“The only problem with film biographies is that they’re usually of the wrong people. Alfred Hitchcock lived a legendary life, and his new Boswell, Peter Ackroyd, has already written doorstops on Shakespeare, Dickens and others. Still, did the Master need yet another close-up? In Alfred Hitchcock, Ackroyd ably follows Hitch from pudgy young PA (motto: “I’ll do it”) to sad, dying Bel Air recluse with nothing to do. But think of all the fascinating figures from cinema still waiting for booklength treatment. Where are the memoirs of L.A.’s Robert Towne and Walter Hill? Where’s the saga of Achmed Abdullah, born of supposedly royal Russian-Afghan parentage, rumored a British spy, and ultimately an Oscar-nominated Muslim screenwriter? Ackroyd’s graceful retread will prove catnip to Hitchcock completists, but for something fresher, check out Hollywood Bohemia, Rob Wagner’s captivating, crude, crackerjack account of his namesake great-grandfather. This 1930s L.A. radical edited Script, a magazine some called a West Coast New Yorker, and befriended everybody from Chaplin to the unsung L.A. classical music writer Jose Rodríguez. Despite its low-profile June publication — by a Santa Maria genealogy publisher! – here’s the rare film bio where we didn’t already know too much.”

A fascinating journal that came on like a cross between a west coast version of The New Yorker and a Hollywood lit-zine, Script was published weekly out of Beverly Hills by Rob Wagner, a writer, artist, activist and film colony insider. It featured contributions by Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin, Upton Sinclair and Eddie Cantor, along with early short stories by William Saroyan, Ray Bradbury, and Louis L’Amour. The magazine’s unapologetic socialist leanings were noteworthy as well, and serve as the subject of Hollywood Bohemia, a recent book by Wagner’s great-grandson, Rob Leicester Wagner.

Mr. Wagner has graciously allowed China Film Insider to reprint Howe’s essay, and we’re proud to do so, as he fits right in. In language that may seem altogether familiar to CFI readers and industry watchers of recent years, Howe discusses the myriad of Chinese stories waiting to be told, the educational and social benefits of a robust Chinese film industry, the commercial potential of China’s population, and ways in which Chinese filmmakers and Hollywood might work together. The piece also contains a fascinating capsule account of the Shanghai film studios’ migration to Chungking during the Sino-Japanese War and the hardships faced there. (He also tips his hat to the egalitarian ideals of Mao’s Communist insurgents, at the time based in Yan’an, then called “Yenan.”).