Among books and essays about individual actors of the 1930s whom I write about, the following were helpful: “Cowboys: William J. Hart and Tom Mix” in Jeanine Basinger, Silent Stars (1999); Al DiOrio, Barbara Stanwyck (1983); Dan Callahan, Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman (2012); Wendy Lesser, “Stanwyck,” in His Other Half: Men Looking at Women Through Art (1981); Bette Davis, The Lonely Life (1962); Ed Sikov, Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis (2008); Lynn Kear and John Rossman, Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career (2006); Scott O’Brien, Kay Francis: I Can’t Wait to Be Forgotten (2007); and Daniel Bubbeo, The Women of Warner Brothers: The Lives and Careers of 15 Leading Ladies (2002).
For more on Warden Lawes, see Ralph Blumenthal, Miracle at Sing Sing: How One Man Transformed the Lives of America’s Most Dangerous Prisoners (2004).
On the 42nd Street Special, and the Warner Brothers–Roosevelt connection, see Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own; Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (2000); Jack L. Warner, My First Hundred Years in Hollywood (1965); Charles Eckert, “The Carole Lombard in the Macy’s Window,” in Stardom: Industry of Desire (1991), edited by Christine Gledhill; and Rian James, 42nd Street (screenplay; 1980 ed.), edited and with an introduction by Rocco Fumento.
Chapter 6. Man About Town
For interesting treatments of how stars were found and groomed, see Jeanine Basinger, The Star Machine (2007); Alexander Walker, Stardom: The Hollywood Phenomenon (1970); and Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz, Gone Hollywood: The Movie Colony in the Golden Age (1979).
Details about the Westmore dynasty can be found in Frank Westmore and Muriel Davidson, The Westmores of Hollywood (1976).
For a nice essay about Whitley Heights, see David Wallace, Lost Hollywood (2001).
On Estelle Taylor, see Roger Kahn, A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring ’20s (2002). On Lina Basquette: Lina Basquette, Lina: DeMille’s Godless Girl (1990); Barry Paris, “The Godless Girl,” The New Yorker, February 13, 1989; and The Brothers Warner: The Intimate Story of a Hollywood Studio Dynasty (1998), as told by Cass Warner Sperling and Cork Millner with Jack Warner, Jr. On Dorothy di Frasso: Jane Ellen Wayne, Cooper’s Women (1988); and John Buntin, L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City (2009).
Chapter 7. Empty Bottles
For information on Hollywood nightlife, and actors at play, see John Buntin, L.A. Noir; Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz, Gone Hollywood; Gregory Paul Williams, The Story of Hollywood: An Illustrated History (2005); Betty Goodwin, Hollywood du Jour: Lost Recipes of Legendary Hollywood Haunts (1993); Leo Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (1942); and Jim Heimann, Out with the Stars: Hollywood Nightlife in the Golden Era (1990).
On specific venues and amusements discussed in this chapter, see Carol Martin, Dance Marathons: Performing American Culture in the 1920s and 1930s (1994); Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935; 1995 ed.); John Chilton, Louis: The Louis Armstrong Story (1971); Warren G. Harris, Gable and Lombard (1974); Marion Davies, The Times We Had (1975); and David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (2000).
Chapter 8. Unionizing Actors, Uniting Fans
For the opening observations about life in L.A., see Matt Weinstock, My L.A. (1947). On gangsters in Hollywood, see John Buntin, L.A. Noir, and Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz, Gone Hollywood.
On the history of the Screen Actors Guild, including working conditions and the Guild’s struggles with the mob, see Tino Balio, Grand Design; Paul Henreid, Ladies’ Man (1984); James Cagney, Cagney (1976); David F. Prindle, The Politics of Glamour: Ideology and Democracy in the Screen Actors Guild (1988); Murray Ross, Stars and Strikes: Unionization of Hollywood (1941); David Witwer, Shadow of the Racketeer: Scandal in Organized Labor; Florabel Muir, Headline Happy (1950); Neal Gabler, “When the Mob Ruled Hollywood,” Playboy, June 2011; Mike Nielsen and Gene Mailes, Hollywood’s Other Blacklist: Union Struggles in the Studio System (1995); Kerry Seagrave, Actors Organize: A History of Union Formation Efforts in the United States, 1880–1919 (2007); Otto Friedrich, City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s (1986); Scott Allen Nollen, Boris Karloff: A Gentleman’s Life (1999); George Murphy, “Say . . . Didn’t You Use to Be George Murphy?” (1970); and the profiles of and interviews with early SAG members assembled by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation and available at www.sag.org.
On Mae West, see Marybeth Hamilton, “When I’m Bad, I’m Better”: Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment (1995); and Emily Wortis Leider, Becoming Mae West (1997).
On moviegoing and fandom in the 1930s, see Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Moviegoing in America: A Sourcebook in the History of Film Exhibition (2002), edited by Gregory Waller; Douglas Gomery, Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States (1992); Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley, Hollywood in the Neighborhood: Historical Case Studies of Local Moviegoing (2008); Anthony Slide, Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine: A History of Starmakers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers (2010); Margaret Thorp, America at the Movies (1939); and Samantha Barbas, Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity (2002).
Chapter 9. Broadway and B Movies
For more on the Broadway theater and other entertainment during World War II, see At This Theatre: 100 Years of Broadway Shows, Stories, and Stars (2002), edited by Louis Botto and Robert Viagas; Richard Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front, 1941–1945 (1970); and Allan M. Winkler, Home Front U.S.A.: America During World War II (1986).
For more on the 1939–1940 World’s Fair, see E. L. Doctorow, World’s Fair (1985); Bill Cotter, The 1939–40 New York World’s Fair (Images of America; 2001); and the DVD The 1939 World’s Fair (PRS Studio, 2010).
The New York night life is described in Arnold Shaw, 52nd Street: The Street of Jazz (1971); Rachel Shteir, Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show (2004); and Robert Klara, “The Riviera of Dreams,” New Jersey Life, May 1995.
On Hollywood at war, see Otto Friedrich, City of Nets; Richard Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?; Allan M. Winkler, Home Front U.S.A.; Thomas Schatz, Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s (1999); John E. Moser, “‘Gigantic Engines of Propaganda’: The 1941 Senate Investigation of Hollywood,” The Historian, Summer 2001.
On movie serials, see Jim Harmon and Donald F. Glut, The Great Movie Serials: Their Sound and Fury (1972); Ken Weiss and Ed Goodgold, To Be Continued . . . : A Complete Guide to Motion Picture Serials (1972); Les Daniels, Batman: The Complete History (2004) and Superman: The Complete History (2004); and William C. Cline, In the Nick of Time (1984).
A definitive scholarly treatment of exploitation films is Eric Schaefer, “Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!” A History of Exploitation Films (1999). For the stories of Lila Leeds and of Robert Mitchum’s arrest, see the Schaefer book, as well as Lee Server, Robert Mitchum: “Baby, I Don’t Care” (2001).
On the marriages of Henry Miller, and on Eve McClure specifically, see Robert Ferguson, Henry Miller: A Life (1991); Mary V. Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller (1993); and Big Sur Women (1985), edited by Judith Goodman.
Chapter 10. From Ed Wood to Ozzie and Harriet
A good source on Ed Wood, featuring memorable interviews with people who knew him and worked with him, including Lyle, is the documentary The Haunted World of Ed Wood (2002), directed by Brett Thompson. I also appreciated “I Was a Movie Star for Ed Wood,” an article based on an interview with Lyle, which ran in the San Francisco Examiner in October 1994.
For more on TV representations of American families and on American families themselves in the 1950s, see Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (1992); Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1988); and Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (1992
).
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