Cut!: Hollywood Murders, Accidents, and Other Tragedies
by Andrew Brettell, Denise Imwold, Heather von Rohr, Warren Hsu Leonard
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Book Summary Information
Author: Andrew Brettell, Denise Imwold, Heather von Rohr, Warren Hsu LeonardEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-11-01
ISBN: 0764158589
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Barron's Educational Series
Accessories:
- 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
- Rock & Roll Heaven: A Fascinating Guide to Musical Icons Who Have Joined the Great Gig in the Sky
- 501 Movie Stars: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Screen Actors
Book Reviews of Cut!: Hollywood Murders, Accidents, and Other Tragedies
Book Review: Overall worthwhile, but with glaring omissions
Summary: 3 Stars
Cut! is a densely illustrated compendium of Hollywood's luminaries whose lives have been touched by tragedy, either in their career or in real life. The subtitle indicates "Hollywood murders, accidents, and other tragedies." The expected appear (Sharon Tate, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, William Desmond Taylor, Thelma Todd, Irving Thalberg) but there are a number of obvious stories missing. There is no Peg Entwhistle, the actress who in 1932 famously flung herself to her death from the "H" in the Hollywoodland sign. No Bob Crane, bludgeoned to death in his bed in Phoenix, Arizona, by persons unknown. No Paul Bern, shot to death in Jean Harlow's closet, perhaps by himself, perhaps by an abandoned ex-lover. As someone else pointed out, Olive Thomas, dead from ingesting bichloride of mercury in Paris, is missing; she exists only as a sentence in a page on husband Jack Pickford. Louise Brooks, whose exit from Tinseltown was of her own volition, and who died at a relatively advanced age in Rochester, NY, probably should have been included, rather than some of the little-known players who make an appearance (Ormer Locklear, for example, who died in an airplane stunt in 1920). Jon-Erik Hexum, who accidentally shot himself on the set of his TV series in the 1980s, is missing, arguably more remembered than Gloria Dickson or Dorothy Dell.
More than half the book is made up of people who died relatively young of diseases after having a Hollywood career (Lee Remick, John Garfield, Montgomery Clift), not what I would term a typical Hollywood tragedy conjured up by the title. There is a wealth of information on most celebrities, with very little I saw in the way of errors. One mistake appears twice: in two photo captions from the movie "Poltergeist," the boy in the movie (Oliver Robbins) is miscredited as Heather O'Rourke. Vic Morrow's accidental death along with two children by helicopter blade is relegated to a back section on movie-set tragedies. I am also uncertain as to why Linda Darnell, a B-movie actress, and Richard Farnsworth, a stuntman who came to acting late in life, rate two pages, while more major stars and award-winners like Betty Grable, Judy Holliday, Frank Morgan, Dick Powell, are summed up in one page. Perhaps it is due to the amount of "tragedy" in the subject's life: poor asylum inmate Frances Farmer gets two pages as well.
Also included are quite a number of obscurities, which may be is due to the book's main compilers being film professors and librarians. Who remembers Lya De Putti? Gilda Gray? Rita Johnson? Charles Ray? Mitzi Green? The average film fan has no idea who these long-lost people are, and the extent of their contribution to filmland seems slight.
The print is also exceedingly small, probably in an effort to keep the book from being encyclopedia-sized. Although, I could just be aging...
However, all that being said, it's still a nice reference book for people who love film and celebrities, keeping in mind some of it's more obvious exclusions.
Summary of Cut!: Hollywood Murders, Accidents, and Other Tragedies
Rebel Without a Cause was one of the most talked-about movies of the 1950s. It might also have been the most jinxed. Among its stars, James Dean was soon killed in a car crash, Sal Mineo died several years later, murdered by an unknown assailant, and the beautiful Natalie Wood died mysteriously when she fell from a docked pleasure boat and drowned. This heavily illustrated book recounts these and many other tragic events that have haunted the Hollywood movie community from its early-twentieth-century beginnings to the present day. Here are accounts of the sudden, premature deaths of stars like Rudolph Valentino, Montgomery Clift, and Peter Sellers. Here too are stories about celebrities who died young because of alcohol or drug-related problems?John Belushi and Elvis Presley among many others?and of the tragic 1998 murder of comedian Phil Hartman. Car wrecks, plane crashes, and other deadly accidents sent Jayne Mansfield, Grace Kelly, and Carole Lombard, to untimely deaths, and accidents occurring during film production have taken several lives, perhaps the most dramatic being the helicopter crash that killed Vic Morrow in 1983. The tragic stories of many Hollywood personalities are told in Cut!, the definitive volume on the fleeting lives of movie celebrities, some of whom became more famous in death than they had been in life. Hundreds of photos, many in color.Entertainers Books
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