If you favor the insider tidbits that Robert Osborne sprinkles around TCM’s film offerings, then you’ll enjoy this schooling on one of Hollywood’s legendary pioneers. I say schooling because the 480+ pages of this work will pass for a classroom textbook.

The publication includes 18 pages of footnotes, a six-page bibliography, and a 12-page index. Added are 42 pages of Walsh’s filmography and a 32-page picture insert. The filmography displays Walsh’s early acting/directing (1913-1915), most of his directorial attributions (through 1964), as well as a few films where he served as a consultant or a writer. The photos have been taken from Mary Walsh’s (Raoul’s third wife) collection as well as from the archives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Despite her six-page “Acknowledgments” section that reads like an Academy Awards acceptance speech, Marilyn Ann Moss’s five-page “Prologue” sets the stage for a reading about this filmmaker, whose personal life was marked by grief, adventure and daring, and who consistently demonstrated his ability to grab whatever assignment and get it done admirably—on time and under budget.

But this is not a stodgy course-book reading. Moss displays her film historian knowledge in a fairly breezy journalist style. She does seem to embrace a formulaic approach to most chapters. Usually Moss renders a global appraisal of the movie industry or perhaps American culture; she shifts into a synopsis of a given movie title together with particular details about any production problems, criticisms of filmic achievements, or revelations about encounters with actors, other directors, or the moneymen; then she interprets any personal collisions or problems in Walsh’s private life; and finally wraps up that period.

Born in March 1887 as Albert Edward, Walsh left home soon after his cherished, story-telling mother died when he was 15 years old. He traveled out West and ventured into cow-punching, horse wrangling, and generally gadding about. Moss admits that, as an inveterate story-teller, Walsh’s imagination (as recorded in his autobiography) was greatly at odds with reality. Walsh’s knack for fact-tion in addition to his general taciturnity and hyperbole about his personal life create obstacles for any biographer.

Walsh fell into movie-making because of his physique as much as due to his horse-riding ability. He altered his moniker to Raoul for his stints in front of the camera and kept the name after he eventually was lured behind the camera under the tutelage of D.W. Griffith. Although he lost an eye through an automobile accident, Walsh never lost his vision in making pictures to entertain an audience. According to Moss, Walsh disdained making “art” from film or in expressing personal agenda or social criticism. His filmmaking usually cast the heroic loner against nature with only a hardy woman at his side.

A self-deprecating, ribald workaholic, Walsh’s bugaboos were the financial precariousness due his gambling on races and later in raising horses. It seems the silver screen’s pioneer held finances like quicksilver. These financial and emotional distractions pursued him through three marriages, not ceasing until he died at age 93 in December 1980.

Moss’s renderings of Walsh’s craft and craftiness throughout decades of change in technology and studio life are extraordinarily enlightening. Slightly shy of being Raoul Walsh’s definitive biography, this critical work should be a classic for any film buff. ( )