Frank Muzzy Volgorde van de boeken

To borrow from Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca, "Last night I dreamt I went back to 'Manderley' again." Instead, we will time travel back to 1824 and a similar little unpaved road that crossed the Brevoort's farm--land holdings that stretched, since 1701, from the Bowery up past today's Washington Square to 14th Street. Brevoort generations developed the land to the northern outskirts of the village of Manhattan. Tales of Fifth Avenue Through Time connects that past with the present via yellowed archival photos--the closest we have to time travel. Historical; yes, hysterical; oh yes, scandalous; but of course--all while being documented via panorama, box and brownie, digital and selfie, cinema, silent and sound, capturing the environs of the wealthiest families on the planet that lived on the only avenue to lend its moniker to a candy bar. Tourist and locals will take a tour bus, and you will too, literarily and visually, past the surviving and ghosts of mansions; past the churches and museums; and past the most exclusive stores credit cards can handle, down the canyon of high-rises that is Fifth Avenue, Manhattan.

"Hooray for Hollywood," the 1937 anthem by Johnny Mercer for the film Hollywood Hotel, says it all cinematically as dozens of star wannabes head for Hollywood in a full production booming vocal number, satirically referencing the illusionary desire to become famous actors: ♫ "Hooray for Hollywood, that screwy, bally hooey Hollywood, where any office boy or young mechanic, can be a panic, with just a good-looking pan ... !" ♫ But that is just what happened. A little sundrenched village in California in 1887 discovered "stardom" and surpasses, at least in lore, any other little village in the world. Tales of Hollywood Through Time, with or without searchlights, captures a bit of that journey. Tales connects the past with the present via yellowed archival photos combined with the contemporary photography of homeboy Frank Muzzy. It provides visual storytelling--the closest tool we have for time travel among orange groves and oil wells during the nurturing era of the art form of the twentieth century, the cinema. "Hollywood" is a recognized global name of a clichéd dream factory, or the nightmare of a realized wish. Both sides of the flipped coin are beautifully packaged from the mountains to the sea in glorious technicolor and cinemascope.