“Hollywood Eden brings the lost humanity of the record business vividly back to life ... [Selvin’s] style is blunt, unpretentious and brisk; he knows how to move things along entertainingly ... Songs about surfboards and convertibles had turned quaint, but in this book, their coolness is restored.” — New York Times From surf music to hot-rod records to the sunny pop of the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, the Byrds, and the Mama’s & the Papa’s, Hollywood Eden captures the fresh blossom of a young generation who came together in the epic spring of the 1960s to invent the myth of the California Paradise. Central to the story is a group of sun-kissed teens from the University High School class of 1959 — a class that included Jan & Dean, Nancy Sinatra, and future members of the Beach Boys — who came of age in Los Angeles at the dawn of a new golden era when anything seemed possible. These were the people who invented the idea of modern California for the rest of the world. But their own private struggles belied the paradise portrayed in their music. What began as a light-hearted frolic under sunny skies ended up crashing down to earth just a few short but action-packed years later as, one by one, each met their destinies head-on. A rock ’n’ roll opera loaded with violence, deceit, intrigue, low comedy, and high drama, Hollywood Eden tells the story of a group of young artists and musicians who bumped heads, crashed cars, and ultimately flew too close to the sun.

A rich trip into a vanished place and time, Lost Hollywood tells the story of the world's most image-conscious city through the fantastical places and people who once held center stage. From Marion Davies' extraordinary Santa Monica playpen Ocean House, known as "Xanadu by the Sea," to America's first luxe housing development, Whitley Heights, and its now-iconic Mediterranean architecture, long gone building projects are brought back to vivid life. This delicious and engrossing book also unearths fresh details on classic institutions from the Hollywood Canteen to the Garden of Allah, from the Brown Derby and the Cocoanut Grove to the legendary Pickfair. Lost Hollywood resurrects a colorful and evocative era in the history of the movies and will delight and inform even the most knowledgeable film buff.

Hollywood Intellect takes off from the wide-spread hand-wringing over the fate or disappearance of so-called public intellectuals. An account of the title phenomenon, Hollywood Intellect challenges assumptions on which such discussions have rested. James D. Bloom argues that such assumptions are the result of misleading inattention to the intellectual work that mass culture performs. Much of America's influential intellectual work has come out of Hollywood, which has long helped shape America's intellectual agenda. Bloom shows how Hollywood movies often do intellectual work as ambitious as the intellectual work in 'art films,' poems and novels, museums and erudite quarterlies. Hollywood Intellect prompts its readers to reflect on the impact of a variety of Hollywood movies with some of the same assumptions, expectations, and questions customarily applied to literary writing. Hollywood Intellect also illustrates how, in examining the emergence of Hollywood and stardom in general as shapers of the public mind, some of our most renowned poets and novelists enriched our experience of mass entertainment and of elite culture. Drawing on a range of literary works and movies, as well as on the careers of both Hollywood and literary celebrities, Bloom documents how Hollywood regulates curiosity, arbitrates civilization, construes and probes stardom, polices genre, and shapes our language.

Today, the director is considered the leading artistic force behind a film. The production of a Hollywood movie requires the labor of many people, from screenwriters and editors to cinematographers and boom operators, but the director as author of the film overshadows them all. How did this concept of the director become so deeply ingrained in our understanding of cinema? In Hollywood’s Artists, Virginia Wright Wexman offers a groundbreaking history of how movie directors became cinematic auteurs that reveals and pinpoints the influence of the Directors Guild of America (DGA). Guided by Frank Capra’s mantra “one man, one film,” the Guild has portrayed its director-members as the creators responsible for turning Hollywood entertainment into cinematic art. Wexman details how the DGA differentiated itself from other industry unions, focusing on issues of status and creative control as opposed to bread-and-butter concerns like wages and working conditions. She also traces the Guild’s struggle for creative and legal power, exploring subjects from the language of on-screen credits to the House Un-American Activities Committee’s investigations of the movie industry. Wexman emphasizes the gendered nature of images of the great director, demonstrating how the DGA promoted the idea of the director as a masculine hero. Drawing on a broad array of archival sources, interviews, and theoretical and sociological insight, Hollywood’s Artists sheds new light on the ways in which the Directors Guild of America has shaped the role and image of directors both within the Hollywood system and in the culture at large.

Both academic and entertaining, this quiz book will introduce a whole new generation of film buffs to America's classic movies. Each of the 100 individual star entries opens with a quote and follows with a biography and filmography. With more than 100 quizzes, one for each star and additional master' quizzes on general knowledge and quotes, this guide covers every aspect of each work, from the plot and the star's character to its production and reception.'

Jeffrey Richards examines the cultural, social, economic and technological circumstances that dictated the rise and decline of each successive cycle of Ancient World epics, from the silent film era, to the "golden age" of the 1950s, right up to the present day (Gladiator, 300, Rome). Analysis reveals that historical films are always as much about the time in which they are made as they are about the time in which they are set. The ancient world is often used to deliver messages to the contemporary audience about the present: hostility to totalitarian regimes both Fascist and Communist, concern at the decline of Christianity, support for the new state of Israel, celebrations of equality and democracy, and concern about changing gender roles. The whole adds up to a fresh look at a body of films that people think they know, but about which they will learn a good deal more.

It starts with a chance meeting at an airport bar and will end with one man's second chance to claim the one who got away. Bryn Blackstone was shocked to cross paths with Jamison Cox at the airport. Why did she have to see him again? Bryn thought she had gotten Jamison out of her system, but there he stood with his yummy smirk and come-hither eyes. He had the same wit, charm, and masculine appeal that drew her to him from the start. It was hard to walk away from Jamison yet again, but she had done it. She was just getting her relationship with her brothers back on track; out of family loyalty, she had to choose them over him. Jamison Cox always knew he would see her again, but not like this, not right now. But there she sat at the airport bar, Bryn Blackstone, the one who got away. She was still lovely and intelligent, a real catch. He wanted to tell her that she had been the only woman in his heart and on his mind since circumstances forced them to part ways. Then, she turned her back on him, determined to leave his life forever. But Jamison knew this one thing for sure, Fate had given him a second chance with Bryn Blackstone, and this time he wasn't going to let her get away. This billionaire romance can be read as a standalone. The story has plenty of angst, steam, and twists and turns; it also ends happily ever after.