Reviews for The Golden West: Hollywood Stories

The average rating for The Golden West: Hollywood Stories based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-10-20 00:00:00 Wilson Whitaker In his 20's during the 1930's Fuchs wrote 3 books about growing up in Brooklyn. They did not sell well (about 400 copies of each) and were not much reviewed. Later in life they were "rediscovered". In the meantime, he went out to Hollywood - and never left. His perspective is rather refreshing since he was a self admitted B-lister, only seeing most of the true stars from afar. He worked there from '39 until '58 and lived until 1993. He worked on about 19 films, and won an Oscar in 1955 for "Love Me or Leave Me". He is also refreshing in that he was an East Coast "literary type" who really loved living in the Hollywood scene and felt fine openly admitting that. As for writing, well his later in life @100 pp. novella (1971), "West of the Rockies" was a story I thought would never end! Including his one foray into a 3.5 page paragraph! And these are pretty dense pages. He just seems to be describing the same thing over and over again, and never getting to where he wants to go. Some of the short pieces that make up this collection give us an interesting perspective on Hollywood through the '50's, and the book is worth reading for that reason. But it was pretty tough going at times - not a "fun" read by any stretch of the imagination.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-12-24 00:00:00 Jeremy Baum This superb collection of Daniel Fuchs's fiction and essays about Hollywood, spanning half a century, records the vagaries of the film industry from the perspective of a screenwriter who toiled for the great studios in their heyday and was on the premises during their decline. Fuchs brought to this subject the watchfulness of a born novelist whose so-called Williamsburg Trilogy, about Brooklyn tenement life, remains a highlight of 1930's fiction -- a marvel of detached sympathy and supple naturalism, all the more remarkable for having been written by an immigrant son when he was in his 20's and on breaks from his day job as a public-school teacher in Brighton Beach. When MGM dangled a 13-week contract in 1937, he took the bait and journeyed west, but kept an eye fastened on the literary world back home. -Sam Tanenhaus, The New York Times