Memoir of life at Warners in the late 30s and early 40s from Jerome, the son of a songwriter who worked as a delivery boy (and became a writer after the war, though one with mainly television credits). It’s an interesting angle and works well enough, offering a fresh perspective on a familiar period. There are some great tidbits of gossip which sound too odd not to be true: Dick Powell didn’t have a sphincter and required laxatives and constipatives all the time, Claude Rains had hideous body odour, Kay Francis was humiliated by the studio in an attempt to break her contract, James Hilton struggled with screenwriting but was very polite about it, etc.
However, at times it feels as though there’s not enough here to pad out a whole book and you wish maybe Jerome had thrown in a chapter of his later reminisces (he worked – uncredited – on Errol Flynn’s Montana and wrote early episodes of Highway Patrol). Also he goes on a bit too much about how he was a slacker – after a while it just gets irritating.
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