Incorrect Entertainment or Trash from the Past

Cultural Historian Anthony Slide, who has been described by the Los Angeles Times as a one-man publishing phenomenon, strikes again with a book guaranteed to contain something "offensive" for everyone.

Chapters on subjects as varied as camp and fascism in Hollywood, Hedda Hopper and the PORKY'S movies. The latest topical jokes on Helen Keller, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Challenger disaster.

Subjects such as "alcohol, drug and spousal abuse, communism, ethnicity, gays and lesbians and religion." Commentary on leading figures of the era, including Father Coughlin, Kinky Friedman, Tom Lehrer and John Wayne. They are all here in this "quirky, outrageous," informative, and above all, "entertaining" overview of political incorrectness and bad taste in 20th century popular entertainment, including film, theatre, music, radio, television and vaudeville.

British-born Anthony Slide is a former associate archivist of the American Film Institute and resident film historian of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He is the author of more than seventy books on the history of popular entertainment and the editor of a further 125 volumes in the "Filmmakers" series. The Los Angeles Times has described him as a "one-man publishing phenomenon."

Among his major works are Early American Cinema, The Films of D.W. Griffith, Great Radio Personalities in Historic Photographs, Great Pretenders: A History of Female and Male Impersonation in the Performing Arts, The Silent Feminists: America's First Women Directors, The American Film Industry: A Historical Dictionary, The Hollywood Novel, Nitrate Won't Wait: A History of Film Preservation in the United States, Lois Weber: The Director Who Lost Her Way in History, and Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Actors and Actresses. His Encyclopedia of Vaudeville was named outstanding academic book of the year by "Choice" magazine, best reference book of the year by "Library Journal" and outstanding reference source of the year by the American Library Association.

In 1990, in recognition of his work on the history of popular entertainment, Anthony Slide was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by Bowling Green University. At that time, he was hailed by Lillian Gish as "our preeminent historian of the silent film."