Reviews for Hearst Over Hollywood: Power, Passion, and Propaganda in the Movies

The average rating for Hearst Over Hollywood: Power, Passion, and Propaganda in the Movies based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-03-03 00:00:00 Crystal Armold I'm not ready to abandon this, but I have started scanning it. The book is really well done, and incredibly detailed. I can only take a few pages at a time. Basically it's another 'powerful man and his corrupt life' histories. In contrast, I'm also reading "Women Making America", a positive historical account that covers the same era and much more. Well, they may cancel each other out and I'll be left with my Bread Bible, "The Encyclopedia of Bread and Bread Machines". The era of which Hearst was a part interests me, moderately. So I'll keep scanning. I'm very tired of hearing about brothels and prostitutes and I'm only about thrity pages in. Well, my husband likes history and wanted me to read one of his books, and when he offered this, I said I would. Sigh. I liked "The Victorian Internet" much better. Ooh...I'm glad I've been sticking with this. I came to a quote that included this sentence: "Where the editors of Yellow Journalism made a mistake was in not understanding the difference between stimulated growth and healthy growth." Or, in the case, of much media then and now- 'simulated growth'. And really, do they not understand it, or understand it far too well...? I have slowed down and am reading much more closely. Altho the very next page had yet more references to prostitutes, which I am wondering are meant as much as a reference to hearst and his life philosophies as much as to actual prostitutes. Continuing on and scanning again. This is a very detailed examination (as in thorough post mortem) of Hearst and his ideas of massive manipulation of the tastes and thoughts of the populace. I kinda get the picture by now, ok, and each specifc account is starting to have less effect on me. I have since abandoned this book for the time being. I get the main point and the whole Hearst thing doesn't hold my attention.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-01-14 00:00:00 Ricardo Chiriboga This may seem a weird reason for a not-great rating, but I there was almost too much information in this book to take in. It was nearly 450 pages (not counting notes) of teeny-tiny print. Because of its title, I expected it to be about Hearst and Hollywood (duh), but it covered every detail of Hearst's life: newspapers, politics, Tammany Hall, and more, down to the most minute detail. It was clearly well researched, but I wish it had been published in two separate volumes. That said, Joseph Cotten's last name is not Cotton, Ruth Warrick's is not Warwick, and the battle the author refers to on p. 413 was almost certainly a public one, not pubic. Where have all the proofreaders gone?