Most of the February issues of the major monthly magazines look like pamphlets this year, so it will be interesting to see if Vanity Fair’s forthcoming March Hollywood issue is its usual telephone-book size.
The annual Oscar tie-in issue is generally second only to Vogue’s mammoth September Fall Fashion issue in terms of ad pages, but the horrendous 2009 advertising market might take a bite out of the Conde Nast special.
In the meantime, VF editor Graydon Carter has overseen the publication of a terrific new book, “Vanity Fair’s Tales of Hollywood: Rebels, Reds, and Graduates and the Wild Stories Behind the Making of 13 Iconic Films” (Penguin).
The Hollywood issue of VF always features a look back of the making of a classic or cult film; these fat and fascinating pieces of reporting have been some of the best movie stories ever published by the magazine.
What’s fun about these pieces — and the book that gathers them together — is the scope of movies VF has deemed interesting enough for in-depth coverage.
Of course, there are accounts of the making of genuine classics such as “All About Eve” (1950) and “The Graduate” (1967) but the book also includes dishy stories on the making of oddball cult classics, like the 1959 working-girls-in-Manhattan epic “The Best of Everything” (above) and the legendary 1970 bomb, “Myra Breckinridge.”
The piece by Peter Biskind on the long and turbulent production of “Reds” (1981) alone is worth the price of admission and bodes well for the Warren Beatty biography the writer has been working on for several years.
One of my favorite films, “Sweet Smell of Success” (1957), is analyzed in the depth it deserves and there is a highly amusing David Kamp account of the making of “Cleopatra” (1963), including the wild off-screen antics of stars-turned-adulterous lovers Richard Burton and Liz Taylor.
