This isn't one of the famous director memoirs - at least, not that I'm aware - and it sat on my bookshelf for a long time unread, but it was good. Very self effacing for a work from a director - it doesn't talk about his life and times and career so much as encounters with crazy characters. They are certainly memorable: Howard Hughes at RKO making him shoot additional footage for His Kind of Woman; dealing with Orson Welles on Compulsion; Kirk Douglas on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Vikings; Rex Harrison on Dr Doolittle (making them hire Sidney Poitier, then quitting, then being replaced by Christopher Plummer and coming back again); Charles Bronson on Mr Majestyk; Daryl F Zanuck in thrall to Juliete Greco; ducking work with John Wayne on North to Alaska; Laurence Oliver on The Jazz Singer.
There's more affectionate reminiscences: working with the team of Stanley Kramer and Carl Foreman; the hard-living polio-afflicted screenwriter Earl Felton (who I'd never heard of before); Gilbert Roland on Bandido; his early mentor, RKO hard man Sig Rogell.
It's all great fun. I wished that there were more on other films Fleischer made - there's nothing on Che! or See No Evil or Amityville 3-D or lots of other movies. But what's here is good.
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