Cut!: Hollywood Murders, Accidents, and Other Tragedies

See Larger Image	Manufacturer: Barron''s Educational Series Written By: Denise Imwold,Andrew Brettell,Heather von Rohr,Warren Hsu Leonard Average Customer Rating:


Binding: Hardcover Dewey Decimal Number: 791 EAN: 9780764158582 ISBN: 0764158589 Label: Barron''s Educational Series Manufacturer: Barron''s Educational Series Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 368 Publication Date: 2005-11-01 Publisher: Barron''s Educational Series Studio: Barron''s Educational Series
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Editorial Reviews: Rebel Without a Cause was one of the most talked-about movies of the 1950s. It might also have been the most jinxed. Among its stars, James Dean was soon killed in a car crash, Sal Mineo died several years later, murdered by an unknown assailant, and the beautiful Natalie Wood died mysteriously when she fell from a docked pleasure boat and drowned. This heavily illustrated book recounts these and many other tragic events that have haunted the Hollywood movie community from its early-twentieth-century beginnings to the present day. Here are accounts of the sudden, premature deaths of stars like Rudolph Valentino, Montgomery Clift, and Peter Sellers. Here too are stories about celebrities who died young because of alcohol or drug-related problems—John Belushi and Elvis Presley among many others—and of the tragic 1998 murder of comedian Phil Hartman. Car wrecks, plane crashes, and other deadly accidents sent Jayne Mansfield, Grace Kelly, and Carole Lombard, to untimely deaths, and accidents occurring during film production have taken several lives, perhaps the most dramatic being the helicopter crash that killed Vic Morrow in 1983. The tragic stories of many Hollywood personalities are told in Cut!, the definitive volume on the fleeting lives of movie celebrities, some of whom became more famous in death than they had been in life. Hundreds of photos, many in color.
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: "Cut" makes the cut........ Comment: I bought the book "Cut", not really sure what I was expecting, but looking forward to reading it. I was pleasantly surprised at what I received. There are many, many pages of interesting information and pictures about "stars" and "celebrities" whom I had long forgotten about or had never known existed, and this made it all the more interesting. As well, there was lots of information about well known celebrities and the "how", "where", "when", and sometimes "why" of the event. This book helped me so much in gaining an understanding of the personalities and situations which occurred at the time of the person's demise by writing in an easy, understandable vernacular. This is a book I will refer to time and again, and I highly recommend it. It was a lot bigger than I thought it would be and hardback, very well done, and very reasonable economically. Enjoy!!! Doodlereader19 Customer Rating: Summary: Morbid Reference Book at Bargain Price Comment: I found this heavy, handsome volume on the bargain table at the bookstore and decided it would make an interesting reference book for my Hollywood/Movie-themed library. Obviously trying to cash in as a high-brow version of the popular "Hollywood Babylon" sensation, this is an admirable collection of abridged biographies of many Tinseltown notables and their (often untimely and/or tragic) demises. There is even a handy guide to gravesites for tourists compelled to visit the final resting places of the scores of celebrities covered in the book. My only gripe is that better editing should have been employed, particularly in the photo captions. There are some major mistakes that will be obvious to even the less-than-diehard movie buffs, which makes me suspect that there may be even more glaring errors in stories presented as fact. Maybe that's why/how it ended up on the bargain table. It might be interesting, but I wouldn't recommend it as perfectly accurate. Customer Rating: Summary: Informative but not the best Comment: This is a huge book with lots of information. Unfortunately if you are looking at more details into the stars' death then this is sort of a dissapointment. It focuses more on the life story of each star instead of their death. But don't get me wrong it is a good book. If you want more morbid details of their deaths etc then Hollywood Babylon is a better choice. Customer Rating: Summary: Comprehensive and fun read Comment: I discovered this book at a book store chain but found - of course - a much better price here on Amazon. This book is loaded with succinct but thorough write-ups of every Hollywood celebrity you can imagine who met an untimely death. Macabre but fascinating, it is also loaded to the hilt with photos. Customer Rating: Summary: Overall worthwhile, but with glaring omissions Comment: Cut! is a densely illustrated compendium of Hollywood's luminaries whose lives have been touched by tragedy, either in their career or in real life. The subtitle indicates "Hollywood murders, accidents, and other tragedies." The expected appear (Sharon Tate, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, William Desmond Taylor, Thelma Todd, Irving Thalberg) but there are a number of obvious stories missing. There is no Peg Entwhistle, the actress who in 1932 famously flung herself to her death from the "H" in the Hollywoodland sign. No Bob Crane, bludgeoned to death in his bed in Phoenix, Arizona, by persons unknown. No Paul Bern, shot to death in Jean Harlow's closet, perhaps by himself, perhaps by an abandoned ex-lover. As someone else pointed out, Olive Thomas, dead from ingesting bichloride of mercury in Paris, is missing; she exists only as a sentence in a page on husband Jack Pickford. Louise Brooks, whose exit from Tinseltown was of her own volition, and who died at a relatively advanced age in Rochester, NY, probably should have been included, rather than some of the little-known players who make an appearance (Ormer Locklear, for example, who died in an airplane stunt in 1920). Jon-Erik Hexum, who accidentally shot himself on the set of his TV series in the 1980s, is missing, arguably more remembered than Gloria Dickson or Dorothy Dell. More than half the book is made up of people who died relatively young of diseases after having a Hollywood career (Lee Remick, John Garfield, Montgomery Clift), not what I would term a typical Hollywood tragedy conjured up by the title. There is a wealth of information on most celebrities, with very little I saw in the way of errors. One mistake appears twice: in two photo captions from the movie "Poltergeist," the boy in the movie (Oliver Robbins) is miscredited as Heather O'Rourke. Vic Morrow's accidental death along with two children by helicopter blade is relegated to a back section on movie-set tragedies. I am also uncertain as to why Linda Darnell, a B-movie actress, and Richard Farnsworth, a stuntman who came to acting late in life, rate two pages, while more major stars and award-winners like Betty Grable, Judy Holliday, Frank Morgan, Dick Powell, are summed up in one page. Perhaps it is due to the amount of "tragedy" in the subject's life: poor asylum inmate Frances Farmer gets two pages as well. Also included are quite a number of obscurities, which may be is due to the book's main compilers being film professors and librarians. Who remembers Lya De Putti? Gilda Gray? Rita Johnson? Charles Ray? Mitzi Green? The average film fan has no idea who these long-lost people are, and the extent of their contribution to filmland seems slight. The print is also exceedingly small, probably in an effort to keep the book from being encyclopedia-sized. Although, I could just be aging... However, all that being said, it's still a nice reference book for people who love film and celebrities, keeping in mind some of it's more obvious exclusions. More Reviews