[light shelfwear, one bent page corner; jacket a little rubbed but no tears or chips]. A love story set against the backdrop of labor unrest and the early days of the motion picture industry in Los Angeles. [Although this goes unmentioned in the jacket copy, the author did her college dissertation on the history of Hollywood labor unions, and is also the daughter of screenwriter Leopold Atlas, whose notable credits included THE STORY OF G.I. JOE (for which he received an Oscar nomination), and who was blacklisted for his political affiliations until he bowed to pressure from HUAC and became a... View More...
[solid clean book, light age-toning to page edges, minor shelfwear; jacket has various tiny nicks along top edge, 1/4" triangular chip at base of spine, spine slightly color-shifted]. The only novel by "Miss Rona," at the time one of Hollywood's best-known columnists/commentators. Film historian/ bibliographer Anthony Slide writes in his bibliography, "The Hollywood Novel: A Critical Guide to Over 1200 Works": "In view of the author's background, one would be tempted to dismiss the book as a typical trashy Hollywood novel. One would be very, very wrong. The Lovomaniac... View More...
[light shelfwear, small light pink smudge on half-title page; jacket shows light wear at extremities, small tear and slight associated creasing at top rear foldover, tiny scuffed spot near top center of front panel]. SIGNED by the author (signature only) on the title page. Another in Baxt's long-running series of period murder mysteries centered around famous movie people in an ingeniously-imagined alternative Hollywood -- in this instance, Greta Garbo (instead of terminating her screen career after the embarrassment of TWO-FACED WOMAN, as she did in real life) accepts the lead in a modern-da... View More...
[remainder mark bottom edge, some wear to edges/corners of book; jacket has traces of wear along top edge, very slight fading to spine]. SIGNED on the ffep by the author, with a generic, non-personalized inscription ("Enjoy the book! I hope you laugh!"). Signed by Author View More...
(price-clipped) [solid clean copy, bumped at bottom corners but no other significant wear, attractive (if generic) bookplate with previous owner's signature on ffep; jacket shows wear at edges and corners, a few small tears, shallow chipping at spine ends, tiny piece missing at bottom right-hand corner of front panel, considerable fading to spine (where the title is almost unreadable)]. Interesting Hollywood not-quite-novel (although the front panel of the jacket calls it "a novel," I have in the past seen a contemporary disclaimer issued by the publisher, averring that it was in fact... View More...
[nice tight clean copy, with no discernible wear; jacket shows faint surface handling wear, short diagonal crease in rear flap]. SIGNED and DATED by the author on the title page. Satirical novel about an investigative reporter-turned-reality-show producer who uses the show to investigate the disappearance of a gangsta rapper's girlfriend. The author's debut novel. Signed by Author View More...
[no discernable wear to book itself; jacket shows a trace of surface rubbing, very minor wear along bottom edge of front panel]. INSCRIBED to veteran TV writer Mel Tolkin, and SIGNED by the author on the half-title page. The second adventure of private-eyes-to-the-stars Rayford Goodman and Mark Bradley, who narrate this tale of a Tinseltown murder in alternating chapters. Signed by Author View More...
(no dust jacket) [moderate wear to extremities, age-toning to edges of text block, one-time owner's small address label at top corner of front pastedown, faint staining to front cover, two-inch tear in bottom of pages 147/148]. Romance that takes place in and around Hollywood rather than a "Hollywood novel" per se -- but although bibliographer Anthony Slide more or less dismisses it as having "little film-related material," there's still a certain amount of local-color interest, as the characters move about Southern California -- going to the races and the casinos in Tia Juana... View More...
[heavy foxing to top edge, somewhat less on fore-edge, some soiling to book's covers, boards slightly warped, light musty smell; the jacket, however, has been affected by none of this, and is nearly flawless, with just a touch of soiling to the rear panel]. One of the more outrageous romans-a-clef in the annals of Hollywood fiction, a thinly fictionalized telling of the rise of MCA founder Jules Stein -- here "Dr. Irwin Cone" (nee 'Isidore Cohen"), who builds his "Talent Corporation of America" into a powerful media giant, and who eventually moves to protect his empire fro... View More...
[moderate wear at extremities, spine turned; jacket shows some wear corners, small tears with minor paper loss at top of spine, a little wrinkling at base of spine]. Mystery novel concerning a staff writer for a film magazine who gets involved in a murder case while investigating an old-time Hollywood scandal. View More...
[light shelfwear, minor spotting to edges of text block, one-time owner's name stamped on front pastedown; jacket is very nice, slightly browned at spine but otherwise unblemished]. Set in Los Angeles, this light-hearted novel deals with a novelist-screenwriter and his three unruly teenage daughters. Like his protagonist, the author was a science-fiction writer and sometime-screenwriter (his most notable credit was THE TIME MACHINE, but he was also responsible for such lower-grade fare as MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS and THE LEECH WOMAN) -- and according to his IMdB data, he had (wait for it....) t... View More...
[small star stamped on ffep, else a flawless copy; DJ soiled, chipped/dog-eared at spine extremities, spine a bit discolored]. Novel about a big-time TV star, the enormously popular host of a daytime network talk/variety show, who had once been an ambitious young writer. Flashback chapters show how he went wrong. View More...
[nice copy, with just a slight bump to the bottom rear corner; faint wear to jacket at a couple of corners]. "...a moral fable set in a slyly portrayed amoral world, peopled with the archetypes beloved in Hollywood. This wicket romp through the machinations of ambition is set in a skewed Los Angeles circa 1963. Judd Haber, the agent's agent, a far-from-perfect Everyman, is estranged from his past (his name used to be Jacob Haber), from his wife and his family. His adopted son is a porn star, his daughter is seeing a man he's never met, and his wife is drifting into a tepid affair with he... View More...
[covers bowed slightly outward, top front corner bumped]. A mystery novel set in 1950's Hollywood, in which "Carson Drury" (read Orson Welles) attempts to buy back the rights to his failed second film, " The Imperial Albertsons," in order to re-shoot the original ending and restore his tarnished reputation. View More...
[good tight copy, internally clean but with some irregular faded spots on front cover as a result of once-dampened dust jacket; jacket is mildly edgeworn, water-stained at upper spine and upper left-hand corner of front panel (although because of the jacket design it's relatively unobtrusive), plus there's a triangular chip at the top front hinge (affecting both the front panel and top of spine)]. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the ffep. This hard-boiled veteran writer returns yet again to the Hollywood Novel, a genre he mined repeatedly (often striking a rich vein of cliche) througho... View More...
INSCRIBED "To Gordon / with much affection always / & happy memories of / the prison compound at / Gower Street!" and SIGNED by the author on the ffep, additional dated "Sept. 1973." Novel by the noted actor-turned-film director/producer/writer, about "a marriage and a love affair carried on in the midst of the glamour, cynicism, and sordidness of the international movie world" (a scene the author knew all too well). According to Hollywood fiction bibliographer Anthony Slide, Forbes had begun writing the novel twenty years before its publication. He goes to some pain... View More...
[solid copy, spine very slightly turned, lower front corner faintly bumped; jacket is edgeworn, rubbed, tiny tears at a couple of corners]. "When Richard Fletcher and Wilhelmina Stevens went to Rome together to make a motion picture, newspaper readers on two continents, already titillated by rumors that they were having an affair, avidly followed their every move. Then Fletcher, the most highly regarded actor of his day, was mercilessly set upon in an alley by unknown assailants and left for dead." (Thugs hired by Eddie Fisher?) One of those "Hollywood novels" that mostly ta... View More...
(no dust jacket) [reading/research copy ONLY, with heavy fading to edges of both covers, water-staining on endpapers; for all that, though, it's a solid copy (hinges and binding intact) with only moderate shelfwear, and internally clean]. (4 B&W film stills) An early Hollywood novel -- one of the first, in fact, by a writer who could legitimately be called a "major author" of his day, although his style has not aged well and he is little read today. The story concerns a small-town minister's daughter who rejects her father's religion, runs away from home, and through a combination of... View More...
[nice tight clean book, slight bumping to top corners; jacket shows just a bit of wrinkling around base of spine and at top edge of rear panel]. Novel about a successful playwright who attempts to prevent his son from renouncing his citizenship by relating the story of his own life: "his youth in the 'thirties; his rebellion against his unschooled father; his discovery of the Communist Party and the Party's manipulation of him; and his eventual painful awakening and its aftermath." Spanning the Great Depression to the present day, the story "is highlighted with Communist intrigues... View More...
[very slight bumping to bottom corners, otherwise a clean tight copy, appears unread; jacket shows just a teensy bit of handling wear]. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the title page. "P.G. Wodehouse meets Preston Sturges" [it sez here] in this "laser-sharp Hollywood comedy," by this Emmy-winning writer-producer (his third "Philip and Gilbert" book, narrated by the former, a writer). Frankly, it really just makes me wonder if Wodehouse ever did meet Sturges? It coulda happened, quite easily. Signed by Author View More...