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A review by abookishaffair
The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century by Margaret Talbot
4.0
Old Hollywood has always seemed like such a fascinating place to me. Just the name Hollywood evokes glamor. I love reading about it and was very excited to read The Entertainer based on the fact that it was about Hollywood alone. The Entertainer is both a personal history and a general history of Old Hollywood.
Margaret Talbot tells both the story of her father and Hollywood in this book. Through recollection of her father's many stories and her own meticulous research, she captures the transition between silent movies and the "talkies," as movies with sound were often referred to as when they first came out. Margaret Talbot's father, Lyle, was a screen actor who made this transition. The story follows Lyle from his sort of sad childhood growing up until his death as an old man. Most of the book focuses on Lyle's time in Hollywood. Even though I did not recognize Lyle by name, through reading the book I realized that I had seen some of the movies that he had been in.
This book is both a fascinating biography and a good history book. So many of the things that happened in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s changed the movie business and laid the ground work for many of the things that we see today in movies. I think that people who both like biographies and history will like this book. While sometimes Talbot could give descriptions that were a little bit too long, overall the writing style in this book was good. I liked that Talbot included her father's story rather than just making this a general history of Old Hollywood. Getting to see everything that was going on through Lyle's eyes was really fascinating.
Bottom line: History and biography lovers will enjoy this book!
Margaret Talbot tells both the story of her father and Hollywood in this book. Through recollection of her father's many stories and her own meticulous research, she captures the transition between silent movies and the "talkies," as movies with sound were often referred to as when they first came out. Margaret Talbot's father, Lyle, was a screen actor who made this transition. The story follows Lyle from his sort of sad childhood growing up until his death as an old man. Most of the book focuses on Lyle's time in Hollywood. Even though I did not recognize Lyle by name, through reading the book I realized that I had seen some of the movies that he had been in.
This book is both a fascinating biography and a good history book. So many of the things that happened in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s changed the movie business and laid the ground work for many of the things that we see today in movies. I think that people who both like biographies and history will like this book. While sometimes Talbot could give descriptions that were a little bit too long, overall the writing style in this book was good. I liked that Talbot included her father's story rather than just making this a general history of Old Hollywood. Getting to see everything that was going on through Lyle's eyes was really fascinating.
Bottom line: History and biography lovers will enjoy this book!