Bringing Up Oscar: The Story of the Men and Women Who Founded the Academy

Slow going

Since I’m a movie freak and have read many, many accounts of Hollywood and its beginnings, when I saw Debra Ann Pawlak’s Bringing Up Oscar: The Story of the Men and Women Who Founded the Academy, I thought, “Wow! I’ve never read an in-depth look at the Motion Picture Academy, formally known as The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I expected to find out just what this institution does in addition to giving out those shiny little men. But since I can read the title, I knew the book would focus more on the people who had the idea for the academy. And oh—it does. The first half of the book details each of the producers, writers, actors, actresses, techies, and one theater owner who thought up this institution. I can save you time: almost each and every one of them were dirt poor, hard-scrabble immigrants who decided working in the fledgling industry would be a good thing, started in the east, and eventually migrated west because it was warmer, sunnier, and free of the restrictions placed upon the new industry by its inventor Thomas Edison. And not only is this story repeated in slight variations, but you will find out the birth dates and birth places of each, including any siblings they may have had. Then suddenly, towards the middle, they meet and have this idea. The academy comes to fruition. Then the book becomes less tedious, as each one of them is dealt with again, this time describing their deaths (mostly heart attacks.) What career facts are told in this section are, for the most part, repeats of myriad facts told in the first section. Get the idea? This is a very repetitious book. Great for high schoolers doing research on the film industry; not so great for those of us who just want to enjoy reading about early Hollywood. The repetition, from the endless dates given to the re-telling of life facts, gets to be mighty tedious. And that explanation of what the academy does? Almost non-existent. In the final chapter, a few sentences intrigued me and ...