The Penguin Book of Hollywood

Hollywood has been a household name for almost a century, famous for its glamour and notorious for its cynicism. It has been written about by moguls, studio executives, producers, directors, screenwriters, and actors, as well as by journalists and novelists. It has even been the subject of a study by an anthropologist. Among some of the less obvious persons who have encountered life in the motion-picture colony are Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, P.G. Wodehouse, Luis Bunuel, J.B. Priestley, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Bertolt Brecht, Aldous Huxley and Kenneth Tynan. Christopher Silvester has distilled this anthology from memoirs and autobiographies, letters and articles. Hollywood is represented here by the full range of its moods and voices - the grandiose and the witty, the sentimental and the bitter, the enthusiastic and the disapproving, and the self-important and the deflating. There are numerous accounts of the scandals, eccentricities and the excesses, the jealousies and vanities, and the abiding charm of this peculiarly American institution.