Book Description
Often typecast as a menacing figure, Peter Lorre achieved Hollywood fame first as a featured player and later as a character actor who trademarked his screen performances with a delicately strung balance between good and evil. His portrayal of the grisly child murderer in Fritz Lang's masterpiece M (1931) catapulted him to international fame. Lang said of Lorre: "He gave one of the best performances in film history and certainly the best in his life." Today, the Hungarian-born actor is also recognized for his riveting performances in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and Casablanca (1942).
The first full biography of this major actor, The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre draws upon more than three hundred interviews, including conversations with directors Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, John Huston, Frank Capra, and Rouben Mamoulian, who speak candidly about Lorre, both the man and the actor. Author Stephen D. Youngkin examines for the first time Lorre's pivotal relationship with German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, his experience as an émigré from Hitler's Germany, his battle with drug addiction, and his struggle with the choice between celebrity and intellectual respectability.
Separating the enigmatic person from the persona long associated with one of classic Hollywood's most recognizable faces, The Lost One is the definitive work of a life triumphant and yet tragically tangled with so many failed possibilities.
Customer Reviews:
The Marked Man.......2007-07-09
"He's crazy about me...all the degenerates are." Peter Lorre, speaking of his chimpanzee co-star in "Five Weeks in a Balloon."
From the beginning of his career, Peter Lorre was typecast. The classic German Expressionist drama, "M", set the tone for his entire career. From that point on, Lorre said that in people's eyes, he was forever "the murderer". This was allowed to overshadow his incredible talent and his great aptitude for comedy. (His throwaway lines, like the one I quoted above, are priceless!)
His career spanned from experimental theater in pre-Nazi Germany, to classic noir films with Humphrey Bogart, to eminently forgettable films from the Sixties. (How odd that one of his last appearances was in "Muscle Beach Party"!)
Stephen Youngkin does an admirable job of chronicling Lorre's professional life, including the myriad missed opportunities--(of note: Malcolm Lowry's rabid interest in seeing Lorre play "the consul" in "Under the Volcano", and Lorre's own desire to produce a film about Kasper Hauser. Both of those projects, never realized, would have added so much to Lorre's cachet.)
The book overflows with examples of Lorre's humanity, professionalism, and wit. Unfortunately, the actor's personal battles with the demons of drug abuse and poor health, his unluckiness at love, and his profligate nature create an undertow of tragedy which no reader can escape. In the end, this is a deeply saddening and troubling book. Long after you have finished reading it, you will find yourself reflecting on the life of this brilliant and tormented individual, who indeed has a special place in the hearts of all the "outsiders" in the world.
Absolutely wonderful.......2007-06-09
First of all I am profoundly grateful, that finally someone took up the task to write a biography on one of the greatest actors of the 20th century. Mr. Youngkin did very good work especially in researching the very early years of Peter Lorre in Vienna and Berlin, which I assume must have been a quite excrutiating task. Nobody who ever saw the film "M" will ever forget the wonderful performance Peter Lorre gave. Even later on, nearing the end of his live, when he was doing B-movies, he gave them that certain Lorre-touch. It is a wonderful read and Mr. Youngkins work cannot be praised enough. Sometimes this biography makes you cry and laugh at the same time. Finally somebody did credit to this wonderful, wonderful actor.
Rehash.......2007-05-13
if you are unable to get ahold of author stephen youngkin's earlier biography of peter lorre, then by all means purchase this book. it's comprehensive and thorough, and a good read of a fascinating subject. if you were able to get ahold of the earlier book, then you can save your money on this one. the only new item that would make purchasing this edition worthwhile is the photo and information on peter's daughter catherine. she looks like him but pretty, and her connection to the hillside strangler is included.
The Lost One.;a LIFE OF PETER LORRE.......2007-03-09
i HAVE READ INNUMERABLE BIOGRAPHIES OF THE STARS.mANY TIMES THEY ARE SIMPLY HARDBOUND VERSIONS OF THE ''NATIONAL ENQUIRER''tHIS BIOGRAPHY OF PETER LORRE IS MORE THAN JUST ANNECDOTAL BUT TELLS A REAL LIFE AND HISTORY OF A REAL ARTISTWHO LIKE AN ACCOMPLISHED MINATURIST WHO PAINT BROADLEY ON A SMALL CANVAS.TO LEARN AND EXPERIENCE SOMETHING OF THE GERMAN CINEMA, THE CONTRACT PLAYERS OF THE 1940'S AND THE DECLINE OF THE REAL ''ARTISTIC CINEMA HAS BEEN A REAL JOY.AS A BOY I SAW THE ''BEAST WITH 5 FINGERS AND IT HAUNTED MY DREAMS.AS A OLDER MAN THE STORY OF THE ''LOST ONE'' WILL STAY IN MY HEART AND MEMORY.
Excellent Book on Peter Lorre!.......2006-11-13
I do hope that potential readers will pay more attention to the publisher's comments, professional reviews, and positive reviews here, because they give a much more accurate account of the contents of the book than the rather negative comments by one reader in particular (who used an alias and gave this book two stars). It seems to me that "critic" has an axe to grind against the author.
This is not a "shapeless and unfocused" telling of Peter Lorre's life, but an outstanding and scholarly chronicle that follows the timeline of his professional work - stage, film, radio, and television. Lorre was no "loser", and he is certainly not described as one here. This book is not "an endless cataloging of his failures and faults". Rather, quotes from the numerous interviews Mr. Youngkin took with Lorre's friends, family members, co-workers, and associates - and which are listed and dated in the book's back-matter - call him a loyal and generous friend and a gifted artist whose talent was not always used well by Hollywood.
As a long-time fan of Peter Lorre's, I found information on every page that set the actor and his career in historical context. Lorre did not exist in a vacuum. The events of the early part of the 20th century on up to the 1960s affected both his personal and professional lives. What one person on this page describes as "too much digression and emphasis on the trivial" is necessary description that explains where Lorre came from in his philosophy and approach to his craft as an actor.
If all you want is a brief synopsis of Lorre's life, there are plenty of "Who's Who" entries that will satisfy. But if a thorough and well-documented discussion is more to your taste, "The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre" is the book for you.
Average customer rating:
- Entertaining Read
- Numerous authors give well rounded picture
- A fine effort, overall
|
Peter Lorre (Midnight Marquee Actors Series) (Midnight Marquee Actors Series)
Manufacturer: Marquee Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Entertainers
| Arts & Literature
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Guides & Reviews
| Movies
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Foreign Languages
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Performing Arts
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
Similar Items:
-
The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre
ASIN: 1887664300 |
Book Description
After coverning horror film icons Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Jr. and Vincent Price, Midnight Marquee Press wanted to go in a slightly different direction for our fifth edition of the Actors Series, by highlighting quasi-horror man Peter Lorre.
While the other entries in the series were predominantly horror film actors, Peter Lorre made many horror film appearances, but was never actually considered a horror film star. Instead, it was Lorre's persona, that of a quirky, deviant little man, sometimes charming, sometimes boiling over with venom, that made him a perfect match for horror films. However, Lorre also played opposite such mainstream stars as Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet, Kirk Douglas, Mickey Rooney and Bob Hope. Lorre felt just as comfortable enacting supporting roles in A films as he did starring in the Bs. This book takes an in-depth look at the film work of this versatile performer by providing analyses of films such as M, Mad Love, The Face Behind the Mask, The Maltese Falcon, The Raven and The Comedy of Terrors as well as many of the other films that made Peter Lorre a film legend.
Customer Reviews:
Entertaining Read.......2002-12-07
This is a great book, an entertaining read. Certainly not a reference book although I am familiar of other books being written about Lorre presently. The chapter about the Moto films are nice coverage, though just a recap of the plots. Only gripe is the chapter about Lorre's radio work. As an old-time radio fan, I do ask readers not to take everything to heart. There are many mistakes in the radio chapter, [...] even John Dunning's Ultimate book that every old-time radio fan has is far more correct. I do wish a Lorre book comes out soon that is a reference. This is an entertaining read for any Lorre fan.
Numerous authors give well rounded picture.......2000-05-19
This is a very good source on both Peter Lorre and his films. Each film is reviewed by a different author so the emphasis, length and tone varies by author. By having this combination of authors all of the heights and shortcomings of Lorre's films are brought out. If you are a Lorre fan you will find this a valuable resource, especially if you want to seach out Lorre films to view - this will guide you to the better ones. Until a definitive biography is written, this will give you some of the facts about Lorre's life in a nutshell.
A fine effort, overall.......2000-01-10
Peter Lorre was blessed, and cursed, with the most distinctive screen persona of all time, including an absolutely unique voice that was quite easy to mimic--- I could do a great Lorre when I was 12. This volume surveys many of the important films in his long career. Though each film is discussed by a different author, there is surprisingly little repetition. In some other volumes in the Midnight Marquee series, film reviews have in fact been nothing more than semi-literate, or painfully illiterate, plot summaries. I am happy to report that this is not a problem with the current book. Although the discussions vary in quality, they are all very well researched and actually function as effective critical reviews of the films in question. Recommended highly.
Average customer rating:
- First Web-review (published 2000) for "The Peter Lorre Companion"
- Mom of a Lorre fan
- witty and poignant -- and a wonderful tribute to Peter!
- "The Trouble With Angels" meets "Catcher in the Rye"
|
The Peter Lorre Companion
Anne Sharp
Manufacturer: Xlibris Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Comic
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Walking the Shark: A Peter Lorre Book
-
The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre
ASIN: 0738831883 |
Book Description
A shy Catholic schoolgirl nurtures a secret passion for a dead Hungarian movie actor, while her precociously nubile best friend seeks adventure with real live men.
Customer Reviews:
First Web-review (published 2000) for "The Peter Lorre Companion".......2006-08-14
Once upon a time in America there lived an intelligent and unusual man, an émigré from his homeland in a Europe demolished by the unceasing, decades-long activity of psychopaths, a rather unremarkable-looking fellow in real life who possessed, however, the gift of great acting ability, of being able to effect a miraculous transformation, many times over and with any manner of variations, before the movie-cameras. Yet, as if Fate had had it in mind from the beginning to offset his good fortune, he was cursed with short stature, public ungainliness, and an unpredictable and often self-destructive nature, with homely yet expressive features and a voice that would eventually be made the butt of jokes.
But there were also those (Humphrey Bogart being one) who saw something entirely different in him: a streak of nobility and stubbornness, something that drove him to constantly strive for perfection of his craft, notwithstanding the incomprehension which seemed destined to envelop him wherever he turned - a quality, in fact, of genius.
I'm hoping that many other readers will soon discover this intriguing first novel by the American writer Anne Sharp: a constantly-shifting and kaleidoscopic hybrid of both Bildungsroman and a lifetime's patient accumulation of the minutiae of film trivia, every aspect of which gradually fuses together to form a glowing love-letter to an actor, long-dead, with whom the narrator has obviously, hopelessly, fallen in love.
We first meet this narrator, a girl of eleven (creative and independent, bright yet lonely), suffering the bullying and viciousness of other girls at junior-high during the early Seventies. She has an older sister with whom she gets along, but her parents are at each others' throats and on the verge of divorce. Her mother, eschewing first the Methodist and then the Episcopalian church, had
"married a Jew. Not a very intense Jew. He had never had a bar mitzvah, and wasn't observant. Both my parents were so alienated from their nominal religions, in fact, that when my sister Yvonne and I were born they took us to the First Unitarian-Universalist in downtown Detroit, where something perfunctory was done to us with water and a rose which did not impart any of the usual benefits associated with baptism, such as eternal life or membership in a human community. But for years I didn't know this."
Having finished her schoolwork, the narrator is allowed during the week to watch the TV show Night Gallery on the portable television in her room, and afterwards reads such fare as the stories of Poe and Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, often far into the night. Then, the summer after she starts junior-high, "my mother sat me down one morning and asked why I didn't have any friends anymore. Mom must have worried, since being an outcast was something she associated with my father."
The narrator's father, altogether an interesting yet shadowy figure, and perhaps spurred on by the half-Russian side of his lineage, commits an almost Dostoevskian act, going to his daughters' school counselor to "talk about" how his wife is supposedly turning both daughters against him. It is the father, however, who is soon afterwards turned out of the house.
At this point I'll call the narrator 'Anne', for the sake of simplicity - although the astute reader will refrain from jumping to conclusions about the autobiographical nature of all that's presented in the novel, this 'uncertainty as to provenance' being one of the book's many interesting nuances.
Anne is transferred to St. Ladislaus, a Catholic girl's school, for Grade 9: "In the whole time I attended Lads I was never kicked once. But it wasn't just me. Human beings in general improve tremendously between the ages of fourteen and seventeen." There is some fine, very humorous description of the pitfalls awaiting her as she enters her teens, but it is at this point that the bravura of the movie-theme starts - and this, the most delightful and subtle thread of the novel, is what holds everything together, and accounts for much of the book's beauty.
Anne's mother, having sent her husband packing, begins to regularly watch a Public Television program, featuring foreign films, every Friday night. Her daughter joins her to watch such films as Grand Illusion, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Seven Samurai, Ivan the Terrible, The Blue Angel, and Knife in the Water. Thus is an ardent and intractable cinephile created.
"Not in a million years would my dad have let me watch movies like this. I had been an extremely phobic little girl. There was a talking clown doll, a Christmas present from an uncle, that made me run away and cry whenever I saw its face or heard its strangled, artificial voice. Yvonne was fascinated by the uniform reaction she got from me just by taking it out of its box. Eventually the box was stored in the basement, whereupon I refused to go downstairs."
The rather eccentric but strong-willed mother allows her daughters to stay up and watch a midnight double feature of Frankenstein and Dracula. Anne is immediately smitten with Karloff and Lugosi, and realizes herself that she's fallen in love with the movies, especially those filmed in black-and-white, in which "the clothes and the settings and the men were much more beautiful."
It is at this pivotal point that she watches the film M, and is devastated by the performance of Peter Lorre as a deranged yet pathetic killer of children:
"You must remember this. There's a city made of grey stone where it's always night. All the people are afraid of a little man who slips around in shadows, emerging whenever he sees a stray child. First he flirts her into the bushes, offering candy, fruit and toys. Then he sticks her with the switchblade he uses to cut up oranges, and leaves her for her mother to cry over."
There now enters into the young girl's life a confusing, addictive, and increasingly obsessive love affair (there is no other word for it) with that Hungarian actor who died not long after she was born. She is fascinated by his voice, by the "purling arabesques of his English pronunciation". She cannot rid herself of that "face of a Buddha in repose, his iridescent purr, his beckoning, exophthalmic gaze." Her coevals make fun of Lorre's voice: "I heard their mocking, cruel, ignorant mimicry and blushed and raged to myself." She watches every movie with Lorre in it that appears on television, even in the early morning, and drifts about the entire school-week "in a semi-hallucinatory state of sleep deprivation." While watching TV late at night, and to avoid waking the mother and sister, the narrator (reminding one of the secretive reading & television-watching habits of ourselves when young) uses an earphone hook-up to her television, so that she can listen to the movie without revealing herself, "spared that shame, at least." Having told others who her favorite actor is,
"People would make a face and say, "Well, what you mean is you like his acting. You're not in LOVE with him."
I would nod and turn away. I saw mental hospitals in my future.
He was so beautiful."
What could other people know, says the narrator, of "a fourteen-year-old girl trembling under this merciless thing that had crept over her when she was little, that she had hoped she would eventually grow out of, that she wasn't growing out of?"
Woven throughout the ongoing tale of her obsession are some wonderful digressions, following the Bildungsroman theme: outings with her father and sister; cigarettes and smoking in the movies; a look at the differences between how men and women become physically aroused; the movie-going experience in the 70's and a paean to the suburbs of Detroit; episodes from her girlhood and her friendships with the depraved Natalie, semi-depraved Valerie, and two irrepressibly aspiring film-makers named Neil and Dave; there is also the profound effect upon her of The Rocky Horror Picture Show; a very cutting and amusing demolition of the deplorable human being but excellent poet Brecht (with whom Lorre, unfortunately for his peace of mind, was often involved); and her first glimpse of her idol on the big screen, as Dr. Gogol in Mad Love. The narrator's father has remarried, and she briefly goes to see a psychiatrist - but is left no less confused and unimpressed by 'real life'.
This wealth of detail is interspersed with the frequent, always bracingly mordant and often melancholy interjections of someone agonizing over a vanished, once-desperately unhappy but tremendously gifted character actor: "For he had been a great artist, and terribly misunderstood."
"They say he was fascinated by the word "creep," often used to describe the characters he played. Rightly so, as it was the single most evocative word you could use to summon up that ur-creature at the pith of those parts he so famously played, small, close to the ground, eugenically suspect. With that perverse whimsy of his, he devised means of turning that hurtful pejorative back at the people who used it on him. He would claim that he had studied the etymological derivation of the word (originally spelled kreep, he insisted), and discovered it had originally meant something akin to "fellow," "regular guy," "mensch," in other words, the opposite of its current connotation. However, it had been corrupted through ill-usage by careless native English speakers [...] He'd go around calling people creeps, then declare that they shouldn't get mad at him; it was really a compliment."
Having arrived in America in 1934, Lorre's time in Hollywood is portrayed with great verve and humor, its elements of absurdity and the uncomfortable feeling of displacement the actor must have felt being perceptively-rendered. It was certainly a strange time in Hollywood, with a steady stream of European émigrés taking on character roles and often forced by their penury to become extras in a vast number of films. Austrian and German refugees, many of them Jewish, were typically being cast as Nazi spies or leaders; Russians and Poles were asked to play the very men who had tortured them, stolen their property, threatened their lives, or otherwise driven them from the Continent.
Hollywood had never seen the likes of such names: Conrad Veidt and Hans von Twardowski, Fritz Kortner and Vladimir Sokoloff, Erich von Stroheim and Martin Kosleck, Emil Jannings and Akim Tamiroff... Olga Baclanova, once a well-known singer and actress in Russia, was reduced to playing the hen-woman in Freaks; Leonid Kinsky may, sadly, be finally remembered only as Sasha the bartender in Casablanca. And then, of course, there was Peter Lorre:
"It was certainly extraordinary for anyone who looked like him, especially as ethnic as he did, to be allowed to work in that pantheon of Aryan beauties. There were obvious problems he might have corrected, like his weight and those terrible teeth (very naughty of him, in that land of grapefruit and cosmetic dentistry), that might have made them more inclined to take him seriously as a leading man. Though it was nearly impossible to make the baroque planes of that incredible face look conventionally handsome, even normal on film. Even the master von Sternberg failed at it. There are some portions of Crime and Punishment in which he shimmers like Dietrich, and in others he just looks like a shoat."
A bittersweet cadence intrudes near the end of this fascinating book, during which the narrator meets the first (perhaps that should be the second) serious love of her life, Brent, who is a DJ at a radio station and introduces her to punk music. She enters university, comes to terms with a grandmother's death, and briefly experiments with drugs. After having driven down to L.A. with her boyfriend, in search of a new beginning to their lives, there occurs a visit to Peter Lorre's tomb in the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery, where
"We found him right away, at the end of a long corridor lined with Armenians. There was nothing to mark him as anyone famous. There was a little brass plaque with his name and dates and those of his last wife, the one he'd had a child with, and who'd been about to divorce him when he died."
This novel, which provokes what nineteenth-century Russians often aptly referred to as "laughter through tears", is a wholly original and excellent piece of work. I will never look at that pitiable yet supremely talented actor, whose very soul somehow mirrored his body and produced an impression of something vaguely misshapen, in quite the same way again.
"During the seventies his estate sued a breakfast cereal company that promoted one of its products with a little blue cartoon ghost that looked and sounded fetchingly like him. The estate argued that he wouldn't have wanted to have been remembered that way.
But his life was spent making sure he'd be remembered as nothing else."
Mom of a Lorre fan.......2002-12-04
This is an extremely honest portrayal of a teenager who yearns for something other than what she has. The writing is literate, lyrical, and insightful. The content of the book contains much more insight into a young girl's psyche than just the obsession she has with the dead actor. The book is much less about Peter Lorre than about the author, and her coming of age in a society and culture that she feels left out of.
witty and poignant -- and a wonderful tribute to Peter!.......2001-02-13
Reading Anne Sharp's _The Peter Lorre Companion_ makes me think of all the girlhood loves I never outgrew and still relish to this day. I saw my first Peter Lorre film at age 27 (and fell hopelessly in love with the man) but like the author says, the book is mainly about her childhood and adolescence. Sharp writes about love, old movies, divorce, friendships, sex, families, Catholic schools and various obsessions with a great deal of humor, wisdom and sensitivity. Whether or not you're a Peter Lorre fan isn't the point -- if you have ever longed for a lover who is always there for you, who is real and yet mysterious and uniquely attractive, you will relate to these stories. I found I couldn't put the book down. Highly recommended! (and now, for those uninitiated into Lorre-love, go and rent "Mad Love" or the 1934 version of Alfred Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and find out what all the fuss is about...)
"The Trouble With Angels" meets "Catcher in the Rye".......2001-01-28
Or maybe not. Maybe the best way to describe it is a reverse "Lolita" where the little girl is chasing after the dirty old man of her dreams...whatever, it's brilliant.
Average customer rating:
|
Classic Dramas Of Suspense (Csa Classic Radio Drama)
Manufacturer: CSA WORD
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD
General
| Movies
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Mystery & Thrillers
| Subjects
| Books
Mystery & Thrillers
| Books on CD
| Audiobooks
| Formats
| Books
ASIN: 1904605591 |
Average customer rating:
- excellent biography/filmography of Peter Lorre
|
The Films of Peter Lorre
Stephen Youngkin
Manufacturer: Citadel Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Acting & Auditioning
| Theater
| Performing Arts
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Performing Arts
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Movies
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0806509260 |
Customer Reviews:
excellent biography/filmography of Peter Lorre.......1999-12-24
This book is a must-read for everyone interested in actor Peter Lorre. Unfortunately it is out of print but if you can get a hold of a used copy, it's well worth the price.
Amazon.com
Pandaemonium was John Milton's invention, the capital of Hell where one of literature's great antiheroes, Satan, ruled his mob of fallen angels. Pandaemonium is Leslie Epstein's invention, a fevered mix of highbrow literary references wrapped in lowbrow comedy, a place where Hollywood directors mingle with German dictators, resulting in--well, you know. The novel's narrators are pulled straight from Hollywood history; the first, actor Peter Lorre, relates the events surrounding a performance of Antigone scheduled to be staged in Salzburg shortly before the Anschluss. Lorre, cast as Antigone's groom opposite the alluring Magda Mezaray, hopes this performance will release him from the string of B movies in which he starred as Japanese detective Mr. Moto. His hopes are dashed when the play is interrupted by an assassination attempt on one of the spectators, Adolph Hitler himself. The play's director, Rudolph Von Beckmann, is held responsible and taken to Vienna to explain things to Joseph Goebbels.
Pandaemonium then returns to Hollywood where, upon his return from an internment camp in Europe, Von Beckmann's plans to make a great Western become inextricably tangled with labyrinthine studio politics and Lorre's attempts to shed his association with Mr. Moto. The second narrator, gossip columnist Louella Parsons, takes up the tale, chronicling Lorre and Von Beckmann's return to Europe in search of Magda. By the time Epstein reaches the filming of Von Beckmann's Western, his fictional landscape resembles Milton's Hell very closely indeed. Pandaemonium is funny, ambitious, and makes for wickedly good reading.
Customer Reviews:
Aptly titled -- chaos, indeed.......2003-08-13
Boy, I really wanted to like it much more than I did. Novels about Hollywood which feature actual personalities are rarely successful, no matter how much insider knowledge is involved. I found that I couldn't finish it, even though I had less than 50 pages left to go. Life is too short.
It could have been SO MUCH BETTER.......2002-08-17
Casting Peter Lorre as the cynical voice of Hollywood was a brilliant stroke in Epstein's part. Unfortunately, the execution fails, as his depiction of Lorre, and for that matter ALL THE CHARACTERS, leave much to be desired.
I agree with a few reviews already written about this book: Epstein tries WAY TO HARD to get his message across, and in the process falls flat. For me this book was heavy and dull, up until they get to the cult-like town of Pandaemonium, where it does pick up the pace and becomes quite the page turner. And I did feel much sympathy for poor Peter Lorre, when he turns from being a Japanesse sleuth to a Cassandra, preaching of destructions to come.
The POV switch was as much an annoyance as (I'm sorry to say this) the Epstein twins. And the "it smells like almonds" jokes were not funny to begin with. The fact that this joke pops up quite frequently throughout the whole book is enough to make you cringe.
One last rant: every single character in this book is selfish and despicable. I hated each and every one of them. Now there's nothing wrong with hating characters. The Maltese Falcon is a prime example of characters you LOVE to hate.
But no, these characters you just simply hate.
Epstein did good when he penned King of the Jews. What happened here is a mystery.
Not as much fun as one might expect.......2002-03-09
The idea of Peter Lorre as narrator of this book promises to be a funny one. But I think those of a certain age, who have the hysterical voice of Rocky Rococo indelibly ringing in our ears, will be disappointed. I was. The author doesn't really capture that Peter Lorre. His coyness about his drug abuse and sexual hi-jinks lacked an expected leering quality. His cringings were ordinary rather than epic. I won't say the portrayal is a failure as he has a certain presence. But for someone so colorful in our memory he is rather flat on the page. Most of the alleged humor in the book is similarly drab.
This is a pretty good book nonetheless. The events leading to those set in the dessert provide many a memorable occasion for compulsive reading. The intricate episode when, as he is being interrogated by Goebbels the imperious Von Beckmann, flashes back to his travels into the Jewish villages of Europe revealing his true origins to us, is masterfully done.
But the culmination of the book, the grim antics on location in Death Valley are outlandish and unbelievable. The cult atmosphere as described is jarringly anachronistic; more reminiscent of Charlie Manson than Hitler. Yet we are explicitly directed by the author to take these as analogous to the Nazi madness of the era.
I wrote this to try and understand what to make of this book. My expectations for it were disappointed at every turn. Yet it held my interest right up to the final chapters. But these desert episodes seem totally misguided; And worse, predictable. Yet I admired much of the writing. I guess those who read of my still unresolved dilemma regarding this book may take it as a warning.
Funny, wicked look at pre WWII Hollywood.......2000-04-27
A really human portrait of mixing the personal and the political in the name of artistic endeavors, I found this book to be a wonderful read about Hollywood in its heyday. In the same way the author was unafraid to take on the Holocaust and protray it in the language of human survival for King of the Jews, Epstein is also unafraid to be both funny and frightening in this novel.
Ambitious, but perhaps too much so?.......1997-11-04
Like his earlier "King of the Jews," this novel also takes on the Holocaust--but this time (with a couple of briefly portrayed exceptions) it's at a distance. The narrative voice of Peter Lorre as a modern-day Cassandra works interestingly in the early parts of the novel, but by the time the ghost town emerges halfway through the book, Epstein seems to have become uncertain whether or not to stay with Lorre's p-o-v or roam about more loosely. This distancing from Lorre weakens the latter part of the novel, and it's hard to care for the characters' fates thereafter. Too many players strut about, enter and leave without making enough of an impression in a novel which reaches for a grand statement about Hollywood, the Jewish role, and the Nazi terror. Epstein's best at brilliant vignettes: a Yiddish version of the Dreyfus trial via stock footage shown on a shetl bedsheet and then resurrected by none other than Goebbels; the opening airplane-in-distress scene introducing the dramatis personae; a satirical graveside panorama of Hollywood's Jews and Gentiles alike; the imaginative staging of "Antigone" after the Nazi occupation of Salzburg; and the splendidly conveyed and visually captivating opening sequence of the grand movie which von Beckmann begins to film in the Nevada wastes. But Epstein's work is stronger in these smaller parts than as its meandering whole, from which at least a third of the book could have been cut and the rest more tightly controlled by its talented but overreaching author. Still, I'm using it for a "Jews and Hollywood" book circle at, fittingly, the Hollywood-Los Feliz Jewish Community Center, and I hope others in our group will record their own opinions about one of the few novels to capture verbally some of film's magical power.
Product Description
A small collection of 5 nice original 8" x 10" stills & portrait photographs of Peter Lorre. There is 1 nice portrait of him holding a gun, from an unidentified film, portrait of him and Brian Donlevy from "Crack-Up" 1 scene still of him with Raymond Massey, Josephine Hull & Jean Adair in "Arsenic And Old Lace" & 1 still of him with Sydney Greenstreet in "The Mask Of Dimitrios" which has a old tape mend to the verso and 1 scene still of him drinking as an unknown actor looks on from "Hotel Berlin". All the stills are vg. Sold as a collection only.
Average customer rating:
|
Stars Beyond, The a Biographical Graveside Guide ( cemeteryS of Theda Bara, Humphrey Bogart, Bob Crane, Marion Davies, Sharon Tate, Rudolph Valentino , Peter Lorre, Marilyn Monroe, Bela Lugosi, Errol Flynn, Walt Disney, Zazu Pitts, Rosalind Russell ETC
Blank Endpaper FORMER OWNER STAMP, Illustrated By Photos Maps b/w Jim Perry
Manufacturer: Manhattan Beach, CA Self-Published J. E. Perry
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000JD6908 |
Books:
- The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (Oprah's Book Club)
- The Message of a Master
- The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens: 8 Steps to Having More Money Than Your Parents Ever Dreamed Of (Motley Fool)
- The Phenomenon of Life: The Nature of Order, Book 1 An Essay of the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe (The Nature of Order, Book 1)
- The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
- The Science of Orgasm
- The Virgin's Lover
- The War Within: One More Step at a Time (Doonesbury Books (Andrews & McMeel))
- There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say
- This Jazz Man
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
- Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction
- Black Mischief, Scoop, The Loved One, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold
- Bunnies 2004 Mini Calendar
- Henri Cartier-Bresson: Scrapbook
- Human Molecular Genetics, Third Edition
- History: Fiction or Science
- Bass Master Shaw Grigsby : Notes on Fishing and Life
- Diana The Queen of Hearts; & CIA/MI6 the Princedom of Darkness. STORY: Sequel to volume Five
- The Agile Manager's Guide to Giving Great Presentations
Mr. Moto Collection, Vol. 1 (Mr. Moto Takes A Chance / Mysterious Mr. Moto / Thank You Mr. Moto / Think Fast Mr. Moto) (4DVD)
Zachary Scott: Hollywood's Sophisticated CAD (Hollywood Legends Series)
The Complete Mr. Moto Film Phile: A Casebook
Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career
Mr. Moto Collection - Vol. 2 (Mr. Moto's Gamble / Mr. Moto in Danger Island / Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation / Mr. Moto's Last Warning)
