BY ADRIAN SMITH 

James Bawden was a TV columnist for the Toronto Star, and Ron Miller was TV editor at the San Jose Mercury News and is a former president of the Television Critics Association. During their respective careers stretching back some fifty years the list of stars they have interviewed reads like a Who’s Who of Hollywood. These two volumes bring together an incredible assortment of interviews from almost the birth of cinema itself, with Buster Keaton, Jackie Coogan and Gloria Swanson representing the silent era. The great leading men are all here, including James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Kirk Douglas, Victor Mature and Cary Grant, and of course classic leading ladies like Bette Davis, Janet Leigh, Fay Wray and Joan Fontaine. Along the way they also met character actors and horror stars like Ernest Borgnine, Victor Buono, John Carradine, and Lon Chaney Jr., and even singing cowboys Gene Autry and Roy Rogers make an appearance. With each book containing over thirty interviews, this is an opportunity to revisit the golden era of Hollywood. Many of the interviews, generally to publicise their latest film, were conducted on sets, in theatre dressing rooms, or if they were lucky, the star’s home, and the authors preface each interview with their own recollection of the moment, giving us a little more insight into how these stars were when the cameras were switched off. Ron Miller has even written an entire chapter titled “My seven minutes alone with Elizabeth Taylor,” recalling the lengths he was required to go to in order to interview with star whilst she was filming the TV miniseries North and South (1985). The effort that went into securing those seven minutes is possibly more entertaining than the interview itself, and secures some sympathy for those dogged TV and film journalists who have to jump through sometimes dozens of hoops before getting their moment.

Miller has helpfully also provided a chapter titled “How to Talk to a Movie Star,” which provides invaluable advice for anyone considering taking this up as a career, including a recollection of the time James Bawden interviewed Julie Harris. “I hate star interviews!” she exclaimed, so Bawden quickly told her that he had never understood Shakespeare until the time he saw her in a production of Romeo and Juliet. “You’ve convinced me!” she replied and spent an hour answering his questions. The lesson? Flattery frequently gets you somewhere.

From nervously interviewing stars like Boris Karloff when barely out of their teens to developing personal friendships with stars such as Bob Hope, Bawden and Miller’s collection is a feast of nostalgia and insight into a never-to-be-repeated era of Hollywood history, and these two books are a must for the bookshelf of any respecting film fan or potential Hollywood journalist. (Both books are published by University Press of Kentucky.)

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