Jon Robin Baitz

Another great book about Hollywood from another time, this time non-fiction. Hollywood in the 1940’s, a city and industry where European intellectuals found refuge in Santa Monica Canyon, (Thomas Mann finishing Dr. Faustus on Mayberry Drive), Igor Stravinsky wrote music for Walt Disney’s Fantasia, a match made not in heaven, but somewhere way down below. Freidrich writes with a kind of exuberance about foolishness, pretense, possibility and licentiousness in the 40’s as World War II provides both a murmuring drumbeat in the background, and subject matter for some good, bad and absurd films.