The Girls in the Picture (a novel) by Melanie Benjamin

The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin is, in the same vein as Song of a Captive Bird, a historical novelization- and a very good one at that.

This book follows Hollywood's first power duo of two friends who became the first movie star and first major woman screenplay writer respectively.

Following the journey of Frances Marion and Mary Pickford from 1914 until 1969, we see two women find their own in a world that is not at all soft to women. Many times throughout the book their gender roles and struggles with everything their male costars didn't have to came to light. Even abortion was touched upon- albeit pretty late in the story considering all the flings alluded to.

One thing that didn't sit well with me was that the book is a huge feminist message and I love it! But when Birth of a Nation is released in 1918 their reactions to it are classic film school, "no one had ever seen this, we wanted to do that, etc." never once is race mentioned.

For the uninitiated Birth of a Nation is a KKK marketing movie that managed to breathe life into the struggling organization. It's praised to this day as the pioneer of most film techniques we still use today, and is taught as such in film school. By ignoring its underlying message, I feel Melanie Benjamin undercut her own; you can't place one struggle above another, and you certainly can't erase one struggle in order to better highlight your own. It wasn't until the very last act of the book that anything about race was mentioned again, in the context of Mary's (also famous movie star) husband being asked if he was "actually a darkie" as he had very sun tanned skin for the day. That's it, race is never mentioned again.

I was also disappointed by the prose in this book, unlike the last few I have reviewed which lifted off the page like a song, this book was written more like a conversation. It was engaging and well done, but not exactly the calibur of speech I would expect from a New York Times bestselling author.

To recap: The Girls in the Picture is a very well written look into the early cinema scene, a beautiful retelling of a friendship between two strong women and their careers. The Girls in the Picture is also a book with no non-white characters set in a time where the highest praise for a film was saved for a pro-klan picture which made me feel like a huge avenue Benjamin could have gone down was wasted.

That being said, I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in film and film history. I found myself popping over to wikipedia and youtube to follow the bread crumb trail to old forgotten movies and movie stars, it was a real treat to be learning about something I had no clue even existed.

That's it for this week- and I know I technically cheated as the book was released 16 Jan 2018 but you'll have to take my word for it that I read it before then.