The World's Greatest Hollywood Scandals

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Just as we have our little guilty pleasure with movies, we have guilty pleasure with books too. For some it might be schlocky fantasies or paranormal teen romances, for me it’s gossipy non-fiction about scandals in Hollywood. Perhaps one of the most juicy books in this genre is Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon that beautifully depicts the Jekyll and Hyde faces of Tinseltown: glamorous and charming on the top, drunken and sex-crazed underneath.

The World’s Greatest Hollywood Scandals by John Marriott and Robin Cross is a book that walks down the Hollywood Babylon path, but sadly does not deliver such a scoop. A dry collection of recounts of famous scandals from Marilyn Monroe’s suicide to the Hollywood ‘Blacklist’ that ruined so many careers this book contains juicy subject matter, but is a prime example of what happens when you just let the content speak for itself. Despite having a few witticisms and quips that give a voice to the narrator the book lacks any fresh or interesting tone and very quickly becomes a dry and boring collection of stories that could have fared better at the hands of some of the tabloid journalists that feature as characters.

While there is definitely time, research, and emotional investment within the pages, the segregated structure of chapters –some of which tell different stories while others confuse you by being follow-ons from the previous one- is done in a way that doesn’t grant the reader immersion into the text: not even a cheap voyeuristic peep over the fence.

At the end of it all I was left disappointed by having the promise of an engaging, juicy gossip fest turned into a dry and unimaginative lecture of regurgitated content.

The World’s Greatest Hollywood Scandals was written by John Marriott and Robin Cross and published by Octopus Books in 1989.