The Last Kings of Hollywood

 

In the 1970s, a fresh crop of film school graduates were looking to shake up the old Hollywood system of having to beg studios for financing and distribution. They had a vision of doing things their way and helping other inspiring directors and writers. 

Leading the pack was Francis Ford Coppola. He and George Lucas became friends. Steven Spielberg was a few years younger than them and looked up to and admired them. Coppola started his own movie studio production in the Bay Area, but lack of administrative oversight quickly brought that to a close. 

Lucas learned from Coppola's mistakes and made some extremely smart business decisions in the beginning regarding his films, mainly keeping a large percentage of the gross profits and retaining the right to merchandising. In turn, each of them would shatter previous records for the biggest movie ever: Coppola with "The Godfather", Spielberg with "Jaws", and Lucas with "Star Wars". Spielberg shattered Lucas's record with "E.T." And so on. Each movie was bigger and better and it ended up changing the old Hollywood system. Maybe not for the better: thanks to these giant blockbusters, movie theaters no longer wanted to show the kind of smaller, more independent films they used to. The takeaway (for me, anyway) was that they ended up inadvertently destroying the things they wanted to nurture. Coppola almost lost everything and Lucas became a recluse who walked away from his "Star Wars" franchise, selling it to Disney. I've read some about the early days of Hollywood so it was really interesting to read about a different time. 

When the Wolf Comes Home

 

Jess, an aspiring actress in L.A., is having a terrible day. She's working the late shift at a crappy diner when one of their regulars makes a mess in the bathroom. She and her coworker make a deal: if Jess goes and cleans it up, she can go home. While cleaning the bathroom (which was described in all too graphic detail), she accidentally pricks her finger on the used needle the customer hid behind the toilet. 

Well that sucks.

Jess goes home and tries to work up the courage to go to the hospital to get checked out, but then all Hell breaks loose. A giant wolf rampages through the apartment complex, killing a bunch of people. Jess manages to escape, taking along a little boy she found hiding in the bushes. 

Jess and the nameless boy (he claims he doesn't have a name) go on the run but unfortunately, everywhere they go the wolf follows and kills. Soon Jess realizes that the little boy can make things happen by believing in them. His fears come true (hence the big bad wolf, who is actually just his dad). He watches a cartoon on TV and the characters jump out of the TV and start terrorizing the hotel they're at. Jess isn't sure how to keep him (and the rest of the world) safe from his own mind. 

It was really good, I enjoyed it, even if the ending felt a little anticlimactic. It's really hard with these types of stories. I've read a lot of them where the ending just falls flat. 

Black Dahlia

 

A friend at work asked me about my favorite true crime stories and I mentioned the Black Dahlia. Elizabeth Short's unsolved 1947 murder is one of my OG true crime interests. Manson, Dahlia, Lindbergh, and Lizzie Borden. Those are the four that I read everything I can get my hands on. 

About a decade ago, Mann wrote a book called "Tinseltown" about the unsolved murder of Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor. Mann starts out by saying that he's not trying to solve the Dahlia case, but of course he does have his favorite suspect: Marvin Margolis. Marvin was a USC medical student and a known boyfriend of Betty's (despite being married). His wife's family were butchers. As a Jewish man, Marvin faced antisemitism at USC. Most likely due to his horrifying experiences in WWII as well as the trauma of being harassed for his ethnicity, Mann theorizes that he probably had a lot of rage in general. Combined with some knowledge of anatomy (it's pretty much a given that Dahlia's murdered knew something about dissection, given how neatly her body was sawed in half) and access to USC's medical labs, which were deserted at the time of year Betty was murdered, he makes a fairly compelling argument. 

The point of the book, however, was to rehumanize Betty. Teach us about the real life young woman behind the myth. Betty was an adventurous young woman who didn't want to stay home and follow the more conventional path of marriage and children, she wanted to see the world. She lived by her wits and made friends easily, friends who she could call on for a place to crash for a night or two, friends who could help her out with rent or food money in a pinch.

It was an interesting book, I enjoyed it. It is a shame that we'll probably never know for sure who killed this poor young woman whose life was just beginning. 

Best True Crime Stories of the Year 2025

Like most books of short stories, some of these were good, others not so much. 

One of my favorites was "The Heiress at Harvard", about wealthy Frances Glessner Lee, who started forensic science at Harvard. I've heard about her "nutshells" before: she created extremely intricate dioramas of crime scenes, little miniature dollhouses basically, and used them to teach crime scene investigators how to properly process a crime scene. Even though Lee died in 1962, her nutshells are still in use at the Maryland Medical Examiner's office. 

The last story in the book, "The BTK Killer's Daughter", was absolutely depressing. I've heard of "CrimeCon", where true crime aficionados go to network with other like minded folks and meet some victims and their families. When I first heard about CrimeCon, I thought "oh, that sounds like fun, I should try to go one year!". 

No. Nope. Don't want to go now. It sounds utterly heartbreaking. Some of the victims of less publicized crimes go in an attempt to drum up interest in their loved ones' cases. The thought makes me absolutely sick for those poor families and friends. I just can't even imagine going around, begging people to care. 
 

Return of the Maltese Falcon

 

I read Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon" several decades ago when I was younger and didn't care for it much. I really tried to like it, after all, it was set in San Francisco, a city that I've always been fascinated by, and was deliciously noir. I'm willing to give it another chance now that I'm older, I just don't have time right now. 

All that is to say: I don't remember the book very well. I also tried to watch the Humphrey Bogart version movie several times and just couldn't get into it. So I wasn't terribly surprised that I had a hard time getting through this book, even though I like Collins and have enjoyed his other stories. 

"Return of the Maltese Falcon" picks up where Hammett's book left off. PI Sam Spade is contacted by multiple interested parties who would like him to find the fabled gold and jewel encrusted statue. Everyone's lying, including Spade, people are getting killed right and left, but in the end Spade untangles everything and there's a somewhat happy ending. The book picked up towards the end, the last fifty pages or so were engrossing, but it was a bit of a slog to get there. 

Lost Story of Eva Fuentes; Chorus of the Union

 

I've enjoyed Cleeton's novels so far, and I enjoyed this one up until a certain point. When I explain why, I'll try not to spoil too much. 

Margo lives in London in 2024. She's recently divorced and has a business where she tracks down lost treasures for clients: furniture and artwork and the like. A client contacts her about a book, apparently very rare. There is only one known copy in existence and it's called "Time of Forgetting" by Eva Fuentes, a Cuban author. 

Margo reaches out to a bookseller she works with to see if he's familiar with the book. He's not, but he gives her information about a woman who's tracking lost Cuban possessions from families who had to flee Cuba. And then he's murdered. Margo's office is ransacked and she's wondering why this book is wrecking havoc and considers telling the client she's out. 

The book is told from three points of view: Margo, Pilar, a librarian in Cuba in 1966 who is hiding books from families fleeing Castro's regime, and Eva herself, in 1900. Eva was a schoolteacher who participates in a program to travel to Boston for the summer to attend classes at Harvard.

All right, here's the dicey part. About 2/3 of the way through the book, a character is introduced who says he's Eva's grandson. His mother, her daughter, was born in 1901. He's in the 2024 part of the book, and he's in his sixties.

My brain screeched to a halt. How is that possible? I started doing math in my head: if he's in his sixties, he was born in the 1960s, right? And his mother was born in 1901, meaning she was in her *sixties* when he was born? 

Huh?

I hoped I misread, that he was actually Eva's GREAT grandson, but no, very clearly, grandson. 

Did no one stop and do the math? Surely I'm not the only one who picked up on that, right? 

At any rate, I barely paid attention to the end of the book because I was so flummoxed trying to figure out the math. I hate when things like that happen. It ruins an otherwise good story. 

"Chorus of the Union" was pretty good. It reminded me of a book I read a few years ago about the 1860 Republican convention, "The Lincoln Miracle". 

Lincoln and Douglas were longtime political rivals in Illinois, with Douglas always beating Lincoln. They debated often and both of them were great speakers. They went head to head in the 1860 Presidential election and Lincoln won due to the Democratic party splitting up into three separate faction over the issues around slavery. Despite not even being on the ballot in most of the Southern states, Lincoln still carried the day, and the South immediately started talking secession.

Despite losing, Douglas was a Unionist through and through. He cautioned the states to give Lincoln a chance and not secede. He was willing to work with Lincoln (and Lincoln was willing to work with him) to save the Union. Unfortunately, Douglas died just a few months into Lincoln's first term and the nation broke out in Civil War. It was a fascinating look at how men who were different in almost every other way could come together on a topic that they both felt strongly about. I don't know much about Stephen Douglas but I'm interested in reading more about him now. 

 

We Did OK, Kid

 

First off, it's killing me to type "OK" instead of "okay". My work prefers "OK", and I refuse. It's just *wrong*. 

That minor grammatical irritation aside, Hopkins' memoir was really good. I can't believe he's 87! I had no idea. Silence of the Lambs just came out what? two, three years ago? Something like that. 

Anthony is Welsh and his dad was a baker. He was an only child and not terribly bright in school. Everyone kind of wrote him off, didn't think he'd amount to much, which made him determined to prove them all wrong. He was good at memorizing and losing himself in poetry, and he managed to parlay that into a successful acting career. 

He has a lot of good life advice and terrific taste in poetry. And I love how down to earth he is. So refreshing.