THE DREAM MERCHANTS (496 pp.)—Harold Robbins—Knopf ($3.50).
The story of the movie industry has long tempted U.S. novelists, and a few writers have brought Hollywood to fictional life e.g., F. Scott Fitzgerald in his unfinished elegy to the independent film artist, The Last Tycoon; Budd Schulberg in his acid-etched portrait of a ratty producer, What Makes Sammy Run? But most novelists who write about Hollywood become infected with the faults they set out to pillory: garish sentimentality and tabloid vulgarity.
Notably of the mine run is Harold Robbins' The Dream Merchants, which begins promisingly...