My Amazon Review of Ronald Brownstein's "Rock Me on the Water:......."

 

Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Movies and too Much Politics

 

Atlantic magazine editor and political writer Ronald Brownstein has written an ode to the creativity surrounding Los Angeles in 1974. Of a sudden Los Angeles was awash in musical, television and motion picture talent with something to say. He highlights Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty for their roles in “Chinatown” and “Shampoo”, respectively. Both movies were written by Robert Towne. With respect to “Chinatown,” Brownstein, in essence, summarizes Sam Wasson’s “The Long Goodbye.” ( See:  Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Sam Wasson's "The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood") Just like Wasson Brownstein views the end of Los Angles’ creative moment with the arrival of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” the following year. He forgets that most people go to the movies to be entertained.

 

With respect to the music, he highlights the careers of singer songwriters Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne along with Joni Mitchell, the Eagles, Crosby, Stills and Nash and the music impresario David Geffen. The way he writes about Ronstadt it seems that he had quite the teenage crush on her. Brownstein was sixteen at the time and likely was not alone.

 

Among the musicians and the actors Brownstein writes of excessive drug use and bed swapping among his leading characters. At times you needed a scorecard to see who was sleeping with who and as the year progressed cocaine use grew to the extent that it eroded their creativity in the years to come.

 

On television Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin made social commentary and had big hit with “All in the Family.” Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor, became a caricature of Nixon’s silent majority. But what Brownstein does not understand a good part of the audience was laughing with Archie, not at him. As an aside, I sat next to O’Connor at a wedding and he was far funnier than he was on television. It was also the time of “Maude,” “Mash” and “Mary Tyler Moore.” Brownstein revels in idea that previously untouchable subjects were brought up on television.

 

Where Brownstein goes astray is when he writes about politics of the era. He spends way too much time on Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. I knew both of them. By 1974 the antiwar movement was a spent force. The real activism on the Left was taking place in the nascent environmental movement which was planting the seeds for today’s housing crisis in California, feminism, and gay rights.                        

On the Right activism was on the rise in opposition to feminism, school busing and rising property taxes. Those movements would flower later in the decade and bring on the Reagan revolution. In 1974 Jerry Brown was not the future, Ronald Reagan was, and I say this as someone who knew Brown then and served on his Housing Task Force. Jerry Brown was a far better governor 40 years later in his second go around.

 

Most troubling and not mentioned by Brownstein was that while all of the actors and musicians were partying on, Los Angeles was beset by gas lines, a recession, and the collapse of its manufacturing base. For most people 1974 was a very bad year and what they longed for was escape. It took a while, but Hollywood finally figured it out, just as it did during the Great Depression.

 

I was on the periphery of the events discussed in the book. To me the book stated out very strong then faded. Brownstein preaches too much and he forgets that entertainment is a business, and that business will not succeed if it beats people over the head by telling them how bad all of the social problems of the country are. As Brownstein notes George Lucas of “Star Wars” fame wanted people to feel better after they left the theater than when they first arrived. I go to the movies and listen to music to be entertained. If I want to look at the flaws in American life, I watch the news and read The Atlantic, of which I am a subscriber.

For the full Amazon URL see: Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll and too Much Politics (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Michael Shnayerson's : Bugsy: The Dark Side of the American Dream"

 

The Rise and Fall of Bugsy Siegel

 

Michael Shnayerson tells the story of how a Jewish eastside kid under the tutelage of legendary mobster Arnold Rothstein rose to be among the top bootleggers in the 1920’s. By 1930 Bugsy Siegel along with Lucky Luciano and his boyhood friend Meyer Lansky became the triumvirate of organized crime. Siegel was instrumental in the formation of Murder Inc. and along the way he paid for his brother’s medical school training. Siegel was hands on in murder, rapes and robberies, a true gangster.

 

He moved from New York City to Los Angeles and with the aid former gangster and now actor George Raft, Siegel become the toast of Hollywood. His Hollywood good looks certainly didn’t hurt. Just as Hollywood found fascination with the radical left in the 1960’s, in the 1930’s Hollywood was enamored with the gangster in their midst. Remember that Warren Beatty played him in the movie, “Bugsy.” Meantime his wife and two daughters were living in the toney Scarsdale suburb of New York City.

 

Shnayerson offers up his belief as to why the Jewish gangsters were far more sensitive to the rise of Nazism in Germany than the Jewish community as a whole. His explanation is that the gangsters knew how violent people can be.

 

Although Siegel get all of the credit for the creation of postwar Las Vegas, much of the credit goes to his partner Billy Wilkerson, publisher of the Hollywood Reporter and nightclub impresario. Siegel took over Wilkerson’s Flamingo project, which was to become the first modern Las Vegas hotel/casino. However, the problem was that Siegel was a horrible construction boss and the project suffered from huge cost over runs that were funded by the Mob. When the Mob suspects Siegel and his girlfriend Virginia Hill from skimming their money, at a Havana meeting in 1946 Luciano and Lansky order up a hit on their one-time buddy.

 

The hit was accomplished in June 1947, a crime that was never solved. Shnayerson offers up his theory as to who actually did it.  This is a fast-paced book well worth the read. I only wish he spent more time on Mickey Cohen, Siegel’s longtime Los Angeles accomplice.

For the full Amazon URL see: The Rise and Fall of Bugsy Siegel (amazon.com)