Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Near Fine in Very Good dj. (c.1941). First Edition. Hardcover. (price-clipped) [good solid copy, minor shelfwear, attractive vintage custom bookplate of one-time owner William Bond Murphy on front pastedown; jacket spine a little faded, with some paper loss at both ends, but the front- and rear-panel sections of the wraparound jacket illustration are fully intact and very attractive]. Based on "over three years of research, observation and work in Hollywood [by] the author and a staff of social scientists which included two sociologists, an economist, a personnel expert, a statistician, a translator, and others," this was the first serious attempt to conduct an examination of Hollywood as a social system rather than an industry. The research was supported by grants from both the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations (and how many books could make that claim?), and had an advisory board that included Robert S. Lynd (of "Middletown" fame), Harold D. Lasswell (one of the most influential political scientists of his time), and Louis Wirth (a leading figure in the Chicago School of sociology). The first section (on "the Movie Colony") analyzes such topics as sex, politics, nightlife, and superstitions, while the "Movie Makers" section focuses on the subcultures of producers, directors, writers, and actors. There are numerous appendices on topics ranging from the statistically sober ("Annual Earnings, Weekly Salaries, and Spending Patterns") to the somewhat offbeat ("Dogs, Yachts, Resorts" and "Fan Mail"). The book is engagingly written by Rosten (this was his first book to appear under his own name, and he would go on to a successful career as a novelist, screenwriter and humorist), but its publishers unfortunately took the enterprise a little too seriously in one particular way, that being their inclusion of a subjects-only index -- so even though there's a wealth of anecdotal information about numerous Hollywood denizens contained in the book, without a name index there's no easy way of getting at the various tidbits about, say, Mr. and Mrs. Basil Rathbone's parties or Hugh Herbert's parlor trick involving inserting a half-dollar into a pop bottle. Cited in "100 Books on Hollywood & the Movies," and very scarce in the lovely jacket, which incorporates a reproduction of Thomas Hart Benton's 1937-38 mural "Hollywood." .