RaveThe Wall Street JournalIt is the not quite hidden theme of this book that as much as the newly arrived immigrant Jews attempted to make themselves and their industry American, their ultimate accomplishment was to make America Jewish. I do not mean merely that Mr. Thomson recognizes that the new medium taught those trapped in the dark how to dress, think, behave, and what was good and what was not. Nor does he restrict his critique to saying that under the guise of accepted morality, the available technology was in fact 'dynamic and disruptive . . . cater[ing] to loneliness, instability, and escape.' No, he quite consciously intends to demonstrate that it was the immigrants themselves, and specifically the Warners, and most specifically Jack, who were filled with 'instability,' ruthlessness and 'dangerous energy.' It was those attributes that would come to characterize not just their studio, founded in 1923, but also the country that watched their films ... As this fine book progresses, Mr. Thomson turns his attention away from the brothers and their studio and onto individual actors and films. These form a remarkable series of critiques and vignettes—cranky, idiosyncratic, sometimes improbable, but always ingenious, and now and then inspiring. He doesn’t miss anyone or anything ... Jack is lucky to have a man who has brought a lifetime of sitting in theaters, shellacked by the beams of the projectionist’s light, and who has thought so deeply and eccentrically and opinionatedly and ultimately so brilliantly about him. We, his readers, are lucky too.
