Four Industry Heavyweights Recommend a Film Book That They Love

A few of the industry heavyweights who cast ballots to help determine The Hollywood Reporter’s list of the 100 greatest film books of all time agreed to share a few words with THR about a film book that they especially treasure.

Below, you can read actor Alec Baldwin gush about his “favorite show business memoir,” marketing exec Terry Press explain why she owns three copies of “the only book dedicated to one of the most iconic screen teams,” studio chief Tom Rothman reveal which how-to book he gives to every young executive who comes to work for him and actor Robert Wagner on the biography of an oft-caricatured golden age studio mogul that actually captures the “vulnerable human being” who met some 70 years ago.

Alec Baldwin on By Myself, by Lauren Bacall

“I had always admired Lauren Bacall as an actress throughout her career, beginning as a young movie star who eventually moved on to great victories on Broadway. Bacall was an inspiration to me. She was tough, she was candid, she was also vulnerable. You can find that vulnerability on the pages of her memoir, By Myself, when she writes about losing Humphrey Bogart to cancer and how her life was upended by that. She also writes about how she moved to New York and made a new life for herself. I found all of that more than a little touching. I think By Myself is perhaps my favorite show business memoir of all.”

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Terry Press on The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, by Arlene Croce

“There have obviously been quite a few worthy books written about Fred Astaire, but this essential look at the 10 Astaire-Rogers films has the advantage of being written by Arlene Croce, who was the dance critic at The New Yorker at the time the book was written and published. By focusing on the production and execution of the dance numbers, Croce teaches us how to actually watch these films and charts how the team evolved. Beginning as essentially a novelty dance act (The Carioca, Flying Down to Rio), they immediately charmed audiences with their onscreen chemistry and quickly were soon on their way into becoming the most iconic dance duo in screen history. Additionally, Croce offers a concise historical context, using the dance numbers in the Astaire-Rogers canon to demonstrate how the country moved through the deco-sheen of Depression-era films to a more down-to-Earth sensibility that was the hallmark of movies musicals and romantic comedies post 1938. If you are a student of dance or Astaire-Rogers obsessive (guilty — I own three copies of this book, including the original one I bought in the early ’70s — I was always in a panic that I would lose one), do yourself a favor and find a copy of the only book dedicated to one of the most iconic screen teams in film history.”

Press is a marketing executive.

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Tom Rothman on On Film-Making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director, by Alexander Mackendrick

“The single best book on the craft of filmmaking that I have ever read is Alexander Mackendrick’s On Film-Making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director. I give it to every young executive who starts to work for me. Mackendrick taught at CalArts for years, and I am on the board there, which is how I learned about it. It’s the best explanation I ever read of ‘show, don’t tell.’ ”

Rothman is chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group.

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Robert Wagner on Lion of Hollywood, by Scott Eyman

“I’ve always been fascinated by L.B. Mayer. I had the privilege of meeting him, but I never really spent any time with him or got to know him. I read any books I can find about him, and most make him out to be a horrible man, but Scott Eyman’s The Lion of Hollywood (2005) showed him as a vulnerable human being and got to the bottom of what he was all about. Scott is just a tremendous talent, as you can see in all of his many books about our industry, including the three that we later worked on together. I’ve just read his latest, about Chaplin, which will be coming out soon, and not surprisingly, it’s amazing.”

Wagner is an actor who has been working in Hollywood since the 1940s.