BEGUILING HOLLYWOOD

Episode 30. Every star I know in Hollywood acknowledges the same fact. With luck you can climb. Without it, your brakes don’t work even when you coast.

For a few short days after Antoine’s crisis I was more aware of the rhythms and mechanisms of filmmaking and its twitchy straitlaced cousin finance...

Episode 29. Never admit anything to anybody. Honesty is not the best policy.

Lethal stress can come at you no matter whether you’re onscreen or off. Actors in Hollywood have committed suicide by swallowing ant paste, Nembutal,...

Episode 28. I used to slip down to the beach and hold my head under the water just long enough to decide to come back up again…it seemed so ironical to feel like that, just when I was made a star.

Clara Bow wasn’t the only one who found Hollywood depressing.

On...

Episode 27 is introduced by Mabel Normand, who said, “Acting in the movies is like a cold — you get used to both after a while.”

Gifted with a glib tongue he moved quickly from never-featured actor, to production assistant, to assistant director, and rapidly ascended the dating...

All creative people should be required to leave California for three months every year. Episode 26

In the words of Dorothy Gale, there’s no place like home. The light here is what made filmmakers move to California. It shines here most of the time,...