survivors to tell the tale. Brownlow captures the weird collision of calculation and exuberance that defined early Hollywood. One history of recent events in Hollywood paints a typical picture of life in the executive suite as being "a bunch of tiny men in designer jeans giving each other high fives." T'was not always so.