Book Review | She Came, She Sang, She Conquered
Barbra Streisand remains the single most powerful and enduring female Jewish cultural figure of my lifetime, writes Glenn Frankel.
Barbra Streisand remains the single most powerful and enduring female Jewish cultural figure of my lifetime, writes Glenn Frankel.
When the state of Israel turned 30 in 1978, its supporters in Hollywood threw a star-studded party. What changed?
No one enjoys looking in the mirror more than Hollywood, and no one does it better—as vastly entertaining show-biz movies like Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve, Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood can all attest. Now comes Mank, David Fincher’s loving and atmospheric re-creation of 1930s Hollywood.
The great French film director Jean-Luc Godard called Ben Hecht a “genius” who “invented 80 percent of what is used in Hollywood today.” Yet most modern American Jews have likely never heard of Hecht, despite his eminence as a playwright, best-selling novelist and screenwriter of a host of Hollywood film classics.
Reviewed by Glenn Frankel