Who the Hell's in It: Conversations With Hollywood's Legendary Actors

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Who the Hell's in It: Conversations With Hollywood's Legendary Actors

4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 · rating details · 91 ratings · 11 reviews

Peter Bogdanovich, known primarily as a director, film historian and critic, has been working with professional actors all his life. He started out as an actor (he debuted on the stage in his sixth-grade production of Finian’s Rainbow); he watched actors work (he went to the theater every week from the age of thirteen and saw every important show on, or off, Broadway for t...more Peter Bogdanovich, known primarily as a director, film historian and critic, has been working with professional actors all his life. He started out as an actor (he debuted on the stage in his sixth-grade production of Finian’s Rainbow); he watched actors work (he went to the theater every week from the age of thirteen and saw every important show on, or off, Broadway for the next decade); he studied acting, starting at sixteen, with Stella Adler (his work with her became the foundation for all he would ever do as an actor and a director).

Now, in his new book, Who the Hell’s in It, Bogdanovich draws upon a lifetime of experience, observation and understanding of the art to write about the actors he came to know along the way; actors he admired from afar; actors he worked with, directed, befriended. Among them: Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, John Cassavetes, Charlie Chaplin, Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, Ben Gazzara, Audrey Hepburn, Boris Karloff, Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, Frank Sinatra, and James Stewart.
Bogdanovich captures—in their words and his—their work, their individual styles, what made them who they were, what gave them their appeal and why they’ve continued to be America’s iconic actors.

On Lillian Gish: “the first virgin hearth goddess of the screen . . . a valiant and courageous symbol of fortitude and love through all distress.”

On Marlon Brando: “He challenged himself never to be the same from picture to picture, refusing to become the kind of film star the studio system had invented and thrived upon—the recognizable human commodity each new film was built around . . . The funny thing is that Brando’s charismatic screen persona was vividly apparent despite the multiplicity of his guises . . . Brando always remains recognizable, a star-actor in spite of himself. ”

Jerry Lewis to Bogdanovich on the first laugh Lewis ever got onstage: “I was five years old. My mom and dad had a tux made—I worked in the borscht circuit with them—and I came out and I sang, ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ the big hit at the time . . . It was 1931, and I stopped the show—naturally—a five-year-old in a tuxedo is not going to stop the show? And I took a bow and my foot slipped and hit one of the floodlights and it exploded and the smoke and the sound scared me so I started to cry. The audience laughed—they were hysterical . . . So I knew I had to get the rest of my laughs the rest of my life, breaking, sitting, falling, spinning.”

John Wayne to Bogdanovich, on the early years of Wayne’s career when he was working as a prop man: “Well, I’ve naturally studied John Ford professionally as well as loving the man. Ever since the first time I walked down his set as a goose-herder in 1927. They needed somebody from the prop department to keep the geese from getting under a fake hill they had for Mother Machree at Fox. I’d been hired because Tom Mix wanted a box seat for the USC football games, and so they promised jobs to Don Williams and myself and a couple of the players. They buried us over in the properties department, and Mr. Ford’s need for a goose-herder just seemed to fit my pistol.”
These twenty-six portraits and conversations are unsurpassed in their evocation of a certain kind of great movie star that has vanished. Bogdanovich’s book is a celebration and a farewell.

From the Hardcover edition.(less)

Paperback, 544 pages

Published October 25th 2005 by Ballantine Books (first published January 1st 2004)

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Feb 24, 2009 Edward Waverley rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has the potential to be revisited occasionally for a long time, it's that sort of book, and I have that sort of a schedule currently. So watch for this.

The career trajectory of Bogdanovich is one of the strangest in Hollywood history. He's now had his fingerprints on or around some aspect of moviemaking, fairly continuously, for over 40 years. What's amazing about that is that every time it looks as if he has been thoroughly disqualified from further participation, some eerie combina...more This review has the potential to be revisited occasionally for a long time, it's that sort of book, and I have that sort of a schedule currently. So watch for this.

The career trajectory of Bogdanovich is one of the strangest in Hollywood history. He's now had his fingerprints on or around some aspect of moviemaking, fairly continuously, for over 40 years. What's amazing about that is that every time it looks as if he has been thoroughly disqualified from further participation, some eerie combination of luck and will and obsequy coalesce to wash him right back up where he last left the scene. Overcoming several blacklists, including those of bankruptcy (both moral and financial), PB is unsinkable. No amount of shameful self-promotion, nor any number of unthinkably bad films, can keep him permanently out of the business. He's a very persistent penny in this way, but when you look back over the long and varied CV, you can't help noticing how few are the highlights, and how deep are the troughs. For every "Last Picture Show" (terrific!) there are three or four Saint Jacks, and I really do mean three or four.

But, Greg, don't you like PB at all? Didn't you give him four stars here? Indeed, and as usual, what I like most about PB is his plethora of contradictions. The man is not a good director and has about ten turkeys to his name, yet we cannot deny that he did make that one really good movie, The Last Picture Show. His prose is frequently journalistic bordering on sycophancy, and yet one must confess that he has occasional passages of such honesty as to bind the heart. Nor can he act even middlingly well, and yet there are parts of this long homage to the art of acting that establish him as an eminently capable critic of that field. And what of his amusing tones of historical and mythological gravity as he goes about the business of the book? (There are perpetual allusions throughout to the theories of Robert Graves..oh dear me.) Even here, even at his most heavy-handed, Peet-ah (that's what Cary Grant called him) some times brings it all off. Who is this guy?

There is no one at all in Hollywood who is quite like him. (less)

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Jun 22, 2009 Stop added it

Read the STOP SMILING interview excerpt with writer and director Peter Bogdanovich

A HITCHCOCKO-HAWKSIAN'S GUIDE TO HOLLYWOOD
By James Hughes

(This interview originally appeared in STOP SMILING The Auteur Issue)

Before directing films like Targets (1968), The Last Picture Show (1971) and Paper Moon (1973), New York native Peter Bogdanovich was a journalist, interviewing Hollywood legends throughout the Sixties and Seventies for publications like Esquire, under editor Harold Hayes. (Several interview...more Read the STOP SMILING interview excerpt with writer and director Peter Bogdanovich

A HITCHCOCKO-HAWKSIAN'S GUIDE TO HOLLYWOOD
By James Hughes

(This interview originally appeared in STOP SMILING The Auteur Issue)

Before directing films like Targets (1968), The Last Picture Show (1971) and Paper Moon (1973), New York native Peter Bogdanovich was a journalist, interviewing Hollywood legends throughout the Sixties and Seventies for publications like Esquire, under editor Harold Hayes. (Several interviews are compiled in two books: Who the Devil Made It and Who the Hell's In It.) Here, Bogdanovich discusses his appreciation of director Howard Hawks, and the influence of Hawks's films on the auteur theory.

Stop Smiling: In the Sixties, when you were documenting the thoughts and opinions of the golden-age directors, how did you observe their take on American cinema at the time, when younger, more inexperienced directors were suddenly empowered by the auteur theory?

Peter Bogdanovich: I don't think they liked the way it was going. Anyone from the golden age of Hollywood wouldn't have liked the way it ended up, because it was fragmented and thrown apart and drifted into dirty movies.

SS: Would the auteur theory rankle them?

PB: No, a lot of them liked that, because they were included in it. People like John Ford, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock and George Cukor. Orson Welles didn't think too much of what was happening. He felt that the films people were making were imitations of films they liked when they were young, which was true and not true. When you're in the middle of an epic change, it's hard to tell that you're in it. Filmmakers of my era didn't sit around and say, “Well, we're the new Hollywood.” Nobody really thought of that, it just sort of happened. I had my feet firmly planted in both eras. I was talking to the older guys, and making my own films, and continued to talk to the old guys and watch the old films. I kept that going for a while. I'm still involved.

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

As they did with his 1997 compendium on film directors, Who the Devil Made It, critics embraced Bogdanovich's Who the Hell's in It, his paean to legendary Hollywood actors, most of whom are now dead. Reviewers applaud the detail and care with which Bogdanovich paints his subjects__Audrey Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich, among them__and the professional insight he brings to this collection. "Inside the bon vivant and raconteur that is today's Bogdanovich," writes the Washington Post, "is an honest-t

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Dec 07, 2009 Josh rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

You get the best and worst of Bogdanovich in this book: the ascot-wearing, bejeweled namedropper who can't get through a paragraph without mentioning Orson Welles and the enthusiastic, knowledgeable movie fan who soaked up a lot of interesting stories from a lot of great actors and filmmakers who are no longer with us. Bogdanovich is afraid of painting anyone in a negative light and his sycophantic hyperbole can be a chore to slog through. His Hollywood-centric viewpoint causes him to make some...more

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Feb 19, 2010 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Bogdanovich has a talent for capturing what exactly draws us to certain actors and actresses and why we should give some a more thorough inspecting and others our absolute respect. As he's worn the director, writer and actor hats throughout his career, he is certainly an expert and we should value his opinion. I only wish he thought to honor the same amount of actresses as actors in this particular book. Afer all, he has worked with some illustrious talents like Madeline Kahn and Barbra Streisan...more

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Oct 04, 2012 Brent Wilson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, pop-culture

I found this through some Wall Street Journal article-

Talking about best movie books.

People like Bogdanovich amaze me - how they remember details of their lives and conversations, and are able to bring such color and life to descriptions. They have to be faithful to the real encounter because they're so rich and interesting and truthful in spirit. My memory performs nowhere near like that!

Chapters on Bogey and Cary Grant were especially memorable.

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Oct 26, 2009 Carol Littlejohn rated it 4 of 5 stars

I like celebrity bio's and evaluations, especially those of another era. Peter Bogdanovich always gives insightful views of many "stars" of the golden era: John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, to name just a few. Most of these celebrities he has met or interviewed and that gives a more intimate touch. For a quick read or quick scan of your favorite celebrity, I recommend this book.

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Oct 09, 2009 Caitlin added it · review of another edition

Who the Hell's in It: Portraits and Conversations by Peter Bogdanovich (2004)

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Feb 03, 2008 John rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-pop-culture-criticism

Bogdanovich's enthuasiasm for his subjects and eloquent writing make this a great read for any classic film fan.

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May 23, 2009 Gary Shapiro rated it 5 of 5 stars

Hear my interview with the author
http://web.mac.com/garyshapiro

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Aug 15, 2008 Ian added it

Worth it.

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Mar 31, 2013 Thomas rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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About Peter Bogdanovich

Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors (which included William Friedkin, Brian DePalma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Michael Cimino and Francis Ford Coppola, among others), and was particularly relevant during the 1970s with his film The Last Picture Show.

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Books by Peter Bogdanovich

Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Legendary Film Directors

The Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten, 1960-1980

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