Reviews for The Shocking Miss Pilgrim

The average rating for The Shocking Miss Pilgrim based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-28 00:00:00 Lllll Lllll It was an obituary of 111-year-old Frederica Sagor Maasthat led me to this book, just three weeks ago. I had no idea this intriguing and so 20th Century woman had existed. Her memoir is a fascinating reminiscence of a roller-coaster career as a reader, editor and screen writer in Hollywood, from the Twenties through the Fifties, written at the age of 98, and clearly she was still fully capable, both in her talent and her memories. It's a perfectly organized re-telling of hope and frustration in a business where barracudas qualify as good souls. Personal references to some big names, powers behind and occasionally on,the big screen. Not muckraking, but a genuine, personal inside look, rooted firmly in the milieu's nature, but told as her - and eventually her husband's - personal journeys through Hollywood and history. From nude orgies to the Depression, World War II, and the McCarthy hearings. What makes it particularly appealing is that despite her very clear point of view, there is an almost total lack of self-importance. As leading film historian Kevin Brownlow suggests, this is must reading that will inform and infuriate. If the movie industry's American past is of any interest, read this eye-opening.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-01-17 00:00:00 Jim Schesvold I came across this book a few years ago when I learned that the author -- a next door neighbor of my great, great-grandparents 1908-11 -- was still living at 102! (They are featured on pg. 6) I phoned her and had a wonderful conversation. She had written this book three years earlier. She has some wonderful experiences, and reports them with untethered opinion and vigor. But her style -- weighed down by cliches -- fast becomes wearisome. Maybe we should give her a break --- she was 99 when she wrote this. There is lots of interest here -- turn of the century Russian, secular Jewish life in Manhattan, early Hollywood, left-wing politics (McCarthy wasn't being paranoid about all the communists within the gates)