To get a start on your holiday gift buying or your own early fall reading, we offer the following Hollywood-related reading suggestions.
Gourmet Ghosts 2
by James Bartlett
James Bartlett wrote the first Gourmet Ghosts - Los Angeles after bar hopping in Hollywood and being told a ghostly tale that led him into the newspaper archives - and down many of the city's dark, historic rabbit holes. With an arsenal of poison, jealousy, despair, serial killers, scandals, guns, and the ghost stories left behind,
Gourmet Ghosts 2 is another collection of murder, mystery and history at dozens of bars, restaurants, hotels and landmarks across Los Angeles. These new weird tales, unpublished accounts, shocking photos and treasures uncovered in the newspaper archives take you from Downtown to The Valley. Discover where you can drink with the devil or dine with a ghost-your perfect Halloween companion.
Teen Idol On The Rocks: A Tale of Second Chances
by Bobby Rydell with Allan Slutsky
Written with award-winning author, Alan Slutsky, Bobby Rydell's biography "Teen Idol On The Rocks" takes you from the idyllic dance floor of American Bandstand and strains of his hits "Wild One" and "Volare" on a six-decade career and journey. One of rock and roll's earliest and most celebrated teen idols, Rydell's battles with alcoholism and his lifesaving double-transplant surgery, offers a humorous, tragic and inspiring story. Still going strong, Rydell will return to the silver screen next year in Taylor Hackford's The Comedian with Robert De Niro, 54 years after his indelible song-and-dance acting stint opposite Ann-Margret in the iconic movie musical
Bye Bye Birdie.
Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe
by Robert Matzen
Academy award winning actor Jimmy Stewart was born into a family with a proud military history and structured his life to fulfill that destiny. Mission begins with his years at Princeton, the Broadway years and his success as a Hollywood playboy and film star. The book chronicles how a movie star thwarted studio heads trying to side track him into a safe desk job. Jimmy eventually landed in the thick of the European theatre where he served with distinction. The man who came home from the war was much changed. Jimmy eventually rose to the rank of
Brigadier General in the
United States Air Force Reserve, the highest-ranking actor in military history.
Mission is the story he never told and it's one of those books you can't put down. It's the story of strong family ties, enduring friendships, military comradery and nightmares, Hollywood glitz and glamour, and people he encountered along the way.
Good Vibrations: My Life As A Beach Boy
by Mike Love and James S. Hirsch
As a founding member of The Beach Boys, Mike Love has spent an extraordinary fifty-five years, and counting, as the group's lead singer and one of its principal lyricists. The Beach Boys, from their California roots to their international fame, are a unique American story -- one of overnight success and age-defying longevity; of musical genius and reckless self-destruction; of spirituality, betrayal, and forgiveness -- and Love is the only band member to be part of it each and every step. His own story has never been fully told, of how a sheet-metal apprentice became the quintessential front man for America's most successful rock band, singing in more than 5,600 concerts in 26 countries. Mike Love tells the story of his legendary, raucous, and ultimately triumphant five-decade career as the front man of The Beach Boys, the most popular American band in history.
The Real James Dean: Intimate Memories from Those Who Knew Him Best
by Peter L. Winkler
In the decades following his death, many of those who knew James Dean best--actors, directors, friends, lovers (both men and women), photographers, and Hollywood columnists--shared stories of their first-person experiences with him in interviews and in the articles and autobiographies they wrote. Their recollections of Dean became lost in fragile back issues of movie magazines and newspapers and in out-of-print books that are extremely hard to find. Until now. Here are the memorable personal accounts of Dean from his high school and college drama teachers; the girl he almost married; costars like Rock Hudson, Natalie Wood, Jim Backus, and Raymond Massey; directors Elia Kazan, Nicholas Ray, and George Stevens; entertainer Eartha Kitt; gossip queen Hedda Hopper; the passenger who accompanied Dean on his final, fatal road trip; and a host of his other friends and colleagues.