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I've heard conflicting views about Spoto's biographys. I've had my eye on a couple for a while but I'm a little undecided.
How would you guys rate his work? Are his books accurate or full of conjecture?

I have read several of Spoto's books, and find them entertaining and generally with what looks like good information. One problem is that he does not have references to facts and quotes that appear in the text. You can't be really sure of what you are reading.
I don't feel like I wasted time reading any of them, and some are better than others, but they don't come up to the quality of the current bio of Spencer Tracy, for instance, or recent books on Victor Fleming, etc.

DM

OK, well more specifically. Has anyone read his Crawford book?

I've read only his Hitchcock biography. It seemed mean-spirited, stuffed with anecdotes that show Hitchcock in a bad light, with little (as I remember) on the plus side of the ledger. (Or should that be lodger?) That aside, though, it's an interesting account of how the films came to be made in the way that they were made and how one led to the next. Much info on the original "treatments" and day-to-day work with the screenwriters.

Gary wrote:I've read only his Hitchcock biography. It seemed mean-spirited, stuffed with anecdotes that show Hitchcock in a bad light, with little (as I remember) on the plus side of the ledger. (Or should that be lodger?) That aside, though, it's an interesting account of how the films came to be made in the way that they were made and how one led to the next. Much info on the original "treatments" and day-to-day work with the screenwriters.

In re: the Hitchcock bio, I suspect he may have picked up much of his info on treatments and work from Peter Noble.

Yes, I read the Crawford a couple of months ago. My comments above apply to it.

Spoto's book on Preston Sturges is worth reading. Sturges himself was so much like a character from a Preston Sturges movie that it'd be hard to make a hash of his story.

Brooksie wrote:Spoto's book on Preston Sturges is worth reading. Sturges himself was so much like a character from a Preston Sturges movie that it'd be hard to make a hash of his story.

Though not a terrible book, it's a distant third when it comes to Sturges biographies. The best one is Christmas in July: The Life and Art of Preston Sturges by Diane Jacobs, followed by Between Flops: A Biography of Preston Sturges by James Curtis. Spoto is less illuminating than either and has little to say about Sturges' work aside from repetitively stating that Sturges was inspired by Feydeau. Indirectly perhaps, but that doesn't account for what Sturges special, since he was more than a writer of farces.