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Summary: Foundational Study of Motion Picture History
Review: .
These stories of Hollywood's original film moguls are as personal and insightful as they are legendary.While today's movie executives seem to be both disposable and interchangable, these industry giants created a mammoth enterprise that will last for the ages. Hollywood's early movie magic endures because these entrepreneurs were driven with a passion to shape their own legacy and to obtain the recognition they craved. This reader would have been interested in understanding how these moguls related to the independent studios, including the Walt Disney Studio. Some critics have accused Walt Disney of having anti-semitic attitudes, while none have sufficientely documented such an extreme conclusion. Based upon the cooperative working relationships with the other major studio heads (including those at MGM, Columbia, RKO, and others), there seems to be evidence supporting a profitable exchange of ideas and creative talent between the studios that would undermine those proposing such anti-semitic rhetoric. Within this exchange, clearly Walt Disney benefitted from these relationships, and his early successes certainly had the attention and admiration of his competition. Sufficient documentation exists in support of these complimentary relationships that capable researchers should be able to bring a more substantial review to contemporary readers. Of particular interest would be the seemingly competitive struggle between Jack Warner and Walt Disney during the 1964 Oscar race (My Fair Lady vs. Mary Poppins). Additional analysis of this aspect of Hollywood history would be beneficial. Gabler's work is a triumph in documenting the essential backstory of Harry Cohn, William Fox, Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Harry Warner, and Adolph Zucker. Brilliant! Dave Mason is Southern California author and Disneyland historian. He is owner of the internet's premier vintage Disneyana auction site,... His next book, "The Merchants of Main Street" is scheduled for release in early 2004.
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Summary: An Empire of Their Own: Very good for academia also
Review: Gabler's An Empire of Their Own is an outstanding sociological, political, literary, and historical review of the important role mostly immigrant Jews played in the first few decades of Hollywood as the film capital. He doesn't pull punches, but gives findings that can be viewed as positive or negative--a welcome approach instead of a biased approach giving only one side. He shows the seven major producers (and many others in lesser detail) to be human beings, with strengths and weaknesses. The bigger picture, including an insight into the personal lives of the producers and how this affected their movies, is very good. He also does a good job of explaining how anti-Semitism played a real role in the lives of these Jewish producers, but how their personal styles also were sometimes not admirable. I have used the book in my Sociology Through Film: Jewish Images class, and rate it very good.
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Summary: Superior History of Hollywood and it's founders
Review: Gabler's book took me a while to get through (mostly since I read it before going to bed and I was always exhausted), but was worth the journey. Gabler writes vividly (with constant analysis) of the who and the WHY of early Hollywood. He deals with their stories, motives, and dreams. It is a fascinating history and social history--for those into religion and cinema. It gets a bit long at the end--the Red Scare seems to go on forever and confusing, but worth the trip. Gabler sheds light an important part of history. Thanks, Neal.
Rating:
Summary: Superior History of Hollywood and it's founders
Review: Gabler's book took me a while to get through (mostly since I read it before going to bed and I was always exhausted), but was worth the journey. Gabler writes vividly (with constant analysis) of the who and the WHY of early Hollywood. He deals with their stories, motives, and dreams. It is a fascinating history and social history--for those into religion and cinema. It gets a bit long at the end--the Red Scare seems to go on forever and confusing, but worth the trip. Gabler sheds light an important part of history. Thanks, Neal.
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Summary: Not necessarily so, but an interesting treatise
Review: Here's an absorbing history of the movie industry. Neal Gabler claims that Adolph Zukor (Paramount), the Warner brothers, Harry Cohn (Columbia Pictures) and the moguls of Fox Studios, MGM and Universal had a dream of what America was which they incorporated into movies and sold to the American public and the world. Gabler claims that what these movies showed was not the real country at all. "Only this way," he writes, "could these immigrants satidsfy their hunger of assimilation into a country that had rejected them." In the end, he says, the fictive America created by these businessmen portrays an artificial "reality" that later generations of moviegoers took as truth. I have two problems with the premise of this book: First, I know for a fact that the America portrayed in the movies of the '40s and '50s did exist and second, those moguls created their own social world, partly out of geographic necessity and partly because the work of filmmaking isolated them from the everyday work world. I know the kind of family, community and lifestyle often portrayed in those "romantic" and "sentimental" movies (i.e. where family members and members of the community worked and lived together in mutual respect and affection) existed because I experienced it. The movies I saw as a child and as a young adult in the 1940s and 1950s mirrored the life I knew. I understand that contemporary life is so different from life in those days that young people view what they call "sentimental romanticism" with disbelief. I pity them. The lives they seem to be living look shabby and disgusting to me! It's an interesting premise but it's built on a false presumption! The book will charm the moviephile. It's entertaining and well written and it gives a fascinating look at backstage Hollywood in a time when Hollywood enjoyed a great deal more respect than it does today.
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Summary: Repetition is a poor substitute for scholarship
Review: I chose to read "Empire," after seeing several highly complementary reviews. It was entirely too repetitive. The basic theme is that the eastern european jews who came to the new world and eventually founded the great Hollywood studios carried several traits in common and a desire to beat the gentiles at their own game while relinquishing ties to their judaic pasts. Swell. But how many times do I need to read it? And how profound is it to inform readers that too great a focus on material success and skirt chasing often has deliterious effects on one's home life and spiritual life? And that capitalism can be cruel? If you want to read about the world that these truly impressive studio moguls founded, I would suggest "City of Nets" by Otto Friedrich.
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Summary: plays like a hollywood script
Review: I had to see the movie for some odd reason. I agree with the last review on many points. The film makes it sound like the Jewish people were the sole inventors of film. It is horribly cliched, and makes etremely odd, partial points, like that "My Fair Lady" is an example of the jews trying to fit in. It plays out like a script written by the moguls themselves. Waste of time.
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Summary: Highly informative, save for occasional factual errors.
Review: I merely wish to correct a factual error contained in Neal Gabler's otherwise highly readable book. And the error appears in the TV documentary as well. My brother Lee J. Cobb's original surname is NOT "Jacoby" but Jacob. The play on the surname "J. Cobb" was actually conceived by our father, Benjamin Jacob. I cannot imagine how this bit of misinformation took root. And it seems somehow to be spreading. Of course, I will enlighten the author as well.
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Summary: A valuable contribution filled with fresh insights.
Review: I merely wish to correct a factual error which appears both in the book and in the TV doc: Lee J. Cobb's original surname was not "Jacoby". He was born LEO JACOB. Heaven knows where Mr. Gabler came up with "Jacoby". It's pure fiction. What actually happened was this: When at age 18 Lee was about to enter upon an acting career, his (our) father suggested the name-change, to which Lee instantly agreed. I am, after all, Lee's brother so I trust the above will be given due credence. And I do wish subsequent editions of the book will include this correction. Thank you.
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Summary: Excellent insight into the construction of American myth
Review: Insightful analysis of how the wide-open land of opportunity was not an ever-present American ideal but was in fact invented by those who most wanted it to be: poor, persecuted immigrants. Unlike the racist and elitist establishment cinema of the East Coast, Jewish Hollywood promoted recurring themes of equality of opportunity -- haunted by nightmares of persecution. The movie 'Hollywoodism' may be in some ways better than this book, because you can see the evidence for yourself. Nonetheless, recommended.
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