Brief review of the Joan Harrison bio "Phantom Lady" by Christina Lane

This brief book review is my contribution to the 2021 Classic Film Summer Reading Challenge, run by Raquel Stecher of the Out of the Past blog. (I originally posted a variant of this on Goodreads.) #classicfilmreading

Phantom Lady was an interesting, well-written, well-researched biography about a previously neglected person in the history of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Joan Harrison was one of only a handful of women producers in pre-1960s Hollywood, and was one of Alfred Hitchcock's primary collaborators in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

While this was certainly a worthwhile read, I did have some concerns. One is that the author spends too much of the text in detailed plot summaries of numerous movies Joan Harrison helped to create (and at least one she did not) and not enough portraying Harrison as a real person with a personality. In addition to slowing down the biographical narrative, this leads to spoilers of movies I was planning to watch or re-watch soon thanks to being reminded of them by this book.

Perhaps a more fundamental issue: by the end, I didn't feel like I knew Joan as a human being, aside from as someone consumed by her work. I probably learned more personal details about Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville than about Harrison. The Kindle edition I purchased also doesn’t appear to have any photographs, which may have helped partially counteract this last deficiency.

Comments

[Raquel Stecher]

Thank you for your thoughtful review. I struggle with plot summaries. They add some context and are a nice reminder if I've seen the movie. But if I haven't they are frustrating!

I'm glad you gave this book a shot. It's one of my favorites that I've read in recent years.