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Rating: 
Summary: Long on gossip, short on facts
Review: Being a huge fan of classic Hollywood, I snapped this book up and devoured it quickly, thoroughly enjoying all the juicy bits and behind the scene information. Once I got over the initial excitement of so much gossip all at once, I took a closer look, and found that in many, many instances, Higham gets the most basic information completely wrong. Information that is laughably easy to verify. For example:1. Norma Shearer and Irving Thalberg's daughter is named Katherine, not Barbara. She was born in 1935, not 1936.
2. Ted Healy died from injuries suffered in a bar brawl, kidney failure, and alcoholism, not from a heart attack brought on by Mayer. He was 41, not 45, when he died.
3. Jean Harlow never had an affair with her stepfather, Marino Bello; in fact, she hated him. And she didn't encourage her friends and colleagues to invest in his "gold mines," either.
4. John Gilbert didn't die of a heart attack. He was given a sedative by his nurse, had an adverse reaction, and choked to death while unattended. And so on... In addition, Higham is very partial to some stars and absolutely hates others; these attitudes come across in Mayer's biography so strongly that they are often distracting from the story itself. Garbo is a monster of selfishness. Crawford is a bed-hopping tramp. Shearer is a terrible snob. Some of which may be true, but I'm sure these people had their good sides, too, but you won't find such balance here. At first glance, there is quite a bit of fascinating, never-before-known "information" in this book. After realizing how little the author checks his facts, though, I have to wonder if any of these incredible tales are true, or even close to true.
Rating: 
Summary: rich in detail
Review: In his prologue, Higham tells us that much of the information he discloses has been drawn from hitherto sealed government files. Its more believable that he had long conversations with Howard Strickling, since Strickling was head of MGM's publicity department during the reign of Louis B Mayer, and the one responsible for the covering up of the secret lives of the stars. I guess the fun about gossip is in the discovery of the sordid details. Perhaps it's then only fair that I drop some of the names mentioned and let you discover the particulars. There's actually not a lot that was previously unknown to me. There's the death of Jean Harlow's husband Paul Bern, and then later the death of Harlow herself. The day of the lamentable shortage of knockworst in the commissary when no jockstraps could be worn under tights. The not too surprising inclination of Garbo's mentor Mauritz Stiller. Garbo's repeated no-shows for marriage to John Gilbert, and Mayer's dislike of Gilbert stemming from behaviour long before Garbo came into the scene. Why Garbo never bore a child. The fate of the footage of extras being drowned in Ben-Hur. The men killed by both Clark Gable and John Huston. Lee Tracy's forced retirement. How George Cukor nearly lost the job of directing Camille, as well. The supplier of drugs to Judy Garland. And Leni Riefenstahl's attempts to join MGM. The scandals seem to dissipate once we hit World War 2, or is that Higham's focus is more on Mayer's infidelities, and eventually his clashes with Nicholas Schenck and Dore Schary? Higham also presents a filmic history of the studio and it's output. I wish he'd only given us more dirt, because I get the impression that these scandals are just the tip of the iceberg.
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