In one of her most ambitious works, Joyce Carol Oates boldly reimagines the inner, poetic, and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker--the child, the woman, the fated celebrity, and idolized blonde the world came to know as Marilyn Monroe. In a voice startlingly intimate and rich, Norma Jeane tells her own story of an emblematic American artist--intensely conflicted and driven--who had lost her way. A powerful portrait of Hollywood's myth and an extraordinary...

For ninety years, Hollywood's brightest stars have favored the Chateau Marmont as a home away from home. An apartment house-turned-hotel, it has been the backdrop for generations of gossip and folklore: 1930s bombshell Jean Harlow took lovers during her third honeymoon there; director Nicholas Ray slept with his sixteen-year-old Rebel Without a Cause star Natalie Wood; Anthony Perkins and Tab Hunter met poolside and began a secret affair; Jim Morrison...

"The little-known story of screenwriter Salka Viertel, whose salons in 1930s and 40s Hollywood created a refuge for a multitude of famous figures who had escaped the horrors of World War ll. Hollywood was created by its "others"; that is, by women, Jews, and immigrants. Salka Viertel was all three and so much more. She was the screenwriter for five of Greta Garbo's movies and also her most intimate friend. At one point during the Irving Thalberg years,...

The Golden Age of Hollywood utilized many backgrounds, from industrial zones of film studios to the mansions where the glamorous live, partied, and were buried. Yet few traces of that Tinseltown have been documented. Bahn takes us on a tour that is part history, part archaeology, and enlivened by reminiscence.

"In 1950, Ingrid Bergman already a major star after movies like Casablanca and Joan of Arc has a baby out of wedlock with her Italian lover, film director Roberto Rossellini. Previously held up as an icon of purity, Bergman's fall shocked her legions of American fans. Growing up in Hollywood, Jessica Malloy watches as her PR executive father helps make Ingrid a star at Selznick Studio. Over years of fleeting interactions with the actress, Jesse comes...

It places the spotlight on one of filmmaking's unsung heroes, casting director Marion Dougherty, and takes viewers on a journey through 50 years of Hollywood history from an entirely new perspective. Relying on her exquisite taste and gut instincts, Dougherty helped usher in the 'New Hollywood' with movies like Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and Bonnie and Clyde.

Marilyn Monroe made history by standing over a subway grating in a white pleated halter dress designed by William Travilla. Hubert de Givenchy immortalized the Little Black Dress with a single opening scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's. A red nylon jacket signaled to audiences that James Dean was a Rebel Without a Cause. For more than a century, costume designers have left indelible impressions on moviegoers' minds, yet until now, so little has been...

"PI Savannah Reid has delved into the ugly side of SoCal's celebrity culture more than once. But the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency may have bitten off more than they can chew when a Hollywood legend makes a deadly comeback... It will be a cold day in San Carmelita before Savannah skips over a high-profile homicide case, especially one attached to a tasty reward. But when 90-year-old former silver screen siren Lucinda Faraday is murdered inside...

"Disillusioned with what the American film industry had become by the 1970s, Bette Davis remembered a time when "women owned Hollywood." This book is their story. Historian J.E. Smyth challenges the belief, reinforced in too many histories and public comments, that feminism died between 1930 and 1950, that women were not important within the Hollywood studio system, that male directors called all the shots, and that the most important Hollywood writer...