When we think of Hollywood we often tend to think about it during its Golden Age. It was a glamorous time when the movies really soared from its silent era heydays to talkies and beyond, and the celluloid dream of making it big in Tinsel Town was the American Dream. Of course with any time period not everything was perfect despite its beautiful veneer. Women were treated differently let alone people of a different color or race. Yet in spite of it all you cannot help but feel nostalgic of the promise of the era.
With all that said you can imagine my enthusiasm when the trailer for the upcoming Netflix Limited Series, Hollywood, created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan was released. In this new series, we are transported to Hollywood's Golden Age but with a twist in its retelling of history seen through the perspectives of a couple of young hopefuls with a dream.
Before the series debuts on the streaming platform on May 1st, here are a couple of books you can read until then. They include recent releases and classic novels to even a memoir written by a real movie star.
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A Touch of Stardust by Kate Alcott
I remember when I first heard about this book it was on a commercial on Turner Classic Movies, which was quite fitting given its story. The novel follows Julie Crawford, an aspiring screenwriter who becomes a personal assistant to film star Carole Lombard while working on the production of the greatest movie about to be made - Gone with the Wind.
This is the perfect novel for cinephiles, especially fans of classic movies. Kate Alcott does such a great job in blending fiction with reality that you feel as if you were there with Julie witnessing the magic of the movies both on screen and off. We get to be a part of the behind the scenes drama between David O. Selznick and the changing wheel of directors as well as the epic romance between Carole Lombard and Gone with the Wind star Clark Gable. Julie even gets her own Hollywood romance with Selznick's assistant, Andy Weinstein.
From the making of the big budget production to its long awaited release, this book is pure cinematic gold from beginning to end.
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Have you ever wanted to know more about the greatest star in Hollywood? Well, one reporter is about to get the inside scoop. When legendary film icon, Evelyn Hugo, contacts aspiring writer, Monique Grant, to give her final interview Monique is immediately intrigued. Why would the greatest actress of all time want to share her story with a regular person like her? And what is there left to say about her extraordinary life that the public does not already know? As it turns out - everything.
We follow Evelyn Hugo from her early beginnings in Hollywood to her climb to fame that suddenly propels her to superstardom. Along the way we also learn about her famous - and sometimes even infamous - seven husbands as well as her greatest kept secret that she is finally ready to share with the world.
When I read this novel, I could not put it down. It felt like reading or talking to a real life actress about her life and learning every secret she was more than willing to share. Taylor Jenkins Reid takes us on a whirlwind of a journey filled with passion, love, and the highs and lows of Hollywood that only those who have been there could have ever truly known let alone experienced. If you are a fan of Elizabeth Taylor or Rita Hayworth, then you are going to love Evelyn Hugo.
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The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Towards the end of his life, F. Scott Fitzgerald spent his remaining years in Hollywood working as a writer on a few movies. During this time he wrote his final but unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, or originally titled The Love of the Last Tycoon, which was inspired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film producer, Irving Thalberg.
The novel follows a young ambitious film producer, Monroe Stahr, and his complicated relationship with his mentor and rival, Pat Brady. Apart from this, it also follows his amorous affair with an Irish immigrant, Kathleen Moore, who closely resembles his deceased wife. Similar to Fitzgerald's other novel, The Great Gatsby, the story is told through the perspective of a Nick Carraway-like figure in Cecelia Brady, the daughter of Pat Brady, who is also in love with Monroe.
Despite how the novel was edited and published posthumously, you can tell and appreciate from what was completed how great it would have been as it starts to pull back the curtain on the Hollywood industry. Just as the story gets interesting with Monroe and Cecelia's growing relationship tied in with the tension brewing from his affair with Kathleen and his looming confrontation with Pat Brady, we are left in anticipation with no resolution. While there have been editions that included notes on what was to happen next, it still does not feel the same.
Among the many film adaptations made throughout the years, Amazon Prime released their own adaptation through their short-lived series, The Last Tycoon, starring Matt Bomer, Kelsey Grammar, and Lily Collins. While the series drifts away into their own iteration and continuation, you can see some of the elements they borrowed from the original source.
So, although we are left to wonder from what was left behind or go by various interpretations of what could have been, for a brief moment we were a part of Hollywood, the way Fitzgerald saw it.
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Watch Me by Anjelica Huston
Anjelica Huston is amazing, let's just make that clear if it was not already. We may know her from her films such as Prizzi's Honor, The Grifters, or even as Morticia Addams in The Addams Family movies, she is an icon in her own right going beyond being just the daughter of acclaimed film director, John Huston.
In 2013 and 2014, she wrote and published two memoirs entitled A Story Lately Told and Watch Me. A Story Lately Told follows her upbringing told in three parts based on the locations she lived in; Ireland representing her childhood growing up and witnessing her father's career, followed by London being her teenage years after her parent's divorce and mother's death, and then New York during her young adult years as a model just before she made the decision to move to California.
Watch Me is basically Part Two of her story, which takes us to her early days in Hollywood as she begins her career as an actress. Acting was a profession she surprisingly never would have imagined after her very first movie, A Walk with Love Death, which she starred in when she was sixteen-years-old and was directed by her father, was critically panned especially towards her acting. Now many years later from her first movie, she rediscovers a newfound love of acting and later even directing while at the same time beginning a seventeen year relationship with Jack Nicholson.
Watch Me is basically Part Two of her story, which takes us to her early days in Hollywood as she begins her career as an actress. Acting was a profession she surprisingly never would have imagined after her very first movie, A Walk with Love Death, which she starred in when she was sixteen-years-old and was directed by her father, was critically panned especially towards her acting. Now many years later from her first movie, she rediscovers a newfound love of acting and later even directing while at the same time beginning a seventeen year relationship with Jack Nicholson.
Her entire autobiography told in two books is such a fascinating read with Watch Me being the origin story of how a young girl from A Story Lately Told really came into her own. Both memoirs are great but not because it delves into the world of Hollywood royalty, but because they are about the extraordinary life of such a talented female artist who lived through hurdles, triumphs, and all, ultimately finding herself.
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Missing Reels by Farran Smith Nehme
Often times stories about actors or films made during Hollywood's Golden Age are set far back to its time period to reveal its history through a first hand account (and there goes the irony of this blog post). Yet what about the regular people who love movies, some of whom were not even alive during Hollywood's pastime? In writer and blogger Farran Smith Nehme's debut novel, she takes us back not further into the past but to 1987 New York where a young cinephile makes an interesting discovery.
Ceinwen Reilly loves classic movies with the silent era being her favorite as is her obsession with Jean Harlow whom she tries to emulate. After discovering that her elderly neighbor, Miriam, may have starred in a long lost film adaptation of The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ceinwen goes on a search to find the remaining missing reels. Along the way, she meets a handsome British math professor named Matthew, whose fellow colleagues are just as invested in films as Ceinwen and who help her track down the lost film.
The novel plays with fans and cinephiles' admiration for movies, if not obsessive at times but is mostly meant with good intentions. Ceinwen and Matthew are almost a riff off of Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant in His Girl Friday when they are together and some of the fictional places mentioned such as The Brody Institute and Civitas film studio will make you wish that they exist.
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Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
I know what you are thinking - isn't that the movie starring Sharon Tate? Yes, but also no. The film adaptation of the best-selling novel by Jacqueline Susann only borrows some of the original story as well as changing its setting to the time of the movie's release in the 1960s. The novel itself is entirely different with themes that show the dark side of the entertainment industry and the climb to fame and success, especially for a woman.
In 1945, Anne Welles moves to New York with wide-eyed hope and aspiration far from what her humble hometown could ever give her. Upon arrival she meets vaudevillian and aspiring actress, Neely O'Hara and later through a series of events she also befriends famous and beautiful actress, Jennifer North. In the years and decades that pass from the 1940s and 1950s to the late 1960s, all three women face the many challenges of success with only their "dolls," which are amphetamines and barbiturates pills, as their source of comfort to get through it.
As sensational as the novel was when it was released, it is still as delicious of read as it was before taking you on a tumultuous ride through different facets of the industry with sharp corners that could take a sudden turn. The main three characters are worthy of empathy, especially as you read how success affects them for better or worse in comparison to the things or ideals they want most. There is a whole array of characters and events involved in each woman's journey that both help but also brings them down. In the end it is not so much what life throws at you, or particularly the kind of life these women faced, but how you handle it. In this case, they reached out for the "dolls."
*This post is not sponsored. All thoughts and opinions are my own. All photos were pulled from Google Images are credited to their original sources.
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