Bernard F. Dick,
City of Dreams: The Making and Unmaking of Universal Pictures.
Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1997
ISBN 0813120160.
US$29.95
249pp

Uploaded 12 November 1999

Bernard F. Dick’s recent study of the history of Universal Pictures, City of Dreams: The Making and Unmaking of Universal Pictures, is a rather odd book. It is not a film fan or coffee table book by any means, but then again it’s not quite an academic tome, either. It’s not strictly an industry history, nor it is an exclusively aesthetic account of Universal. And although it is largely well written, it has occasional odd lapses into illogical prose.

Let’s start with the book’s place in film studies and its relationship to other works. Dick’s style is highly readable, and he relates the rise and fall and rise (or the “making and unmaking”, as he puts it) of Carl Laemmle’s Universal Pictures as a pleasant enough story, with all the drama we expect from such a Hollywood tale. The subsequent account of Universal’s fortunes and misfortunes is clearly put forward, but the less-than-committed reader may find himself wishing for a diagram to keep track of all the various owners and machinations involved (MCA, Matsushita, Seagram, et al) and executives and their movements in, around, and out of the studio (come to think of it, diagrams would have been pretty helpful!).

The problem, one that limits the use of the book as a scholarly source, lies in Dick’s deliberate decision to restrict the use of citations. As he explains, “Since studio history often appears to be a skein of facts, I have tried not to overwhelm the reader with documentation” (xiii). A noble intention, to be sure, and, after all, who wants to be “overwhelmed with documentation”? But we are historians and film scholars; we depend upon documentation (actually, we crave documentation).

Consider, for example, this passage:

“The turnaround came with E.T. , which by the end of 1982 had taken made over $300 million. Although one would have expected the success of the film division (which, with $400 million in domestic rentals in 1982 surpassed the 1975 record, thanks to E.T. ) to reflect favorably on president Ned Tanen, it was attributed to the marketing expertise of Robert Rehme, whom Tanen had hired away from Avco Embassy in 1982 so he could be relieved of some of the burdens of distribution (170).”

The information concerning E.T. ‘s profits should be easy enough to find, I suppose, so we can excuse the lack of citation for that. But who attributed this success to Rehme? How does Dick know why Tanen hired Rehme? Certainly, a scholar of Dick’s experience and stature knows what he is talking about and has done his homework. But his argument would have more force with the proper documentation, and, in more practical terms, other scholars would be much better able to use this research for their own work.

Another problem lies in the fact that the two aspects of the book – Universal’s industrial history and the history of its films as films – don’t always mesh very well. The analyses of the Universal releases of John Ford (86-87) and James Whale (90-94), for example, are very good, but really don’t seem to have much to do with the main thrust of the book, which is the business of Universal; or, if they do, the connection is not made clear.

Finally, there are more than a few instances of puzzling prose. Consider the following puzzling passage: “But [Goetz and Spitz] had no feeling for musicals. Even if Mexican Hayride had had a major Cole Porter score, which it did not, Universal was not interested in the music, just the book, for which it paid $50,000 in order to have a vehicle for Abbott and Costello” (145). Dick’s point is understood, but it certainly seems odd to mention Cole Porter, who had no connection to any of this at all (and, once more, there is no citation for this bit of information). Or this one: “Morita went to court and won; litigation proved less expensive than he thought, yet he succeeded in implementing a principle that paralleled Edison’s philosophy of putting nothing on the market until it has been perfected”(190). The use of the word ‘yet’ makes no sense at all in this sentence; surely Dick meant ‘and’?

Despite this nitpicking, Dick’s book, ultimately, is a well-written history of a studio to which little attention has been paid. Its usefulness, however, is seriously compromised by his refusal to provide the documentation that is demanded of all historians, and that we demand of our students.

Timothy R White