There are many arguments made with regards to the greatest film year ever. Authors Stephen Farber and Michael McClellan are the latest to make the case that 1962 is one … Continue Reading Interview: Author Michael McClellan Talks New Book
With the global pandemic keeping us all in our homes now is a great time to take up a book! I’d been hearing about Christina Lane’s biography on Hitchcock’s collaborator … Continue Reading Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock
There have been several fictionalized “exposes” of Hollywood, from Day of the Locust to The Carpetbaggers. But none have been properly contextualized through the lens of women, many of who … Continue Reading I Lost My Girlish Laughter
I always enter into celebrity autobiographies with a fair bit of trepidation. I know getting information straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, is the best way when it … Continue Reading Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years
There’s a reason author Jeanine Basinger’s books are so thick: they’re filled with classic film knowledge and analysis you won’t find anywhere else. Whether it’s deconstructing star personas or the … Continue Reading The Movie Musical
There’s something inherently compelling about people who have died on-stage. The ultimate proof of dying for one’s art, so to speak. As authors Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns lay out … Continue Reading The Show Won’t Go On
1939 turns 80 this year but should you read 1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year in celebration?
Let’s look at the latest biography on the Queen, Olivia de Havilland!
One of the great fallacies about filmmaking is that it’s only recently that women have taken part in it. But as we’re seeing through the release of works like Be … Continue Reading The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick
He was a successful Hollywood screenwriter whose words shaped several of Frank Capra’s classic features. She was the actress whose beauty (and powerful set of lungs) captured the heart … Continue Reading Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollywood Memoir
Author David Thomson is one of the most prolific writers on classic film and Hollywood history. His past works, including Moments That Made the Movies, The Big Screen, and Beneath … Continue Reading Author David Thomson Discusses Classic Films and ‘Sleeping With Strangers’
The Chateau Marmont has never been one of Hollywood’s splashiest hotels. For a long while it was noted more for its infamy, being the place where comic John Belushi died. … Continue Reading The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont
Howard Hughes is one of the most enigmatic and, to this day, mysterious figures in Hollywood history. Much of his life remains mired in mystery and rumor, stories told in … Continue Reading Seduction: Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood
It’s amazing how many interviews with classic era stars are finally being given the opportunity to engage with fans. It’s hard not to be jealous upon reading David Fantle and … Continue Reading Hollywood Heyday: 75 Candid Interviews with Golden Age Legends
It’s amazing to go to your local library and discover a biography you never knew existed; so it was that I pulled out Frank Castellucio and Alvin Walker’s The Other … Continue Reading The Other Side of Ethel Mertz: The Life Story of Vivian Vance
If you read my extensive interview with Michael Curtiz biographer, Alan K. Rode, then you know Curtiz was a director with a mania for filmmaking. The famed Hungarian helmer of … Continue Reading Book Review: Michael Curtiz – A Life in Film
