Dishing Hollywood: The Real Scoop on Tinseltown's Most Notorious Scandals
Author: Laurie Jacobson
List Price: $16.95
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ISBN: 1581823703
Publisher: Cumberland House (November, 2003)
Sales Rank: 53,567
Average Customer Rating: 4.62 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Dishing Hollywood: Recipe for Success
I highly recommend Dishing Hollywood The Real Scoop on Tinseltown's Most Notorious Scandals. Laurie Jacobson really knows her stuff and serves up heaping portions of scandal and intrigue of Hollywood's most notorious stars. I have read all of the author's books and Dishing Hollywood is Jacobson at her best. Jacobson brilliantly spins tale after sordid tale, "sprinkles" famous film quotes throughout each chapter and "tops" off with a recipe of the star's favorite dish (or, in some cases, their last meal!). Dishing Hollywood is a tasty treat, and I can't wait for Jacobson's next book!
Rating: 2 out of 5
half-baked Hollywood Babylon
Betty Crocker meets Kenneth Anger--and the result is this sloppy goulash that repackages tired left-overs from "Hollywood Babylon" (celebrity murders, suicides, scandals,etc ) by appending recipes (yep, recipes!) that supposedly have some signifigance to each case--but rarely do. For instance, an anecdote about Frank Sinatra (by all accounts a notorious garlicphobe) is accompanied by a recipe for spaghetti sauce that calls for four cloves of the stuff. Likewise, an error-filled rehash of the Sharon Tate/Manson massacre (the bodies were scattered all over the property, not located "in a bloody heap"), is followed by directions on how to prepare cheese enchiladas SIMILAR to those Tate MIGHT have ordered during her last meal at a Mexican restaurant. And in an epilog to a recap of the 1947 Black Dahlia party-girl murder (which the author deems solved on the basis of a highly spurious "case closed " paperback that has since been thoroughly discredited by anyone familiar with the crime), readers are treated to another spaghetti sauce recipe, this one attributed to of one of the victim's johns! (Let's not even go into the author's unsubstantiated claim that Joan Crawford helped clean up Dorothy Kilgallen's death bedroom before cops were called following the columnist's mysterious 1965 demise--a heretofor unknown "scoop" accompanied by the two-ingredient how-to instructions for Kilgallen's favorite cocktail: a vodka tonic.)
Despite its promise to deliver "the real scoop", this warmed-over combo plate will leave both scandal-mongers AND foodies with a bad taste in their mouths.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Whatta Dish! A Collection of Hollywood Scandals Du Jour
I fortuitously fell into this little gem the day after xmas.....a belated "BEST" present to myself.
While I already own Jacobson's two other books and hold her in high regard, this book proves that she is only getting better as a film historian and writer.
She assumes a slick, quasi-cinema noir persona in her narrative and mixes in a Sandra Lee-like easy 'recipe' that takes a not too subtle slam at each of the scandals/stories she relates. The vanity of the 'dish' (aka scandal/tragedy/hard luck story) only enhances the general readability of this book. This is a novel approach that makes an already interesting product even more appealing. I kept thinking that the author did a terrific job with the material she was presenting.
Aside from the kidding around, this book is really rather fair and factual. The author knows her stuff and relies on knowledgeable sources to substantiate or refute claims made in the book.
My only criticism of this book is that I wish it had been longer and had covered some other stories that I find interesting and want to know more about. Hopefully there will be a follow-up to this book which will do that.
Anyway, this is a very good read and worth the $ and time spent reading it.
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