🧲 Books like this
An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood
Neal Gabler · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick
Mallory O'Meara · 368 pages
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
Mark Harris · 496 pages
The epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967-Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Doolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde-and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood, and America, foreverIt's the mid-1960s, and westerns, war movies and blockbuster musicals-Mary Poppins, The
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
Peter Biskind · 506 pages
"Easy Riders, Raging Bulls vividly chronicles the exuberance and excess of the times: the startling success of Easy Rider and the equally alarming circumstances under which it was made, with drugs, booze, and violent rivalry between costars Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda dominating the set; how a small production company named BBS became the guiding spirit of the youth rebellion in Hollywood and ho
The Parade's Gone By...
Kevin Brownlow · 577 pages
Passing in review here is the silent film era and Mr. Brownlow has done a splendid job of vitalizing the past through interviews and personal research. Most of this material has never seen print before and the filmophile will go wild over reminiscences such as Joseph Henabery's (who assisted Griffith on Intolerance). And the snaps: Garbo who loved watching talking pictures in reverse but refused t
City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s
Otto Friedrich · 495 pages
Close to being the last word of the golden age of the flicks. All the stars are here and more, but it is the author's perspective that makes this so interesting and captivating. Hollywood's power lay in its ability to create potent images that defined a nation's awareness of itself. But often the creators were unaware of how well they succeeded. The author here gives us the dream machine's layers
West of Eden: An American Place
Jean Stein · 343 pages
"An epic, mesmerizing oral history of Hollywood and Los Angeles by the author of the contemporary classic Edie; Jean Stein transformed the art of oral history in her groundbreaking book Edie : American Girl, an indelible portrait of Andy Warhol 'superstar' Edie Sedgwick. Now, in West of Eden, she turns her lens toward the city Sedgwick came from--Los Angeles--and a mythic cast of fortune hunters a
A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940
Victoria Wilson
"Fifteen years in the making, the first volume of the full-scale astonishing life of one of our greatest screen actresses whose career in pictures spanned four decades beginning with the coming of sound--the first to delve deeply into Stanwyck's rich, complex life and to explore her extraordinary range of eighty-eight motion pictures, many of them iconic; her work, her world, her Hollywood through
Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System
Sharon Waxman · 448 pages
Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud
Shaun Considine · 457 pages
Explosive, exhaustive and unsparing, the inside, tell-all story of the celebrated, long-term feud of Hollywood's two greatest screen legends, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
Montgomery Clift: A Biography
Patricia Bosworth · 438 pages
John Wayne: The Life and Legend
Scott Eyman · 682 pages
"A revelatory biography of the enduringly popular John Wayne that draws on more than 100 interviews as well as exclusive access to the files of Wayne's film production company to answer the question why he became and remains an iconic American figure"--
Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations
Peter Evans, Ava Gardner · 293 pages
A self-portrait of the late film legend's golden-era Hollywood life traces her impoverished childhood in North Carolina through the heights of her career, sharing details of her relationships with such figures as Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, and George C. Scott.
The Star Machine
Jeanine Basinger · 608 pages
Film studies authority Basinger gives us an entertaining look into the "star machine," examining how, at the height of the studio system, from the 1930s to the 1950s, the studios manufactured star actors and actresses. She shows us how the machine worked when it worked, how it failed when it didn't, and how irrelevant it could sometimes be. She gives us the "human factor," case studies focusing on
Louise Brooks: A Biography
Barry Paris · 609 pages
No other movie actress made so strong an impact with so short a roster of films. Yet Louise Brooks spent a quarter of a century in oblivion before an unsought "resurrection" confirmed her place in cinema history and generated her brilliant second career as a writer-iconoclast. Her story begins in turn-of-the-century Kansas: at age ten, a seasoned performer; at fifteen, discovered by Ted Shawn and
Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz
Coyne S. Sanders, Thomas W. Gilbert · 386 pages
A dual biography of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball focuses on the star-crossed marriage that sired one of the most powerful production empires in television history but ended in disintegration.
Natasha: The Biography Of Natalie Wood
Suzanne Finstad · 387 pages
***Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood* is a well-written exploration into the experience, life, and ultimate tragedy of one of Hollywood's most beautiful and gifted stars. It reveals in poignant and often harrowing detail, the abuse and exploitation that the legendary starlet endured to reach the pinnacle of success.**
Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn
Donald Spoto · 288 pages
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood's Golden Age
Robert J. Wagner, Scott Eyman · 262 pages
The legendary actor and best-selling author of Pieces of My Heart offers a nostalgic look at Hollywood's golden age, touring favorite hotspots and exploring period business practices before the advent of paparazzi culture and high-powered agents.
Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century
Sam Kashner, Nancy Schoenberger · 500 pages
The definitive story of Hollywood's most famous coupleHe was a tough-guy Welshman softened by the affections of a breathtakingly beautiful woman; she was a modern-day Cleopatra madly in love with her own Mark Antony. For nearly a quarter of a century, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were Hollywood royalty, and their fiery romance—often called "the marriage of the century"—was the most notoriou
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
Lawrence Wright · 448 pages
"Based on more than two hundred personal interviews with both current and former Scientologists--both famous and less well known--and years of archival research, Lawrence Wright uses his extraordinary investigative skills to uncover for us the inner workings of the Church of Scientology: its origins in the imagination of science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard; its struggles to find acceptance as a
Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman
Sam Wasson · 260 pages
A closeup examination of Blake Edwards' classic film, Breakfast at Tiffany's, winner of two Oscars.
The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks
Nicole LaPorte · 504 pages
LaPorte goes behind the hype to reveal how Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg joined forces to create DreamWorks.