This was another case where I much preferred the movie. After I saw the 1980 miniseries, I decided to check out the novel to see how it differed. I soon found out that the TV movie made the characters more believable as well as likeable. Sure, they had their faults but the bad guys weren't as horrible and the good guys had more depth. Johnny Edge (played by Mark Harmon) was more sophisticated than in the novel, where he came across as too gullible and trusting. Morgan Fairchild's Dulcie Warren could be as heartless as she was selfish, but she also had a vulnerable side, whereas in the novel she was a conniving user as well as a whore, who thought nothing of sleeping with her married first cousin! YUCK!!! (Thankfully, the movie skipped that crap.) In the series you felt sorry for Mark Kessler, but in the book he was just plain awful. His sister, Doris had a lot more depth on screen than in print and so did their parents, Peter and Esther Kessler (Vincent Gardiner and Kaye Ballard.)

If you never saw the series, I say check it out, you won't be disappointed. If you never read the book, I say skip it, you will be. ( )

Johnny Edge is a picture man. He lived thirty years in the picture business. He went that way together with Peter Kessler since Johnny came to Rochester to go his own way. Johnny had the ideas and Peter the money. They became best friends like a family and Peter went the way together with Johnny and all the other fellows.

The Dream Merchants show the way of the beginnings in the movie business, based in New York, with the movement to Hollywood and into the era of sound pictures. It is a lively story, told very vivid. The people seem to appear in front of the inner eye by reading. The story comes to live by reading. I love the way Harold Robbins wrote his books and the Dream Merchants is one of his best bestseller. In fact, all his books were bestsellers and it‘s difficult to decide which one is on top of them. I decided for me: the latest I had read is always the best. And I read his books again and again, a second and third and, I will read them, a tenth time.

I suggest you to read this book and all the other novels by Harold Robbins for your pleasure as a reader. His books were still one of the best fictional novels.
So long! ( )