Star Shine Book

Relatives of the late Hollywood photographer Bert Parry offer up an album of mostly candid b&w portraits he made of the great names from the 1930s to the mid-1960s. As in a family album, the photos, previously unpublished, are sometimes silly (Joan Blondell mugs with two pugs), sometimes touching (Glenn Miller conducts a uniformed wartime big band), and sometimes dim and grainy. And as in a family album, proofreading wasn't always the top priority—Esther Williams, for instance, becomes Ester in one set of images, and even Parry's name is repeatedly misspelled. But the tone is just-folks and the effect nostalgic. The volume has no index. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR