Elliott Capon: 3 books

What happens when a guy accused of stealing a type of onion defends himself by saying, “I was only taking a leek”? Or at the insect Olympics, where certain bugs hold the stopwatches, because “flies time”? That’s when you’re in the world of the “shaggy dog,” a type of story that ends...

In 1940, American Heartland Pictures, once a great studio producing hybrid talking/silent Shakespeare films, is now gushes forth the cheesiest, crappiest, lousiest low-budgetest serial adventures in the industry. And that’s fine with Farley Rottenwood, the immigrant-turned-sort-of-mogul who bought...

Zoltan Szábo and his wife Hilka, the first couple of the Romanian theatre, are forced to flee the fascists in the mid-1930s and wind up in Hollywood. Big stars in Europe, Zoltan is relegated to playing a two-bit Poverty Row vampire again and again, while his incredibly beautiful wife, Hilka, gets...