100 books like Hollywood Babylon

It doesn't matter that it was patently phony: The glamour that was Tinseltown in Hollywood's golden age was impossibly romantic and utterly irresistible. Much of it had to do with the social lives of movie stars, and in particular the shenanigans they got up to in swanky nightclubs where they danced, courted, and made merry. Jim Heimann is a superb chronicler of Los Angeles's architectural and cultural past, and this beautifully illustrated book is crammed with images of the likes of Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich, Charlie Chaplin, Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, and Lauren Bacall patronizing such swell spots as Mocambo, the Trocadero, Ciro's, the Coconut Grove, the Player's Club, and many others. They're all gone now, but this collection of hundreds of photos of the clubs, inside and out, and the patrons, dressed as if for a royal wedding, brings them back to vibrant life.

Before he became a writer of potboiler novels and true-crime journalism, Dominick Dunne was a film and television producer and a social butterfly who also happened also to be an avid amateur photographer. This memoir of his Hollywood days, which resulted in a crash-and-burn from which he emerged as a writer, is filled with intimate, candid images of such friends (not all faithful) as Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, Paul Newman, and Frank Sinatra, as well, of course, as Dunne and his family. There are dreamy and even eye-popping tales throughout, and if you're at all familiar with Dunne's books or magazine writing, you'll marvel at how so much of it so neatly dovetails with the life he actually lived and, thankfully, captured on film and in these frank and candid pages.

We call them 'movies' as a nickname for 'moving pictures,' and the immense importance of the 'pictures' part of that phrase is underscored by this lavish and gorgeous book celebrating the work of Hollywood's classic glamour photographers. In brief lives and portfolios of the likes of George Hurrell, Peter Stackpole, Phil Stern, Sid Avery, and Ruth Orkin, we see hundreds of photos of such icons as Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, James Dean, Judy Garland, Marlon Brando, and Shirley MacLaine on the set and off, posed for sumptuous portraits or grabbing coffee and a smoke between takes, in iconic images and remarkable candids. David Fahey and Linda Rich, important photographers themselves, are ideal guides to this gallery, pointing out aspects of the photographers' technique and craft without losing sight of the remarkable subjects of these memorable shots.

Peter Biskind chronicles the rise of New Hollywood in the 1970s, featuring such "movie brat" directors as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg. But he also refers to such older directors as Stanley Kubrick.

It’s written in a chatty and easy-to-read style and is full of useful tidbits of information about Kubrick and especially his new backers at Warner Brothers.

I saw the film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood before reading the book. And I loved the film, one of Tarantino’s best, where – as in Inglourious Basterds – he uses fictional characters to create a world in which factual characters might exist, to the extent that the reality of the script and the reality of real life become inevitably intertwined, in ways in which reality can be distorted to a better end. This playing of fantasy and reality and the myths (the Once Upon A Time…) that storytelling can distort, is ably rendered by this book which I understand Tarantino wrote after the film was finished. There’s greater expansion on the back stories of the stuntman and his double, and less around the Manson murders, but for a film buff the book is a delight in which Tarantino’s fascination for cinema shines through, and therefore is well worth… show more.

I grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. We lived above an all-purpose drugstore that included two aisles of paperback books.

Almost every day after school, that store became my own personal library. If were attracted by a particular title or cover, it would wind up in my to-buy list.

Seize the Day was one of those books. The protagonist is the hapless Tommy Wilhelm, a small-time loser who spends his life trying to impress his big-shot father (think Willie Loman only less successful).

Desperately trying to make something of himself that his father can be proud of, Wilhelm gets involved with conman father figure Tamkin.

What impressed me most was Bellow’s ability to create a living, breathing, deeply flawed character that you’re actually rooting for.

What makes characters like Wilhelm compelling is not only the constant struggle to survive in a world that seems to be stacked against them.… show more.

Up until the internet took over, radio airplay was the record industry’s lifeblood, and labels would do just about anything to get it. That included hiring independent radio promoters, and not asking too many questions about what they were doing to get certain records on the air at big stations.

Hit Men is an incredible tale of an ugly mid-1980s payola (play for pay) scandal, one that had rumors of organized crime involvement. It’s exactly the sort of sordid big-business shenanigans that made grassroots outfits like Rounder a lot more appealing.

Also recommended, William Knoedelseder’s Stiffed: A True Story of MCA, The Music Business, and the Mafia, which covers much of the same ground.

Anything to do with Jim Carrey, I’m in. In fact, when teachers would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d reply “Be Jim Carrey.” As a longtime fan, I was excited to learn that he would finally be charting his life in an autobiography. As it turns out, the book was mostly wild fiction. What’s so engaging about this book is how he blends real-life occurrences like his body of film work and relationship with Renee Zellweger with completely off-the-wall fantasy like mentor Rodney Dangerfield returning as a Rhino, Kelsey Grammar leading a cult, and Carrey struggling with his career as his entire essence goes virtual. It’s extremely experimental, but the inclusion of celebrities will leave you grinning.     

Rebecca Prime is one of the contributors to my book and her book is a fascinating sequel to that volume. It covers the careers of several blacklisted filmmakers who fled Hollywood and America, seeking to find new work and life opportunities in Europe. Impeccably researched and elegantly written, Prime’s study tells the story of a generation of creative workers that was lost to the USA but which made a vital contribution to European and British cinemas. As she details, many of the exiled filmmakers faced almighty personal and professional struggles to adjust to their new circumstances, and while a few (e.g. Joseph Losey and Jules Dassin) would eventually achieve fabulous success, many other exiles found it difficult to secure regular and fulfilling work opportunities or personal happiness.

Wasson and Basinger are two other authors where you simply want to read everything they’ve written.

The reason I picked Hollywood: The Oral History for this list is that you have several hundred pages of Hollywood players telling their own stories. What could be better?? We get the scoop from stars, grips, screenwriters, carpenters, producers, directors, publicists, and everything in between.

What was it like to work in Hollywood in 1949? This book has your answer. What was the transition from Old Hollywood to New Hollywood like, this book has the goods.