The Midwest Book Review

The Theatre/Cinema Shelf: Hollywood Renegades

Hollywood Renegades introduces us to a group of independent filmmakers whose collective efforts and use of their movies as weapons against the major studies effectively ended the old Hollywood studio contract system.

Historian J. A. Aberdeen reveals fascinating information (much of it previously unreported) about the rise and fall of the Society Of Independent Motion Picture Producers (SIMPP) and how an independent filmmaker movement of more than 50 years ago laid the foundation of the modem Hollywood we have today—and a struggle by independents to make and distribute their films that continues into the present day.

Highly recommended reading for all movie buffs and cinema history students, Hollywood Renegades reveals the astonishing stories of Charles Chaplin, Walt Disney, Samuel Goldwyn, Alexander Korda, Mary Pickford, David O. Selznick, Walter Wanger, Orson Wells and others whose impact on American filmmaking was as profound and far reaching as they were talented and ambitious.

The Bookwatch - December 2000 - vol. 22, no. 12, p. 1