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
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
With a wealth of biographies out there it’s often difficult to differentiate yourself from the herd by finding someone new to say. A figure like Alfred Hitchcock, outside of being … Continue Reading Alfred Hitchcock
Part of the reason I read film books is to have an outsider entice me to check out a movie. Where some of you come here to have me tell … Continue Reading High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic
Whether you’ve watched it once or countless times there’s no getting Casablanca out of your blood. “As Time Goes By,” the La Marseillaise sequence, Bogie and Bergman, Casablanca is the … Continue Reading We’ll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie
Tippi Hedren says in the introduction to her autobiography that so much has been written about her that it’s high time she set the record straight. Tippi is as succinct … Continue Reading Tippi: A Memoir
When I started reading Stephen Michael Shearer’s biography, Beautiful, on actress Hedy Lamarr I had no idea a documentary about the raven-haired starlet was being produced. Bombshell: The Life of Hedy … Continue Reading Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr
Today’s book is not a biography as the author would claim. Writer Margaret Talbot‘s biography/Hollywood history book The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father’s Twentieth Century is a fantastic blend … Continue Reading Old Hollywood Book Reviews: The Entertainer – Movies, Magic, and My Father’s Twentieth Century
