What happens when powerful, high profile Hollywood producers decide their old wife is tired and they want a younger model? We all know the answer, as does Gigie Levangie, the former wife of uber-Hollywood exec, Brian Grazer. They may have been divorced for decades but Levangie has been successfully mining her private life to write snarky fiction for years. She’s back with her ... Read More...
Delayed Rays of a Star
The premise for Delayed Rays of a Star is one I love. In 1928 young photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt took a photo of three women at a party in Berlin (see below). One of them, Anna May Wong, was already famous as a Hollywood actress, but the other two, Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl had yet to achieve celebrity. Author Amanda Lee Koe takes this one photograph and spins it ... Read More...
The Paper Wasp by Lauren Acampora
The Paper Wasp is the story of two young women living in small Michigan town who were best friends. Up until high school that is, when Elise was discovered and left town for L.A. to become an actress. In losing her popular best friend, Abby floundered and even though she ended up as valedictorian she never fit in again. Now, a decade has passed and Elise’s star is on the rise ... Read More...
The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont
Everyone knows I’m not a big fan of non-fiction. It’s not that I think it’s all bad—I know it’s no different than fiction with lots of great stuff out there. It’s just that reading it makes me drowsy. I can’t get more than 10 pages in most non-fiction without wanting a nap. So, it’s got to have a big hook for me to bite and The Castle on Sunset does. It’s Shawn Levy’s history ... Read More...
The Only Woman in the Room
For those of you who aren’t old movie buffs…why not?! Old black and white movies with all their stylized glamour are one of the best escapes out there. But I digress. If you’re not aware of Hollywood in the 1930s then you won’t recognize the subject of Marie Benedict’s new novel The Only Woman in the Room. It’s Hedy Lamarr, who at the peak of her career, was known as one of the ... Read More...
Hollywood Women: The Girls in the Picture
Mary Pickford was one of the first Hollywood stars, having acted from the time she was a child to not only maintaining her film career when silent moves became ‘talkies’, but going on to create her own studio, giving her and her partners the creative control actors didn’t have at the time. Frances Marion was a screenwriter, one of the first women in the business, who ... Read More...
