They don't make tinsel the way they used to, which may be progress but also may not. Hollywood in the 1940s, the last imperial decade of the movie industry, was a dream factory, a sausage machine, a gloriously successful trade conspiracy (till the feds made the studios sell their captive theater chains). It was, for wowsers who cared to moralize, a creepy metaphor of the American soul. Ignorance ruled. Bad taste feasted; genius writhed. Or so genius said. Oddly, though not many superior films were produced, quite a few good flicks got made.
Anyone who reads has toured parts of this...