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BOOK REVIEWS
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Louis Armstrong: In His Own Words
Selected Writings
Thomas Brothers, Editor
Oxford University Press, 2001
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 The great jazz trailblazer Louis Armstrong has been the subject of countless biographies and music histories. Yet little attention has been paid to the remarkable array of writings he left behind. Louis Armstrong: In His Own Words introduces readers to a little-known facet of this master trumpeter, bandleader and entertainer.
Edited by Thomas Brothers, a professor of music at Duke University, this important volume, based on extensive research through the Armstrong archives, includes some of his earliest letters, personal correspondence with one of his first biographers in 1943-44, autobiographical writings, magazine articles and essays. Here are Armstrong’s own thoughts on his life and career—from poverty in New Orleans to playing in the famous cafes, cabarets and saloons of Storyville, from his big break in 1922 with the King Oliver Band to his storming of New York, from his breaking of color barriers in Hollywood to the infamous King of the Zulus incident in 1949 and, finally, to his last days in Queens, New York. Along the way Armstrong recorded touching portraits of his times and offered candid, often controversial opinions about racism, marijuana, bebop and other jazz artists such as Jelly Roll Morton and Coleman Hawkins.
These writings provide a balanced portrait of Armstrong’s life as a musician, entertainer, civil rights activist and cultural icon. His idiosyncratic use of language and punctuation has been preserved to give the reader an unvarnished portrayal of this compelling artist. Included are introductions to the writings, as well as an annotated index of names and places significant to Armstrong’s life.
Armstrong was a great one. And now with In His Own Words, you can get a glimpse of the man himself. Delightful reading.—John W. Whitehead
ARCHIVE HIGHLIGHT:
LOUIS ARMSTRONG: "You Can't Play Anything on a Horn That He Hasn't Played"
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Selected Letters Of Dashiell Hammett, 1921-1960
Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett, editors
Counterpoint, 2001
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 Dashiell Hammett helped to create the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. In his five great crime novels, all of them written in a magnificent burst of creativity between 1927 and 1933, Hammett gave America a cast of immortal heroes—The Continental Op, Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles, mold-breaking, red-blooded characters drawn from Hammett’s own experience as private detective. A popular writer from the start, he had an ambitious literary vision. As he was working on his classic The Maltese Falcon, he wrote a letter to his publisher about the potential of the detective story form: "Someday somebody’s going to make ‘literature’ out of it…and I’m selfish enough to have my hopes."
Hammett is best known for The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Thin Man (1934). Both of these books spawned classic films. Indeed, John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941) is considered one of the great films of all time, and Humphrey Bogart’s portrayal of Sam Spade made him a star.
Hammett, however, was no sit-at-home hack writer who lived in tranquil bliss. He was a complicated man who lived the painful artist’s life. And now with the publication of Selected Letters, we get a personal glimpse of Hammett’s complex and intricate mind. This is an unprecedented collection of letters spanning Hammett’s life, from 1921, when he was recovering from tuberculosis in a hospital with only vague plans about the future, to his death in 1960—his life of writing, celebrity, military service and political activism behind him. It draws on nearly 1,000 previously unpublished letters, many never seen even by previous biographers, to the persons most important in Hammett’s life—including his wife, Josephine Dolan, and their two daughters; his lovers Lillian Hellman, Peggy O’Toole and Prudence Whitfield; and his editors at Knopf and Black Mask magazine. The book is divided into four sections: the early years of a struggling writer; his period of success and subsequent dissipation in New York and Hollywood; the years during which Hammett rejoined the Army at the age of 45; and the final years of defending his political convictions, being jailed for them and struggling to make a comeback.
Though Hammett’s work is admired by millions, the man himself has always been an enigma, his image bound up with his characters and the legends of Lillian Hellman. Now with Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett we get a peek at not only the private man but also the hardworking—and hard living—professional. He was part cynical tough guy, like Sam Spade; he was part-sophisticated inebriate, like Nick Charles. But the character of Dashiell Hammett was too complex to be easily categorized. His letters to his family, lovers and colleagues show his personal warmth, his political commitment and his wide-ranging intellectual curiosity. And with wit, intelligence and style, these letters further confirm Hammett’s extraordinary talent as writer and observer.
Selected Letters is edited by Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett. Layman is the author of Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett and Dashiell Hammett: A Biography, as well as two other books on Hammett. Rivett is the granddaughter of Dashiell Hammett.—John W. Whitehead
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Double Idemnity
Billy Wilder
University of California Press, 2001
The Lost Weekend
Billy Wilder
University of California Press, 2001
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Magnificence is a strange thing. If only it came in buckets. But, unfortunately, it only comes in thimbles. Such is film. But now we can peek at some of that cinema magnificence in the form of published screenplays. Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend are classics.
Double Indemnity (1944) is a triumph on every level and stands as one of Wilder’s greatest achievements. The story of an insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray) who is lured into a murder-for-insurance plot by a blazing femme fatale (Barbara Stanwyck) is a definitive example of the ‘40s film noir.
The Lost Weekend (1945) is one of the first films to explore the devastating effects of alcoholism. This film swept the 1945 Academy Awards for Best Picture, Director, Actor (Ray Milland) and Screenplay. Great viewing but also great reading—and with bonuses. Both of these are facsimile reproductions, and Double Indemnity, for example, contains the original—and quite different—ending, published here for the first time.—John W. Whitehead
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Continue for more book reviews...
e 2, Dylan Reviews
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