The Columbia Story
The resurgent popularity of independent filmmakers in recent  years makes it easy to forget the colossal movie-making empire  created by the original Hollywood mega-studios, of which  Columbia Pictures and Universal Studios are prime examples.  Hirschhorn (formerly film and theater critic for the London  Sunday Express), who pioneered the glossy, lavish studio history  with his groundbreaking The Warner Bros. Story (LJ 3/1/80), here  offers revisions of two works published in the 1980s,  maintaining their exceptional quality. The logistical dilemma of  how to cram into a volume of manageable size photos and  critiques for every film produced by a studio since the silent  movie era (over 3000 for Universal) is cleverly overcome by the  judicious use of tiny arrows to match text with illustrations,  omitting captions as well as cast and production credits.  Hirschhorn's virtuoso command of cinema history and the motion  picture industry is demonstrated throughout, a typical example  being his critique of His Girl Friday, in which he relates the  film to the original Broadway play, identifies the overlapping  dialog technique as having been borrowed from an earlier Frank  Capra film, and provides an articulate and entertaining critique  of the plot. Not only are there a multitude of black-and-white  photo stills, but they are especially well selected and capture  the films' mood and impact. In addition to the main,  year-by-year section featuring the films, there are excellent  narrative histories of each studio. Highly recommended for all  libraries and essential for cinema collections. Richard W.  Grefrath, Univ. of Nevada Lib., RenoCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.