Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, the Mob, and Sex

Overview

Peter Bart delivers a fast-paced, anecdote-rich account of Paramount Studios during a volatile period at the end of the 1960s and the start of the 1970s. Writing from the vantage point of someone who was inside the studio system, he traces how a once-staid Hollywood institution collided with a new culture of risk, sex, and organized criminal influence. The narrative blends boardroom drama, on-set chaos, and salacious personal encounters to capture an industry remaking itself.
The book emphasizes the clash between old Hollywood hierarchies and the renegade energy of a younger generation of filmmakers and executives. Against a backdrop of shifting ownership, cash-infused takeovers, and legal gray areas, Studio decision-making, about scripts, stars, and money, becomes a window into larger social upheavals.

Setting and historical context

Paramount is depicted at a moment when the postwar studio system had fractured and corporate buyers, independent producers, and unsavory financiers all vied for control. The era saw greater tolerance for explicit material on screen, more auteur-driven projects, and a loosening of censorship, producing both daring successes and spectacular failures. That cultural ferment coincided with questionable financial practices and alliances that blurred the lines between business and crime.
Expansion of film financing beyond traditional backers opened windows for quick cash and influence from actors, agents, and outside investors who didn't always observe legal or ethical norms. Those pressures shaped which scripts reached the screen, who got promoted, and how the public image of Hollywood was managed.

Peter Bart's role and perspective

Bart writes as an insider who rose through studio ranks and later moved into journalism and publishing, giving him a dual identity as participant and chronicler. His prose oscillates between vivid recollection and wry self-defense, often naming the powerful figures who shaped decisions and describing his own involvement with blunt candor. That insider status allows detailed portraits of meetings, negotiations, and off-hours encounters that are rarely disclosed elsewhere.
His perspective is personal and partisan without being wholly reverential. He celebrates creative triumphs while acknowledging compromises and excesses, and he makes clear how ambition, ego, and sexual politics intersected with corporate maneuvering to produce both art and scandal.

Notable episodes and characters

The narrative focuses on a cast of studio executives, producers, directors, and star names who alternately collaborated and collided as fortunes rose and fell. Many chapters linger on dramatic boardroom fights, the courting of marquee talent, and the damage done when financial expediency trumped artistic judgment. Bart pulls back the curtain on behind-the-scenes deals where secrecy, threat, and seduction were tools of influence.
A recurring thread is how organized crime and shadowy financiers found routes into legitimate studio business, sometimes through distribution, sometimes through loans or investments. Those relationships created dilemmas for honest executives and complicated attempts to steer Paramount toward stable leadership and a clear creative vision.

Themes and tone

The book explores power, how it is acquired, exercised, and defended, within an industry where image matters almost as much as profit. It interrogates the cost of reinvention: creative freedom gained alongside the erosion of ethical standards. The tone mixes gossip and gravitas; scenes meant to entertain coexist with sober reflections about accountability and the survival of institutions.
Bart's storytelling emphasizes human flaws more than institutional theory, portraying Hollywood as a place where talent and vice coexist, and where the line between legend and infamy is often thin.

Reception and legacy

Readers drawn to Hollywood memoirs and studio lore will find the book rich in anecdote and atmosphere, especially those interested in the tumultuous transition from old studio control to modern filmmaking. Critics have praised its insider detail and brisk pacing while noting a tendency toward self-justification. As a record of a fraught chapter in studio history, it stands as a colorful, if partial, chronicle of how ambition, money, and desire reshaped one of America's iconic institutions.