Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1530856
B O O K R E V I E W SOPHISTICATED LADY: "I can't talk about Hollywood," Parker said. "It was a horror to me." P H OT O : P H OT O F E S T 48 C I N E M O N T A G E By Betsy A. McLane A disconcerting sense of melan- cholic nostalgia ties together two very different new books. The au- thors write about Hollywood's past, and despite moments of fun, both books recall worlds of moviemaking now long lost. "Dorothy Parker in Hollywood" by Gail Crowther and "Hollywood Behind the Lens: Treasures from the Bison Archives" by Marc SUCH A NASTY WOMAN HOW DOROTHY PARKER RULED – AND RUED – HOLLYWOOD Wanamaker and Steven Bingen contain classic Hollywood stories of rousing success followed by fading glamour. Crowther's is a skillfully researched biographical narrative with only one photograph, on the cover. Wanamaker/Bingen's is similarly fact-filled, but consists almost entirely of photographs. It is one of Wanamaker's series of more than 20 remarkable Southern California picture books. While neither is a seamy expose, nor a work of great tragedy, their subjects -- portraits of bygone days -- seem similarly, and sadly, quaint. The aura of wistfulness on their pages goes deeper than simply the word "Hollywood" in their titles. For those who care about Hollywood history, both Marc Wanamaker and Dorothy Parker are names with resonance. While