Picture

By Lillian Ross

Book Overview

A classic look at Hollywood and the American film industry by The New Yorker's Lillian Ross, and named one of the "Top 100 Works of U.S. Journalism of the Twentieth Century."

Lillian Ross worked at The New Yorker for more than half a century, and might be described not only as an outstanding practitioner of modern long-form journalism but also as one of its inventors. Picture, originally published in 1952, is her most celebrated piece of reportage, a closely observed and completely absorbing story of how studio politics and misguided commercialism turn a promising movie into an all-around disaster. The charismatic and hard-bitten director and actor John Huston is at the center of the book, determined to make Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage--one of the great and defining works of American literature, the first modern war novel, a book whose vivid imagistic style invites the description of cinematic--into a movie that is worthy of it. At first all goes well, as Huston shoots and puts together a two-hour film that is, he feels, the best he's ever made. Then the studio bosses step in and the audience previews begin, conferences are held, and the movie is taken out of Huston's hands, cut down by a third, and finally released--with results that please no one and certainly not the public: It was an expensive flop. In Picture, which Charlie Chaplin aptly described as "brilliant and sagacious," Ross is a gadfly on the wall taking note of the operations of a system designed to crank out mediocrity.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1681373157
• ISBN13: 9781681373157
• Release Date: April 2019
• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.1" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Louis B. Mayer is the unlikely hero.

The end, on post-production, is priceless. Especially the material about adding the score. But I think Louis B. Mayer comes out as the true hero, because of his skill at balancing commercial and artistic considerations.

Devastating inside look at Hollywood

Lillian Ross, a writer for the New Yorker, heads to Hollywood in 1950 to watch John Huston make his next picture, "The Red Badge of Courage" at MGM, and manages to capture a horrifying snapshot of the studio system at its worst during a difficult time of transition for the film industry. She happens to be on hand to see Louis B. Mayer forced out and Dore Schary installed as studio head while the film is in mid-production. There are several scenes of Huston grinning and bearing it as Schary pompously lectures the great director of "The Maltese Falcon," "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "The African Queen" on how to make a movie. Schary pompously cites how he "solved story problems" in several of his own stodgy, now-forgotten pet projects as producer, like "The Next Voice You Hear." In one hillarious scene we see Arthur Freed, MGM's great producer of musicals, playing yes-man to Schary, and we glean, perhaps, how Freed, by appeasing the new boss, managed to keep some autonomy for his own expensive production unit through much of Schary's cost-cutting reign.Then come the ill-conceived (or deliberately rigged) sneak previews. This serious war drama is screened at a local theater for an audience that came to see a Ginger Rogers romantic comedy, and the audience response is... (surprise!) vociferously negative. They find the film depressing, and many walk out. The old adage that new executives try to kill the projects put into the works by their predecessors may apply. Schary uses these preview results to justify having the movie re-cut while Huston is out of the country working on another film.Anyone who suspects that there never was a golden age of Hollywood without inept executives and corporate committees will enjoy this book. You wonder how anything good ever gets made. Cynics will chuckle, film lovers will just shake their heads in sorrow. Of course, there is that other adage about not wanting to see how the sausage gets made...

One of the top 100 books of Journalism of the century

Lillian Ross's books "Picture" and "Portrait of Hemingway" were listed as two of the top 100 best-of-the-century works of Journalism compiled by 36 judges working under the aegis of New York University.

MORE THAN A MOVIE BOOK!

Lillian Ross has given movie fans and those with a serious interest in film an extraordinary book about the final days of the studio system--and shows exactly why it collapsed. A few years later the independent film-maker emerged, and another book details that experience. Interestingly enough, both books deal with Audie Murphy. Like the Ross book, A THINKER'S DAMN by William Russo recounts the foibles of movie-making, this time in Saigon with Joe Mankiewicz in 1957. Each provides a timeless impression of a bygone movie era.

A well written first-hand account of how a movie is made.

An entire book on the creation of John Huston's "The Red Badge of Courage." What's most amazing is that Ross seems to be a fly on the wall. She attends big meetings with Hollywood execs. She is along with the gang during casting, shooting, editing, and previews. This is reporting like reporting was meant to be. It is such a good first-hand account, that people uninterested in movies will find favor with it.