Over forty legends of the film business recount their first trip to Hollywood. Actors, directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, and editors-half of them women-recall the long joinery, their initial impressions, their struggle to find work, and the love for making movies that kept them going. Drawn from letters, speeches, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies-and illustrated with over sixty vintage photographs and illustrations-each story is intimate and unique, but all speak to our universal need to follow our passions and be part of a community that feeds the soul. This anthology is edited and annotated by award-winning author and film historian Cari Beauchamp, the only person to twice be named as an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholar. Of MY FIRST TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, Academy-Award-winning film preservationist, historian, and author Kevin Brownlow writes: "What every film fan years for-first-hand, eyewitness accounts of a Hollywood none of us can remember and all of us wish we'd known. Completely fascinating." And film critic and historian Leonard Maltin writes: "What a priceless parade of evocative and highly entertaining memories. Once you start reading you won't want to stop."
Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited first work of fiction—at once hilarious, delicious and brutal—is the always surprising, sometimes shocking, novelization of his Academy Award winning film. RICK DALTON—Once he had his own TV series, but now Rick’s a washed-up villain-of-the week drowning his sorrows in whiskey sours. Will a phone call from Rome save his fate or seal it? CLIFF BOOTH—Rick’s stunt double, and the most infamous man on any movie set because he’s the only one there who might have got away with murder. . . . SHARON TATE—She left Texas to chase a movie-star dream, and found it. Sharon’s salad days are now spent on Cielo Drive, high in the Hollywood Hills. CHARLES MANSON—The ex-con’s got a bunch of zonked-out hippies thinking he’s their spiritual leader, but he’d trade it all to be a rock ‘n’ roll star.
On August 5, 1958, Jack Warner spent six hours playing baccarat, taking $4,000 from the tables at Cannes before stepping out into the night. He drove home along a winding road in a sporty little Alfa-Romeo, and was negotiating a tricky turn when a truck leapt in front of him. The Alfa was destroyed, but Warner was saved—thrown out the door to land forty feet from the burning car. Around the world, the newspapers told of the death of the king of Hollywood. But Warner wasn’t finished yet. One of the true legends of the movie business, Warner had wielded absolute power over his studio since the silent era. He produced Casablanca and The Jazz Singer; he feuded with Errol Flynn, and gave the green light to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? starring Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. As the studio system crumbled, Warner’s control remained unquestioned, and in this engaging autobiography, he shows the man behind the crown. Jack L. Warner is portrayed by Stanley Tucci in the Ryan Murphy TV series Feud.
Leonard Maltin is America's best-known film historian, film reviewer, and author of books that have sold more than 7 million copies. He remains a thought leader on past and present Hollywood through his website www.leonardmaltin.com, and a social media presence that includes an active Facebook page and a Twitter feed with more than 66,000 followers. In Hooked on Hollywood, Maltin opens up his personal archive to take readers on a fascinating journey through film history. He first interviewed greats of Hollywood as a precocious teenager in 1960s New York City. He used what he learned from these luminaries to embark on a 50-year (and counting) career that has included New York Times bestselling books, 30 years of regular appearances coast-to-coast on Entertainment Tonight, movie introductions on Turner Classic Movies, and countless other television and radio performances. Early Maltin interviews had literally been stored in his garage for more than 40 years until GoodKnight Books brought them to light for the first time in this volume to entertain readers and inform future film scholars. Teenaged Leonard Maltin landed one-on-ones with Warner Bros. sexy pre-Code siren Joan Blondell; Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated actor Burgess Meredith; Cecil B. DeMille's right-hand-man Henry Wilcoxon; Oscar-winning actor Ralph Bellamy; playwright, novelist, and MGM screenwriter Anita Loos; early screen heartthrob George O'Brien; classic Paramount director Mitchell Leisen; and others. Later in his career, Maltin sat down with men and women who worked inside the top studios during the heyday of movies and early television. This second set of in-depth interviews reveals what life was like under Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Harry Cohn, and the other titans of Hollywood. What emerges is a fascinating and at times uproarious homage to Golden Era Hollywood. In addition, key feature articles from Maltin's newsletter Movie Crazy are published here for the first time, providing new perspectives on the Warner Bros. classics Casablanca and Gold Diggers of 1933 as well as many other masterpieces—and bombs—from Hollywood history. Finally, Maltin looks back at what he considers Hollywood's "overlooked" studio, RKO Radio Pictures, which gave us such classics as King Kong and the many dance musicals of Astaire and Rogers. In Leonard's unique and witty style, he looks at dozens of obscure RKO features from the 1930s, including saucy pre-Codes, musicals, comedies, and mysteries. Leonard Maltin's love of movies and vast knowledge about their history shines through from the first page to the last in this unique volume, which includes 150 rare photos and a comprehensive index.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Thank you to Sheila Nevins for putting all this down for posterity. Women need this kind of honest excavation of the process of living.” —Meryl Streep An astonishingly frank, funny, poignant book for any woman who wishes they had someone who would say to them, “This happened to me, learn from my mistakes and my successes. Because you don’t get smarter as you get older, you get braver.” Sheila Nevins is the best friend you never knew you had. She is your discreet confidante you can tell any secret to, your sage mentor at work who helps you navigate the often uneven playing field, your wise sister who has “been there, done that,” your hysterical girlfriend whose stories about men will make laugh until you cry. Sheila Nevins is the one person who always tells it like it is. In You Don’t Look Your Age, the famed documentary producer (as President of HBO Documentary Films for over 30 years, Nevins has rightfully been credited with creating the documentary rebirth) finally steps out from behind the camera and takes her place front and center. In these pages you will read about the real life challenges of being a woman in a man's world, what it means to be a working mother, what it’s like to be an older woman in a youth-obsessed culture, the sometimes changing, often sweet truth about marriages, what being a feminist really means, and that you are in good company if your adult children don’t return your phone calls. So come, sit down, make yourself comfortable, (and for some of you, don’t forget the damn reading glasses). You’re in for a treat.
James Mottram traces the roots of this generation of American film-makers to Steven Soderbergh's 'Sex, Lies and Videotape' and looks at how many kickstarted their careers and made their mark at Robert Redford's Sundance Institute in Utah or at his film festival.
In the first book of a thrilling new romantic suspense trilogy, USA Today bestselling author Leslie A. Kelly shows just how hot - and how dangerous - Hollywood can be. In the shadows, someone is always watching Aspiring screenwriter Jessica Jensen grew up on movies starring heartthrob Reece Winchester, the eldest brother of a Hollywood dynasty. She never thought she'd meet the man in person, though. Actor, director, millionaire, and gorgeous mystery man--he's every woman's fantasy. Reece wants Jessica the moment he sees her, and he's a man who always gets what he wants. At first he was only after a night in her bed, but as he comes to know the smart, confident woman beneath the stunning exterior, he realizes once will never be enough. Unfortunately, Jessica's real-life Cinderella story is about to take a deadly turn... Reece's world is filled with fierce ambition and dark family secrets the Winchesters desperately want to hide. But he and his brothers aren't the only ones who know those secrets. Someone else is out there, waiting to strike. Waiting-and always watching. When danger finally steps out of the shadows, Reece will have to face his past. And Jessica will have to decide just how far she can trust the man she loves with her heart...and her life. "Kelly hits all the right notes here and balances the romance with suspense to very nice effect, making this a must read for readers who like a bit of danger with their love story. Recommended." --Library Journal "The romance between this pair was hot and exciting, but it was the ending that I really liked because it had me on the edge-of-my-seat. ...I would recommend Watching You by Leslie A. Kelly, if you enjoy romantic suspense, the opposites attract trope, or books by authors Susan Stoker, Cora Brent, Kaylea Cross and Laura Kaye." -- Harlequin Junkie
As the last season of Family Affair comes to a close, prime-time teen star Kaitlin Burke is no closer to deciding what she wants to do after the show ends. Struggling with career choices and bummed over a ridiculous catfight with her BFF, Liz, Kaitlin is so mixed up she even starts to semi-bond with her archnemesis, Sky. Worst of all, she falls in with two of Hollywood's biggest party fiends when one of them asks her, "Don't you ever do what you want to do?" Shopping sprees and the Tinseltown nightlife seem fun at first, but soon Kaitlin realizes that being a paparazzi princess just might be her downfall. You won't want to miss the fourth book in Jen Calonita's beloved six-book Secrets of My Hollywood Life series.
Hollywood marks the fifth episode in Gore Vidal's "Narratives of Empire," his celebrated series of six historical novels that form his extended biography of the United States. It is 1917, and President Woodrow Wilson is about to lead the country into the Great War in Europe. In California, a new industry is born that will irreversibly transform America. Caroline Sanford, the alluring heroine of Empire, discovers the power of moving pictures to manipulate reality as she vaults to screen stardom under the name of Emma Traxler. Just as Caroline must balance her two lives--West Coast movie star and East Coast newspaper publisher and senator's mistress--so too must America balance its two power centers: Hollywood and Washington. Here is history as only Gore Vidal can re-create it: brimming with intrigue and scandal, peopled by the greats of the silver screen and American politics. "Hollywood shimmers with the illusion of politics and the politics of illusion," wrote the Chicago Sun-Times. "A wonderfully literate and consistently impressive work of fiction that clearly belongs on a shelf with Vidal's best," said The New York Times Book Review. With a new Introduction by the author.
"Maitland Ward joined the cast of The Bold and the Beautiful as a teenager and found fame as the loveable, sexy (but not too sexy) co-ed Rachel McGuire in the later seasons of the beloved ABC sitcom Boy Meets World. Forced into the "good girl" role time and again, she was denied the darker, meatier roles she truly wanted to sink her teeth into. And so she turned away from Disney gold, and eventually established herself as one of the most-respected actresses in porn today. Full of jaw-and panty-dropping anecdotes, as well personal stories from her time on one of the most beloved sitcoms of the '90s, RATED X won't be your run-of-the-mill celebrity memoir. Readers will get to see Hollywood and triple-x stardom up close and personal, and in a whole new light. Her story is not a cautionary tale. It's a story of hope and triumph about a woman who took her desire by the reins, shot to the top of the industry, and has become one of porn's most prominent figures with crossover appeal-all at the age of forty. Sharp, provocative, and unexpected, RATED X is the story of a Disney Princess who-unapologetically-found her fairytale in porn"--
