And Women Too – The Real Mad Men of Advertising, a Smithsonian Film

I recently watched "The Real Mad Men of Advertising", a Smithsonian Channel documentary, produced after the conclusion of the "Mad Men" television series, which ran for seven seasons, from 2007-2015, and depicted the advertising profession in New York in the 1960s, and gave excellent insights into the trends of popular culture and the politics of the time.

The documentary is in four parts, each covering a decade, from the 1950s through the 1980s. A number of former advertising stars, including copywriter Jane Maas (1932-2018), various university professors and museum curators, and others speak about the history, trends, and famous ads of the various decades. Another leading contributor is Matthew Weiner, originator of the "Mad Men" series. Narration is by John Slattery, one of the stars of the "Mad Men" series.

The complete program runs just over 160 minutes, so it can be watched at one sitting...in fact, I would recommend it for maximum enjoyment and immersion. 

On Camera and Behind It – The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin

With its historical perspective, this novel, a fictionalized version of the friendship between silent film star Mary Pickford and the screenwriter/director Frances Marion, offers unique insights into the lives of two women of influence in the early years of the movie business, and presents portraits of some of the other screen personalities, writers, directors and studio owners, some flattering, some far less so.  

Even though the chapters alternate between Pickford and Marion, Marion is really the heart of the story, and to me, as a fellow writer, the more interesting personality. The chapters about her work in Hollywood, her experiences in World War I as a journalist who planning (and later producing) a film about the women who served in the war, and her relationship and marriage to her husband, Fred Thomson, a minister turned screen cowboy, were very compelling. Marion, who wrote over 300 screenplays and won two Oscars, is one of the subjects of the Women Film Pioneers Project at Columbia University, https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-frances-marion/. She also published a number of books, including a memoir, Off With Their Heads!: A Serio-Comic Tale of Hollywood, which was later made into a documentary film. 

Pickford was depicted as very guarded, since her success and reputation was dependent on her screen and public image. I found her difficult to like, and although she supported her mother, sister, brother, and niece financially, she appeared overly attached and childlike in her relationship to her mother. It seemed that she was never really able to leave her past behind and move forward, and was also exceptionally emotionally dependent upon her second husband, Douglas Fairbanks, who eventually divorced her. The other, and very informative, side of Pickford depicted in the book was her business and professional acumen. She was one of the founders of United Artists studios, and of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. 

I originally read this book in hardcover format, but enjoyed it even more as an audio book, read by Broadway actress Kimberley Farr, who has been the reader of many other audio book productions.

A Tragic Family on Stage – Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

For the first time, I am reading and rating books as long list candidates for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Booth was ultimately one of my three choices, and the one I enjoyed most and considered the best-written. Apparently I had inadvertently overlooked it when I made my initial selections, or perhaps it was added at a later point, but as we reached the last week of the rating period, I knew I could fit in one more, and I made a wonderful selection, because it turned out to be an outstanding work of historical fiction.

Even though it was published last year, I was given access to an advance copy of the e-book, which I  found so compelling that I could hardly put my iPad down, and was reading at every possible opportunity. I finished the 480 or so pages over three days, and was sorry when I came to the end, something I haven't experienced all that often lately.

It is the somewhat fictionalized story of the Booth family of actors which most tragically included Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, the next-to-youngest of the ten children. Booth's father was the famous Shakespearian actor Junius Brutus Booth, and John Wilkes's brothers Junius and Edwin were also actors, Edwin having the most illustrious career of them all. New York's Booth Theater on 45th Street in the current Theater District was named for Edwin. Edwin and the other members of the Booth family were Union loyalists, with John the exception. Booth's mother was Mary Ann Holmes, his father's mistress, whom he eventually married once he was divorced from his first wife, but the children were all born illegitimately.

The Booths lived in Maryland, near Bel Air, about twenty-five miles northeast of Baltimore, first in a rustic and remote cabin on a farm, then in a large house built by Junius Sr. They also had a town house in Baltimore. These locations figure importantly in the book, along with others in Philadelphia, New York, and Richmond.

The book follows the family chronologically through the births (and the many deaths) of the children, their education, entry into adulthood and beyond, until the assassination and capture of John. It particularly portrays the lives of John, Edwin, and their sisters Rosalie and Asia, who was especially close to John. The Booth family story is interspersed with brief chapters that recount Lincoln's political career, his speeches, and episodes from his presidency, leading up to his death, which provides a paralleling timeframe and account of his rise to the White House.

Much of the book is based on historical fact, with the fictional aspects being the conversations and imagined internal lives of the main characters. Anyone who has read non-fiction books such as Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, or studied even the basics of the Civil War era will recognize that the trajectory of events is quite realistic, but reading what the author Karen Joy Fowler imagines of the family interactions, motivations, and thoughts of the principal characters truly brings them to life and makes them all the more compelling. Her skill brings these historical events out of the past and into the present, with all of its current strife between today's political parties and the culture wars that are causing so much struggle now. The similarities of the gulfs between today's Democrats and Republicans are chillingly striking...

I highly recommend this title for readers interested in history, politics, and theater.