As a movie lover, I love stories about old and new Hollywood. To me, Hollywood has always been a very interesting place to learn about, as evidenced by films such as Billy Wilder’s intriguing Sunset Boulevard or Quentin Tarantino’s vivid take on the Sharon Tate murders in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. This fall, writer Bernard F. Dick gives us another slice of Hollywood’s rich history with his amazing new book, Engulfed: The Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood.
This book chronicles the world-famous movie studio’s fascinating history and how it has influenced Hollywood today in a spectacular fashion. It’s a fascinating read that will surely entertain fans of this type of history.
Whether it’s talking about Paramount’s early days or highlighting the infamous studio struggles throughout the decades, this is a well-written novel full of Hollywood facts that even I as a lover of this kind of history was not aware of. For example, I didn’t know about how Paramount was responsible for releasing the very first Academy Award-winning movie, Wings. I also didn’t know a lot about Paramount co-founder Adolph Zukor’s background or how he helped form Paramount Pictures as we know it today, and it was very interesting to read about.
The main complaint I have with the novel is that it skips over what I feel is the main reason Paramount Pictures is in financial trouble today. Yes, the pandemic is part of it, but Paramount was struggling way before COVID-19 arrived on the scene: its decision to sell both its Marvel distribution rights and future movies from its iconic Indiana Jones franchise to Disney was a huge part of this.
But despite this omission, Dick has written a fantastic book that illustrates the rise and fall of the world-famous studio while providing film geeks a fascinating read to add to their collection of movie memorabilia.