Rating: 
Summary: Enormously entertaining
Review: You know that famous "Hollywood" sign perched on its hill? Well, the view from my front window includes that hill's reverse slope. That back side has ... nothing, which is about all I knew of Hollywood's golden era despite the fact that I've lived in the environs of Los Angeles just about all of my adult life. From the vantage point of such abysmal ignorance, I found LOST HOLLYWOOD to be one of the more entertaining and interesting books I've read recently.In twenty-three chapters, journalist-author David Wallace takes the reader as far back as the 1870's to begin his narrative, most of which focuses on the evolution of the Tinseltown movie industry, its stars, and associated glitz from around 1911 through the glory years of the 20s, 30s, 40s, and into the 50s. Each chapter has its own stand-alone topic, e.g. Cecil B. DeMille, D.W. Griffith, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, the arrival of "talkies", the Hotel Hollywood, the studio contract system, the Hollywood sign, gossip mongers Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, the stars' cars, the stars' yachts, the Cocoanut Grove, the Hollywood Canteen, and Schwab's drugstore. Much of the volume's diversion value lies in the fascinating, sometimes titillating, trivia it contains. Did you know that womanizer Errol Flynn's custom-built Packard had a passenger seat that became a bed at the touch of a button, and the license plate read "R U 18"? Or that New York opera star Geraldine Farrar was paid two dollars per minute of daylight for every day she was in Hollywood filming "Carmen"? Or that the fake palm trees in the Cocoanut Grove were leftover props from Valentino's film "The Sheik"? Or that Paulette Goddard got the female lead in "North West Mounted Police" after slapping her bare foot on director DeMille's desk knowing it would appeal to his foot fetish? My only criticism of LOST HOLLYWOOD is that it cries out for more pictures. True, there's a relevant period photo at the beginning of each chapter, but it just isn't enough. At 188 pages in paperback, it's a book I was compelled to read in a single day, reluctantly wasting time on other nuisance activities like my job, sleeping and household chores. Is LOST HOLLYWOOD a masterpiece? Nah! It's simply great fun.
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