Roll 'Em

By R.Z. Sheppard

MOVIOLA by Garson Kanin Simon & Schuster; 446 pages; $12.95

Contrary to cliche, Hollywood does not manufacture dreams; it preserves them in strips of celluloid that promise eternal life. Hollywood embalms desire. Hollywood is a necropolis lined with deities made to appear more beautiful and menacing than they really are. Hollywood, In short, is a good read, even when encountered in Moviola, an overwrought, eulogistic novel about the film business. The book is a greenhorn-to-mogul saga with cameo performances by great stars of the distant and recent past. There is even a bit part for Thomas Alva Edison, without whose inventive genius. . .

The entrepreneurial brains are provided by BJ. Farber, a fictional composite of those remarkable immigrants who parlayed dry-goods stores, nickelodeons and theater chains into movie fiefs. They are here too: Goldwyn, Mayer, Zukor, et al. Farber is a lovable old shark. The book's unlovable shark is Hareem Adani, a New York-based conglomerate chief out to add Farber Films to his corporate shell collection.

Adani, a Levantine of unspecified nationality, contains all the ruthlessness, greed, ill temper and bad manners heretofore ascribed to some Jewish studio heads. The unfortunate result is to create two stereotypes where one is more than enough. The characterization nevertheless has its uses. Adani sends a class operator to California to make a deal with Farber. He bears the elegant name of Guy Barrere and a resume that includes the Columbia University School of Journalism and Rolling Stone.

Farber is more convincing, even when he sits Barrere down (after dinner with Fred Astaire, the Jimmy Stewarts, Claudette Colbert, the Gregory Pecks and the Henry Fondas) and tells him his life story. It is an epic feature that includes three wives, mistresses, ups, downs and flashbacks from movie history. Farber is present at the Creation. After his theater chain folds he becomes production assistant to Mack Sennett at D.W. Griffith's Biograph studios in New York. Sennett and Mabel Normand carry on their Keystone Kops love affair; Harold Lloyd simulates climbing the side of a building on a facade laid flat on the floor; Fatty Arbuckle takes a blueberry pie in the face; and Buster Keaton gives Charlie Chaplin costume advice for a tramplike character he hopes will make people laugh.

Garson Kanin, playwright (Born Yesterday), novelist (The Rat Race) and Hollywood memoirist, is wooden in his overall structure but energetic in his scenes. The Fatty Arbuckle party that led to his sex scandal, trial, ruin and censorship; Greta Garbo's slow but sure rise to stardom amid the "ah-rintch" groves, and the pandemoniac search for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara. Much space is devoted to a novelization of the rise and fall of Marilyn Monroe. Farber's conclusion: Hollywood did not kill her; "it was just a case of bad luck, mismanagement. She met the wrong people, she got bad advice."

Is this the misfortune, mismanagement and bad advice that led to legendary stardom? No matter. The Farbers have a stake in making The Industry smell like a rose. The Kanins don't mind either. DeMillean in scope and cast, Moviola reads like the greatest benefit performance ever told. -- R.Z. Sheppard

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