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Books & Authors

Hollywood

On July 13, 1923, the famous Hollywood Sign came to life, dedicated to a Hollywood Hills subdivision. However, there were a few extra letters on the sign back then: it read Hollywoodland. These letters were later dropped in 1949.  Ever since this dedication, the landmark has served as a visual reminder to those nearby that one has, in fact, arrived to Hollywood. Check out the following book titles that explore the lives of classic actors and actresses.  It is a day of Hollywood, after all. 

Styling the Stars: Lost Treasures from the Twentieth Century Fox Archive by Angela Cartwright and Tom McLaren

Revered for their indisputable sense of style, classic Hollywood films continue to inspire today's fashions. But the carefully crafted appearances of the timeless characters personified by the likes of Clark Gable, Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn came as the result of meticulous hairstyling, makeup and costume design...Written by Angela Cartwright and Tom McLaren, with a foreword by Maureen O'Hara, this collection of candid rarities offers a glimpse into the details of prepping Hollywood's most iconic personalities, plus revelatory stories about Twentieth Century Fox classics.

The Leading Men of MGM by Jane Ellen Wayne

Gable, Tracy, Stewart, Old Blue Eyes and the King were Hollywood gods; men wanted to be them, women just plain wanted them. As celluloid royalty and soldiers in Louis B. Mayer's box office army, the men of "The Leading Men of MGM" captured the hearts and imaginations of the movie-going public during a thirty-year stretch encompassing three wars and the ultimate downfall of a studio empire. While their roles onscreen are some of the most memorable ever captured, they often pale in comparison to the lives these men lived behind the scenes...Offering a warts-and-all look at fifteen-plus legendary tinsel town stars, in addition to exploring their successes as geniune Hollywood talent, author Jane Ellen Wayne has written a must-have volume for film buffs of all stripes.

Enchantment: the Life of Audrey Hepburn by Donald Spoto

Her name is synonymous with elegance, style and grace. Over the course of her extraordinary life and career, Audrey Hepburn captured hearts around the world and created a public image that stands as one of the most recognizable and beloved in recent memory. But despite her international fame and her tireless efforts on behalf of UNICEF, Audrey was also known for her intense privacy. With unprecedented access to studio archives, friends and colleagues who knew and loved Audrey, bestselling author Donald Spoto provides an intimate and moving account of a beautiful, elusive and talented woman.

 

Elizabeth Taylor: Her Life in Style by Susan Kelly

She was a star who was both idolized as a screen goddess and viewed by her adoring public as someone who was approachable, relatable and fun. This luminous photographic retrospective of the great roles and public and private moments captures the style and essence of one of Hollywood's last great stars.

 

Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant by Jennifer Grant

The author is the only child of Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon. This portrait is of the relationship between a daughter and her father, one of America's most iconic male movie stars. She writes of their life together through her high school and college years until his death in 1986 at the age of eighty-two.

 

Tought Without a Gun: the Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart by Stefan Kanfer

In this comprehensive biography of one of the great movie icons of our time, Stefan Kanfer, the acclaimed biographer of Lucille Ball, Groucho Marx and Marlon Brando, illuminates the life and career of Humphrey Bogart. Along the way, Kanfer gives us a wide-reaching cultural appraisal of the movies many of us know and love as masterpieces of American cinema: "The Maltese Falcon," "Casablanca," "To Have and Have Not" and countless others.

 

Home: A Memoir of My Early Years by Julie Andrews

Since her first appearance on screen in "Mary Poppins," Julie Andrews has played a series of memorable roles that have endeared her to generations. But she has never told the story of her life before fame. Until now. In "Home: A Memoir of My Early Years," Julie takes her readers on a warm, moving and often humorous journey from a difficult upbringing in war-torn Britain to the brink of international stardom in America. Her memoir begins in 1935, when Julie was born to an aspiring vaudevillian mother and a teacher father, and takes readers to 1962, when Walt Disney himself saw her on Broadway and cast her as the world's most famous nanny.

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