Living in the shadow of a famous parent can have powerful effects, from professional opportunities to pressure so great it leads to suicide. Some children of stars are proud of their roots while others live in secrecy. This is a rare look into the private lives of the children (and, in a few cases, grandchildren) of these classic Hollywood icons, revealing the stresses and inspirations of living with great performers who may or may not have been great parents. Some movie stars protected their offspring, but others used them as publicity props or even made them into rivals. Despite their unusual upbringing, some of the children succeeded in the movies or elsewhere, but many never lived up to the public expectations. Many lost their parents, whether to the extremes of the celebrity lifestyle, to divorce, or to their careers. From the beautiful bedtime stories Harpo Marx and his wife told their four adopted children to explain where they'd come from, to the studded belt Bing Crosby used to punish his sons for not obeying the strict family rules, this work tells the best and worst of growing up in a celebrity home. Families covered include those of W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Eddie Cantor, Mario Lanza, Ruth Hussey, Jerry Lewis, Douglas Fairbanks and Boris Karloff. Research is drawn from interviews with celebrity offspring, who also provided never-before-published snapshots of Hollywood legends at home.

Diana Serra Cary's well-wrought, empathetic narrative presents the underside of the glittering stage and screen world: frightened children, merchants who buy and sell childhood as a commodity, rapacious stage mothers and fathers whose ambition and avarice make them willing to sacrifice their children to fulfill their own dreams. The first part of the book mines a lode of new information, recounting stories of the precursors to Hollywood's child stars (and their ambitious parents) - the spectacular 1853 stage debut of four-year-old Cordelia Howard, the rise of red-haired Lotta Crabtree in California's Gold Rush camps, and the travails and triumphs of the hoydenish Elsie Janis as she ad-libbed her way to stardom. Cary - as "Baby Peggy", Hollywood's pioneer child star, the youngest in theatrical history - has lived her subject, surviving a childhood filled with an enormous workload, some real physical danger, and emotional trauma. She weaves her own story of being her family's chief breadwinner with similar tales involving famous movie children she knew and worked with - Jackie Coogan, Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, and Judy Garland, among many others.

This collection of interviews, all conducted by the author, focuses on the children of Hollywood legends. Each child (and, in one case, grandchild) talks about the joys and difficulties of growing up in the shadow of the Hollywood spotlight. While some were significantly influenced by their famous parents and chose a career in entertainment, others felt no attraction toward the glamour of Tinseltown fame. Among the interviewees are the offspring of such major stars as Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Jimmy Stewart and Rosalind Russell, as well as such prominent supporting players as Jack Elam, Gene Lockhart, Billy Barty and Jesse White. The collection also includes a list of books and/or websites published by the children of the actors featured.

Long before Shirley Temple's curls bounced their way into America's heart, Baby Peggy lit up marques here and abroad. This story of the shared infancy of a child and the film industry reveals the incredible life and awesome burdens of a child super-star.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Dressmaker and A Touch of Stardust, comes a Hollywood coming-of-age novel, in which Ingrid Bergman's affair with Roberto Rossellini forces her biggest fan to reconsider everything she was raised to believe In 1950, Ingrid Bergman, already a major star after movies like Casablanca and Joan of Arc, has a baby out of wedlock with her Italian lover, film director Roberto Rossellini. Previously held up as an icon of purity, Bergman's fall shocks her legions of fans--and none more so than seventeen-year-old Jessica Malloy, whose father is Bergman's Hollywood publicist. After years of fleeting interactions with Bergman, Jesse has come to idolize the actress as the epitome of elegance and integrity as well as the paragon of motherhood, an area in which her own difficult mother falls short. But in a heated era of McCarthyist paranoia and extreme censorship, Ingrid's affair sets off an international scandal that robs Jesse of her childhood hero. When the stress placed on Jesse's father begins to reveal hidden truths about the Malloy family, Jesse's eyes are opened to the complex realities of life--and love. The Hollywood Daughter is an intimate novel of self-discovery that evokes a Hollywood sparkling with glamour and vivid drama.

A guide to child stars and the movies that made them famous traces the lives, careers, and changing fortunes of child actors, including Mary Pickford, Judy Garland, James Dean, and Tatum O'Neal