Book Review | Israel’s Star Turn
When the state of Israel turned 30 in 1978, its supporters in Hollywood threw a star-studded party. What changed?
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