Vignettes from my new book Hollywood Stories: Short, Entertaining Anecdotes About the Stars and Legends of the Movies!

Don’t Practice What You Preach

Warren Beatty was fired up to direct and star in the 1981 drama Reds, which told the story of John Reed, the founder of the American Communist Party. The forty-four-year-old sex symbol Beatty had scored big at the box office with the 1978 comedy Heaven Can Wait, and now wished to tackle much more serious subject matter. Leery of the politics, but wanting to be in the Warren Beatty business, Paramount Studios’ executives reluctantly agreed to pony up twenty-five million. Warren led a large cast through a punishing nine-month schedule in which they recreated the 1917 Russian Revolution. The completed Reds got great reviews, won a Best Director Oscar for Beatty, but struggled to earn back its costs. The leading man’s passion for his project inadvertently drove up the film’s expenses; at one point during the production of Reds, several extras became so inspired by one of Beatty’s anti-capitalistic speeches that they went on strike. (more…)

Some light-hearted vignettes from my new book: Hollywood Stories: Short, Entertaining Anecdotes About the Stars and Legends of the Movies!

Hope and Roosevelt 

Democrat Franklin Roosevelt was the first of eleven presidents Republican Bob Hope entertained. The commander-in-chief loved the comedian on the big screen and appreciated Hope’s efforts entertaining the troops during World War II. Their paths crossed when Bob emceed a dinner in the president’s honor, a few months before Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term in 1944. In front of a crowd of luminaries, Hope told a story about a Marine in the South Pacific who was disappointed that he had not encountered an enemy combatant. (more…)

Government broadcaster PBS is running a new, five-part series on a subject naturally interesting in our time: American Experience: The 1930s. Episodes are available for online viewing here.

The program is just what one would expect from PBS: earnest, well-researched, skillfully presented, and eager to lick the boots of government while criticizing individual freedom for everything wrong in the world.

There are two important lessons to be learned from the Great Depression, in my view:

1. The government causes business cycles and downturns through its erratic, manipulative policies intended to benefit powerful voting blocs at the expense of those less able to fight back. The market works when left alone, and government interference should be limited to redressing actual harms done by one party to another. This includes combating fraud, enforcing valid contracts, and setting clear but liberal guidelines for transactions made across political borders. And nothing more.

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