Easy the Hard Way is a full-life story told with gusto, often hilarious, sometimes touching. It will bring a lump to your throat when you least expect it. Joe Pasternak emerges from the pages of his autobiography as an imaginative and resourceful man of tremendous drive and honesty, who is also a warm and deeply human talent.
Pasternak's early life reads like the script of an American dream picture: born in a tiny town in Transylvania, son of the
shammas
at the local synagogue, at seventeen Joe threw off the shackles and made his way to Philadelphia. He knew no English, knew in fact little of anything, but he had sense enough, he writes, to go to New York.
The rise of Joe Pasternak was not always in a straight ascending line, but sooner or later it always landed him one rung higher. From Paramount in Jamaica he went to Universal in Hollywood and thence to Europe to supervise Universal's operations abroad before the war. Those were the great days of movie making in Germany and Pasternak played an important part in them.
As a producer he is credited with helping such great stars as Deanna Durbin, Judy Garland, Mario Lanza and others to achieve stardom in Hollywood.