The Fifty-Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood [*SIGNED*]

New York: Simon and Schuster. Very Good+ in Fair dj. (c.1961). First Edition. Hardcover. (price-clipped) [good solid book, with just a bit of shelfwear to bottom edge; the jacket, alas, has suffered a decline and fall of its own, and is a bit of a mess -- heavily edgeworn, tape-repaired both internally and externally, some paper loss at spine extremities, etc.]. SIGNED by the author (no inscription) on the ffep. Perhaps the first major "Old-Hollywood-is-Dead" treatise, by the Hollywood correspondent for Time magazine. Described in the jacket blurb as a "verbal autopsy," the book's tone is set in the opening chapter, a pathetic portrait of D.W. Griffith in his final days. "Shocking, absorbing, explosive, venomous [sez the blurb], this is a deadly serious book, not to be confused with cinematic nostalgia or fan-magazine hokum. It is a history of the movies that almost becomes an obituary. ... One whole chapter is devoted to [D.W.] Griffith; another, by contrast, to Marilyn Monroe. Other chapters pillory Louella [Parsons], Hedda [Hopper], and the kept press, the publicity-proud, talent-shy directors, the stars. No one is spared the author's merciless, probing pen, and no one comes off well except the technicians, the little people--and some of the old-timers." .