Saturday, April 30, 2011

MOVIE NEWS … THE GREATEST BACKLOT

 

MGM BACKLOT BOOK

One might think that by this time, every conceivable film-related topic has been covered in book form…but some releases prove that this isn’t so. Perhaps the most unusual, and exciting, addition to the library of movie books is M-G-M: HOLLYWOOD’S GREATEST BACKLOT by Steven Bingen, Stephen X. Sylvester, and Michael Troyan, with a foreword by MGM veteran Debbie Reynolds (Santa Monica Press). As the authors explain in their Introduction, “Our purpose in producing this book is not to discuss the films that MGM produced. That particular road has been well travelled elsewhere. Our interest here is not in the product at all, but rather the factory responsible for that product. Our goal is to preserve, in print and in memory, if not in brick and mortar, the actual physical place that was once Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for the first time.”

The authors have traced the history of the M-G-M lot with equal measures of thoroughness and panache. This is much more than a collection of behind-the-scenes photos: it is a guided tour inside the walls of a magical kingdom, building by building, street by street, peppered with quotes from people who worked there over the years. From scene storage to the fabled Little Red Schoolhouse, from the standing sets to the backlot jungle and lake, this is a closeup look at Hollywood’s most prestigious studio from its earliest days through the television era.

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