John Howard Reid

Beginning with Abbott & Costello and ending with You Cant Cheat an Honest Man, this book reviews almost two hundred movies from 1916 to 1957 with an oddball copy right 1982. The vast majority date from the 1930's, 1940's, and 1950's.

There are a few B & W images - movie posters, at the beginning and and ending of the book.

The author includes:
"100 Highlights of Movie Comedy"
"A Few of this Book's Comedians"
and an Index
Each review begins with cast and crew, copyright information, Synopsis then ends with Comment (the review).… (mais)

This is a book that could have come out only in the 21st century, for better and worse. Before ebooks and Lulu, if you wanted to publish a book on such an esoteric niche subject, your main hope would have been an academic publisher who would have bound it in an expensive library binding and sold it at over $100 a copy. Occasionally you'd see specialty presses try to sell stuff like this, but still at prices that kept it out of the hands of someone with merely a casual interest in the subject.

No more; this book, and many others like it that may never have gotten published in the 20th century, are available on Lulu (and similar print-on-demand sites) and available for the Kindle (and other e-readers and in other electronic formats) for quite reasonable prices. This is clearly a well-researched book by someone who knows and appreciates his subject; everything's great, right?

Well, no. In the old days, if this book had got published, it would have gotten into the hands of a publisher who had to convince their audience that the high price they paid was worth it. They would have had someone carefully edit it, with an eye to it being the best reference book it could be. They would have added multiple indexes, indexing movies by title, by year, by director, by actors. They would have made everything uniform and consistent. This book (at least the Kindle version) doesn't have consistent headers for movies, which acerbates the problem that it doesn't have a table of contents, not to mention any indexes. The information is good, but the presentation is clearly amateur and suffers for it.… (mais)

“Silent Movies & Early Sound Films on DVD” by John Howard Reid is a wonderful guide to classic movies that can be found on DVDs. The movies are listed in alphabetical order, but it doesn’t need to be read that way. I started off reading from the beginning, but then found myself randomly selecting pages and reading them from top to bottom.

Mr. Reid definitely knows his stuff when it comes to silent movies and early sound films. Each movie lists the actors and the roles they played, director and crew, copyright date, and usually a synopsis and notes. I particularly like it when the author puts in his own comments about a movie. Sometimes his comments are scathing such as his review of “Don’t Be Nervous” where he states that it “is an excellent example of Educational at its worst. “ He can also praise as in the film “Sunrise” where he says that it is “simply one of the best movies ever made, Sunrise is both an invigorating and heart-warming, yet sometimes comic and intensely dramatic experience.”

I don’t know much about silent movies or early talking movies, but reading this book makes me want to go out and find many of them. Mr. Reid’s enthusiasm is very contagious and his knowledge is immense. This book is a great resource and could be a fun way to revamp movie night in the home.

**This book was received for free through Goodreads First Reads. That in no way influenced my review.**… (mais)