SOURCE: Hunter, Frederic. “Hollywood's Write Stuff.” Christian Science Monitor (21 May 1990): 14.

In the following review of Writers in Hollywood, Hunter praises Hamilton's scholarship and historical research.

In the beginning was the image.

And the image moved. In silence. The images were first seen in penny arcades, “nickel-in-the-slot Kinetoscopes and Mutoscopes,” as Ian Hamilton notes, “with their two-minute vaudeville routines, their circus turns and boxing bouts.”

Later, around the turn of the century, motion pictures were delivered in small movie houses rather than through slot machines. A bill might include a half hour of chases, comedy routines, even bits of staged and photographed historical events, explained, where necessary, with title cards.

Then early moviemakers began to place several sequences into a single film, suggesting a narrative flow. They varied camera angles; they introduced closeups and inserts; they explored storytelling techniques.

Their images really were worth a thousand words in what...