Book Review: Who the Hell's In It: Portraits and Conversations

(Bought at a used bookstore near Hudson, NY for 50 cents): Peter Bogdanovich’s 2004 collection of profiles and interviews of 25 film stars is a total delight. Even at almost 500 pages, it’s a fun, fast read. The author has worked with most of the subjects as a director (Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara, Sidney Poitier), or had long, admiring friendships with them (Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart). He analyzes their style and appeal with precision and objectivity, though he goes a bit overboard on Jerry Lewis, devoting 70 pages to the manic comic director-producer-writer-clown. Lewis was never one of my favorite, but Bogdanovich’s profile offers explanations of his juvenile appeal and surprising masterful technical mastery behind the camera. Many of the pieces had appeared in journals and there is some overlap in stories. Several include the tantalizing prospect of a Western to be directed by Bogdanovich, written by Larry McMurtry and starring John Wayne, Stewart and Henry Fonda. When the project failed to materialize, McMurtry turned his screenplay into the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove and continued with many prequels and sequels.   

I most enjoyed the snapshots of the stars at work. An on-set visit to Jack Lemmon during the filming of Billy Wilder’s Irma La Douce was my favorite for its intimate capturing of the actor’s day-to-day life. I just viewed Bogdanovich’s first film Targets and his portrait of its star Boris Karloff takes us into the changes in Los Angeles, the movies and the actor’s checkered career. The recent death of Gena Rowlands gave the chapter on her husband John Cassavetes an added melancholy and a strong desire to rewatch their quirky, intense films.

The volume is bracketed with portraits of two screen goddesses of different eras and influences whom the author briefly encountered in real life: Lillian Gish and Marilyn Monroe. Gish was the first movie incarnation of innocence and Monroe the last avatar of sexiness in the Hollywood studio system. Both chapters give us the director’s insights into what the movies give us and how its stars filled our dreams.

Like his hero Orson Welles, Bogdanovich never quite recaptured the stunning success of his first feature (The Last Picture Show, one of my favorite movies), but this book imparts his lifelong love of cinema and its stars. 

Note: The American edition is subtitled Conversations with Hollywood's Legendary Stars. I bought the British edition which is subtitled simply Portraits and Conversations. Instead of William Holden and Audrey Hepburn on the cover, mine has Marilyn Monroe in the Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.