Early Days In Hollywood

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28530, 8 March 1958, Page 3

Early Days In Hollywood

I Blow My Otvn Horn. By Jesse L. Lasky. Gollancz. 284 pp. Index.

The most interestihg part of this unusual autobiography is the account of the early days of Hollywood and the business of making movies. Lasky is a pioneer of the motion-picture industry and from the beginning, with, his partner, Sam Goldfish (later Goldwyn), has been a principal in one of the leading companies. The story takes the reader from silent films, through “talkies,” to the present decade of the “cinemascope” screen and 3-D (the technique of which, by the way, was perfected as long ago as in 1926, so Lasky reveals). The book is a mine of fascinating and often ludicrous anecdotes about practically al) the great names of cinema. There is Rudolph Valentino, for instance; there is the making of Lasky’s first “epic” —“Covered Wagon”; there are his trials with Gloria Swanson; the story of “Beau Geste,” pearly rejected on the grounds that it had “a French title no-one could pronounce”; “Gay Desperado”; “Rhapsody in Blue”; “The Great Caruso”; and there are pen portraits of the great producer, Cecil de Mille, of Irving Berlin, Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette McDonald, and hosts of other stars of yesterday.

The author has a sense of fun and has always enjoyed life to the 1 full. In this autobiography he transmits his own zest to the reader, and though the story is lacking in literary merit, this tale- will entertain a wide circle of picture-going fans.