A book on Norman Taurog? Well, when you think about it, why not? There was a period there when he seemed to have directed every second film that screened on Saturday afternoon TV - MGM musicals, Martin and Lewis, Elvis flicks, AIP comedies - in part because he specialised in easy-to-watch fare: colourful comedies with musical numbers. His career went back even further than that: he won an Oscar in 1931 for Skippy, and he made his name directing comic silents.
Taurog started out as a child actor, went into props, and in the wild and woolly days of early silent cinema found himself a director, working with some dude called Larry Sermon. He worked his way up to longer movies and from then on was never out of work: a man who worked hard, wore his authority easily, and thrived in the studio system; who was particularly good with comics and children.
Taurog was a fatty, which no doubt contributed to the diabetes which led to him losing sight in one eye for the latter part of his career; eventually the other eye went to, and he became completely blind - this was the only thing that stopped him making movies. (I imagine he would have kept going into the 70s otherwise, maybe for TV.)
His personal life wasn't without incident: he had a messy divorce, remarried one of Louis B. Mayer's secretaries, who was a big noise in the Republican Party, and who encouraged Taurog's own political involvement: he was part of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals or whatever it was caused, the right wing group at the time of McCarthyism. He was the uncle by marriage to Jackie Cooper, who accused him of being abusive on set (though Hoey casts doubt on this, in a convincing way, pointing out Taurog often helped him later in life).
This book benefits considerably from the fact that Hoey knew Taurog well - he produced Palm Springs Weekend, which Taurog directed, then went to work for him as an assistant on several of his Elvis movies. So there's lots of little personal touches and insights, such as giving a full account of the death on the set of Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, the antics of the Elvis mafia on his movies, the fact Taurog liked Elvis but grew to loathe Jerry Lewis. Hoey has done his research too on other movies although at times I felt he got sidetracked giving mini-bios of other people Taurog worked with.
But it's a very easy read, which consistently surprised me (Taurog was pall bearer for Virginia Rappe, of Fatty Arbuckle fame, the sheer cheapness of Colonel Tom Parker) and I liked this a lot.
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