Hill of Beans is a provocative read about the complexity of Hollywood.--Sadie Leite, The Tufts Daily
Hill of Beans
A Novel of War and Celluloid
Description
The film Casablanca opens with the words, “With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of the Americas.” Leslie Epstein’s Hill of Beans is the story of how one nation, one industry, and in particular one man responded to that desperate hope. That man is Jack Warner. His impossible goal is to make world events—most importantly, the invasion of North Africa by British and American forces in 1942—coincide with the release of his new film about a group of refugees marooned in Morocco. Arrayed against him are Stalin and Hitler, as well as Josef Goebbels, Franklin Roosevelt, a powerful gossip columnist, and above all a beautiful young woman with a terrible secret. His only weapons are his hutzpah and his heroism as he struggles to bring cinema and city, conflict and conference together in an epic command performance.
Hill of Beans is the novel that Leslie Epstein—the son and nephew of Philip and Julius Epstein, the screenwriters of Casablanca—was born to write.
Reviews
It's a blisteringly funny, fictional farce using the film's famous production woes as the backdrop for a bawdy espionage adventure boasting an all-star cast of world leaders and movie-industry icons, with the fate of the free world hanging in the balance.--Sean Burns, WBUR The ARTery
It's a blisteringly funny, fictional farce using the film's famous production woes as the backdrop for a bawdy espionage adventure boasting an all-star cast of world leaders and movie-industry icons, with the fate of the free world hanging in the balance.--Sean Burns, WBUR The ARTery
Like its predecessors, Leslie Epstein's twelfth book is filled with unique energy and megaphone voice that never stops from the first page to last.--Mark Bernheim, Jewish Book Council
