Adrian brunel

[orpheum]

I have just finished reading "Nice Work" the autobiog of Brunel which i bought off Amazon a year or so ago.Lots of interesting stories from the Britsh film indistry of the 1920s,30s and 40s.About the making of Elstree Calling,of being paid £50 to co direct "The Lion Has Wings" and being asked by Pascal to act as a stand in for Claude Rains on Ceasar and Cleopatar when Rains had to depart for the States.Incidentally he talks about a very interesting quota quickie for Butchers called "Variety".Sounds similar to their Variety Jubilee.Anyone out there got a copy>If so please get in touch.

[theuofc]

name='orpheum']I have just finished reading "Nice Work" the autobiog of Brunel which i bought off Amazon a year or so ago.Lots of interesting stories from the Britsh film indistry of the 1920s,30s and 40s.About the making of Elstree Calling,of being paid £50 to co direct "The Lion Has Wings" and being asked by Pascal to act as a stand in for Claude Rains on Ceasar and Cleopatar when Rains had to depart for the States.Incidentally he talks about a very interesting quota quickie for Butchers called "Variety".Sounds similar to their Variety Jubilee.Anyone out there got a copy>If so please get in touch.

Thanks for this review, Orpheum. Brunel's autobio sounds quite interesting. I enjoy memoirs about the film industry back then. There is always something new in each one. I'll get it from my interlibrary loan.



Barbara

[orpheum]

I would mention that this was published in 1947 so i doubt if any library,other than the BFI,will have it.

[CaptainWaggett]

name='orpheum']I would mention that this was published in 1947 so i doubt if any library,other than the BFI,will have it.

Barbara is in the USA so her sources will be different, but checking this useful site, I find that there are copies in several London libraries (plus the British Library will have a copy. So British members wanting to borrow a copy may be in luck.

[theuofc]

name='CaptainWaggett']Barbara is in the USA so her sources will be different, but checking this useful site, I find that there are copies in several London libraries (plus the British Library will have a copy. So British members wanting to borrow a copy may be in luck.

Yes. NICE WORK appears to be a popular enough book so that it is available...I'm amazed!....through 70 libraries in the US, mostly university ones but a few public libraries including the one in financially hard-hit Detroit (which knows its reading priorities).



There are four in-state libraries I can tap; but if not, I would pay a small fee of $3.00, a little over 2.00 gbp, for an out-of-state library loan. I often wind up buying the book once I've seen it, but sometimes not. THREE CHEERS FOR LIBRARIES...and Librarians. :-)



All best,



Barbara

[orpheum]

Funny that an old book like this is still in libraries when i cannot get the library to buy books on George Raft and Peter lorre!You will find it an interesting book since he has many an intersting tale to tell ,including how he was effectively blackballed by the industry when he sued Gainsborough and Michael Balcon as they had not honoured his contract.

[Steve Crook]

name='theuofc']THREE CHEERS FOR LIBRARIES...and Librarians. :-)



All best,



Barbara

I'll second that



Steve

[theuofc]

name='orpheum']Funny that an old book like this is still in libraries when i cannot get the library to buy books on George Raft and Peter lorre!You will find it an interesting book since he has many an intersting tale to tell ,including how he was effectively blackballed by the industry when he sued Gainsborough and Michael Balcon as they had not honoured his contract.

Hello, Orpheum,



I certainly understand your frustration. This is not news to you, but I suspect that some holdings of libraries reflect any number of forces: the predilections of the head librarian or the one placing orders at the time, faculty book orders which often supplement the courses they are teaching or indicate their particular specialties at the time, and a library's current budget.



Perhaps any or all of the above were factors in the Brunel book being ordered back then while the current economic squeeze may tightly constrain a library's ordering priorities and thus put the bios on Raft or Lorre lower on the list than, let's say a film reference book that might be used for core courses in film. Or maybe not.



All best,



Barbara

[orpheum]

We have the biog of Tallulah Bankhead on the shelves.Great lady but find one in a hundred who remembers her.However Lorre and Raft are still names known to some of the general public.

[theuofc]

name='orpheum']We have the biog of Tallulah Bankhead on the shelves.Great lady but find one in a hundred who remembers her.However Lorre and Raft are still names known to some of the general public.

I hear you. Supposedly, "The Lost One" on Lorre is excellent; it's a bio I have on my long list of to-reads. When I first heard about it, I was sad to learn that Lorre was addicted to morphine. How much did that impact his career?



About the Tallulah Bankhead book: it's hard to know the whys behind that choice. It may even have been ordered to flesh out a women's-history niche in the library's holdings. Who knows. As an aside, Bankhead was a rather interesting character who set about to have a wild life and was pretty successful at it.



All best,



Barbara

[CaptainWaggett]

name='theuofc']I hear you. Supposedly, "The Lost One" on Lorre is excellent; it's a bio I have on my long list of to-reads. When I first heard about it, I was sad to learn that Lorre was addicted to morphine. How much did that impact his career?

It is very good. John Gielgud mentions the morphine addiction in his autobiography - it was clearly an issue when they were making Secret Agent.



It's fairly unlikely that a British library will buy an American publication (which the Lorre biog is) unless it's requested by a reader regardless of the subject matter for all sorts or tedious of logistical reasons relating to library suppliers.

[theuofc]

name='CaptainWaggett']



....It's fairly unlikely that a British library will buy an American publication (which the Lorre biog is) unless it's requested by a reader regardless of the subject matter for all sorts or tedious of logistical reasons relating to library suppliers.

Ah, ha. Very enlightening! Thanks for that perspective and also for the Gielgud comment about Lorre.



All best,



Barbara

[will.15]

name='orpheum']We have the biog of Tallulah Bankhead on the shelves.Great lady but find one in a hundred who remembers her.However Lorre and Raft are still names known to some of the general public.

I knew who Bankhead was before I actually saw her because she was frequently caricatured in old cartoons with a cigarette holder in her mouth, muttering, "Dahling." She was a larger than life character.

[orpheum]

I asked for 4 biogs from the library,and ending up buying all of them off the internet,bar one on William Powell which was very expensive.So now if it is a British biog,eg Margaret Rutherford i ask the library to get it,with special exceptions such as Wll Hay.If it is an American book i buy it for the cheapest price off the internet.

Peter lorre was a very sad case of morphine addiction.Look at his ghastly bloated appearance in some of his last films.

Going back to the libraries a minute i am currently reading "Charlies Girl" about Virginia Cherrill who starred in " City Lights" and also a couple of quota quickies.It is published in the UK.I doubt that many people remember her.It was purchased in May by the library and i am the third borrower.I cant help but wonder why they bothered to buy it.After all she is hardly more than a footnote in cinematic history.I have gotten to just over halfway and am now just leafing through the extremely boring recollection of her personal life with the Earl Of Jersey.Who knows and who cares!

[CaptainWaggett]

name='orpheum']

Going back to the libraries a minute i am currently reading "Charlies Girl" about Virginia Cherrill who starred in " City Lights" and also a couple of quota quickies.It is published in the UK.I doubt that many people remember her.It was purchased in May by the library and i am the third borrower.I cant help but wonder why they bothered to buy it.After all she is hardly more than a footnote in cinematic history.I have gotten to just over halfway and am now just leafing through the extremely boring recollection of her personal life with the Earl Of Jersey.Who knows and who cares!

Presumably someone requested it. It's as cheap to buy as book as to do an inter-library loan (and you don't have the hassle of packing it up and sending it back). Most libraries will buy a reasonably priced book rather than borrow it from the British Library (though grudgingly in some cases...)



Of course, some libraries are better funded than others which helps. An inter-library loans department is very expensive to run relative to the amount of issues it generates (which is what libraries are judged by)