Its Time for Arthur Read to Eat Lunch in This Town Again
25. A Story Lately Told (2013) and Watch Me (2014) by Anjelica Huston
The two volumes of Anjelica Huston'southward autobiography are a shrewd account of her life with wry comments on the alpha-males in it, including her father John Huston and longtime boyfriend Jack Nicholson.
24. Petty Girl Lost (1990) by Drew Barrymore
She published this at 15 years erstwhile and similar and so many motion picture autobiographies, the title is a pre-emptive ironic twist on any the writer is nigh famous for – in Drew Barrymore's case, a child-acting star turn in Steven Spielberg'southward classic ET, and then falling casualty to substance corruption. As she says: "I had my first drink at age nine, began smoking marijuana at 10, and at 12 took upward cocaine."
23. The Lonely Life: An Autobiography (1962) and This 'north That (1987) by Bette Davis
Bette Davis published this autobiography in the 60s, at the cease of her great menstruum, and updated it in the 1980s – after her daughter BD Hyman published a Mommie Dearest-type memoir of her – detailing her life and times, with truthful leading-lady hauteur ascension above the general awfulness and the fallout from four fraught marriages.
22. My Story (1959) by Mary Astor
This bestseller from the aureate-age legend Mary Astor recounted one of Hollywood'due south virtually scandalised lives. In 1936, she was divorced, after an affair with the dramatist George South Kaufman, and the press coverage became obsessed with her diary, which supposedly chronicled her sexual adventures. Much argued well-nigh in court, the diary was impounded in a bank vault and finally burnt.
21. What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front end Line (2002) by Art Linson
Art Linson (the producer of Fight Club) gives an amusing account of the unendingly humiliating business of a life spent trying to get movies fabricated – there is a wince-inducing anecdote of trying to persuade Alec Baldwin to go back into his trailer and shave off the inappropriate straggly beard he had grown but earlier filming. Linson describes the process of sucking up to powerful people as "bog snorkelling" and "grabbing the knee pads".
20. Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake (1970)
The fatale screen-goddess'southward autobiography was written towards the end of her life, hitting dorsum at her reputation for existence difficult and recounting her professional partnerships with Joel McCrea and Alan Ladd – and with her legendary, lustrous pilus, which she had to cut during the 2d earth war to deter female factory workers from copying information technology.
xix. What Falls Away (1997) by Mia Farrow
Mia Farrow'south autobiography was widely praised for her eloquent memoirs, recounting her troubled family life and her relationships with Frank Sinatra, André Previn and most dramatically of all, Woody Allen. The book was published five years after she first made public allegations that he had sexually molested seven-yr-old Dylan, which he has consistently denied, which were investigated past the government and for which no charges were brought.
eighteen. Memoirs of a Professional Cad (1960) by George Sanders
The suave and mellifluous player'southward memoir sported jovially with his onscreen reputation, recounting his remarkable early life in Russia, his character-acting adventures in Hollywood and his marriage to Zsa Zsa Gabor. Written before his slide into ill-health and depression, it maintains a dapper jauntiness.
17. Dauntless (2018) by Rose McGowan
It was the courage and uncompromising commitment of Rose McGowan that formed the arrowhead of the #MeToo movement and the campaign to bring Harvey Weinstein to book. Part of what this memoir does is tell us what lies beneath a lot of Hollywood'due south racy anecdotes and gossip: a world of corruption and bad religion.
16. Y'all'll Never Consume Luncheon in this Town Once more (1990) by Julia Phillips
The producer Julia Phillips became the first woman to get a all-time pic Oscar with The Sting in 1973 and she was a driving force backside Taxi Driver in 1976 – but it was this tell-all volume near the cocaine-fuelled, vanity-charged horror of Hollywood that fabricated her a fable. (Cocaine use bankrupted Phillips.) David Geffen, Steven Spielberg and Richard Dreyfuss came off as ego-addled narcissists and the book and so infuriated the manufacture that she really was banned from Morton's, the A-listers' restaurant.
15. What's Information technology All Nearly (1993), The Elephant to Hollywood (2010) and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off (2018) by Michael Caine
Michael Caine's 3 books of autobiography and his meandering thoughts on the acting craft give u.s.a. his life from his beginnings as Maurice Micklewhite from a working-course family unit to his success in Swinging London and his breakthrough roles in Alfie, Zulu and The Italian Job. He recounts a legendary meeting with John Wayne in the lobby of a Hollywood hotel who advised him: "Talk low, talk wearisome, and don't say much". Perhaps Caine's legendary delivery really is the Brit version of Wayne.
14. Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star (2005)
In the 50s, Tab Hunter was an impossibly gorgeous slice of B-motion-picture show beefcake, a sexy actor and singer for whom Jack Warner created Warner Bros Records. Hunter tells us how, despite being intensively marketed to swooning women, he in fact preferred men, in an era in which homophobic paranoia went hand-in-hand with red-baiting – and had affairs with Anthony Perkins and the figure-skater Ronnie Robertson.
13. Me: Stories of My Life (1991) by Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn's garrulous, wayward memoir is a fluent and engaging merely scattershot operation (in which you can conspicuously imagine the famous quavering Bryn Mawr voice) perhaps designed to proceed at bay those who would have likewise close an interest in her private life. She handles tactfully her relationships with Howard Hughes and her legendary co-star Spencer Tracy, and gives nothing to those readers who believed that she was gay.
12. Aye I Can (1965) by Sammy Davis Jr
A massive bestseller in its 24-hour interval, with an aspirational title that is sometimes mockingly extended with "… if Frank Sinatra says it'due south OK" in honour of the line from This Is Spinal Tap virtually his perceived subservient position to Ol' Blue Eyes in the Las Vegas Rat Pack. Despite the conservatism of his later years, when he endorsed the presidency of Richard Nixon, his battle against racism is stirring. In that location is an extraordinary, Ballardian clarification of how he lost his center in a car accident – information technology barbarous prey to the bullet-shaped horn push button on the steering cycle of his 1954 Cadillac. Davis gallantly helped the other driver out of her motorcar with the eye yet dangling out of its socket.
xi. My Autobiography (1964) by Charles Chaplin
Chaplin brought a richly Dickensian flair to this autobiography: with the aforementioned mix of sadness, sentimentality, humour and warmth that formed the bedrock of the Hollywood storytelling style he pioneered. He gave it to united states in three acts: the grinding poverty in London; the staggering success in Hollywood; and so the chilly anti-communist cold shoulder and concluding retreat to that well-known leftwing enclave, Switzerland. Chaplin name-checks grand acquaintances such as the Prince of Wales, simply he isn't large on acknowledging other silent-movie greats and is reticent about his love life.
10. Adventures of a Suburban Boy (2003) and Conclusions (2020) by John Boorman
Boorman, i of many movie directors who plow out to be beautiful writers also, vividly and disarmingly describes his babyhood in south London and then in Ireland with the kind of appointment that he would show in his cracking personal film Promise and Celebrity. He gets his commencement making documentaries at the BBC, and then there are his experiences in Hollywood dealing with the fragile egos of Burt Reynolds, Richard Burton and Marlon Brando, who pointedly told Boorman what Michael Winner had said to him: "Y'all are a keen actor, I am not a dandy director, delight do whatever you like."
9. American Prince: A Memoir (2008) and The Making of Some Similar it Hot: My Memories of Marilyn Monroe and the Archetype American Movie (2009) past Tony Curtis
The impossibly handsome Tony Curtis matured from being a B-moving picture swashbuckler into a bright dramatic and comic actor. Later a depiction of his tough upbringing in the Bronx, New York, he gives a seductive view of the Hollywood playground, and his meetings with Laurence Olivier, Frank Sinatra and Billy Wilder. His subsequent book detailed the making of Some Like It Hot and his complex relationship with Monroe, with whom he had had a relationship that flowered once more during filming (he was married to Janet Leigh, she to Arthur Miller). This resulted in a pregnancy that miscarried.
8. Lulu in Hollywood (1982) by Louise Brooks
Towards the end of her life, Louise Brooks revealed herself to be a great writer about the film business and this memoir, published when she was 78, cemented her reputation. Like so many stories of early on Hollywood, it is the story of an inventor and a pioneer, someone who helped create a whole linguistic communication at present taken for granted. After her dull Kansas childhood, Brooks came to New York in the 1920s as a dancer and made the acquaintance of Walter Wanger, Herman Mankiewicz and Charlie Chaplin, but establish greatness in Europe with the Austrian director GW Pabst. Her glossy bob hairstyle became a daring sexual brand identity, but this strong, vital woman found herself frozen out of Hollywood past its tetchy menfolk.
7. The Ragman's Son: An Autobiography (1988) by Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas's story of his rise to greatness in the Hollywood golden age with movies including Champion, Spartacus, Paths of Glory and Ace in the Hole is a compelling read, for the baking energy (reproduced in his prose) with which he strove to get away from his former poverty, and his rage at himself for non having confronted the antisemites earlier in his life. Despite his 65-year marriage, Douglas was serially unfaithful, and the book is naive about sexual politics, but at that place are some ripe stories about his relationships with Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford. While lovemaking on her rug, Crawford disconcertingly murmured to him: "You're so clean. It's wonderful that you shaved your armpits when you made Champion."
six. By Myself (1978) past Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall describes her career on Broadway and in Hollywood, her marriages to Humphrey Bogart and Jason Robards, and her thing with Frank Sinatra (who features as anecdote fodder in so many of the books about this catamenia). She was a Jewish girl dreaming of being similar Bette Davis, and made her mark get-go as a fashion model who defenseless the attending of Howard Hawks who bandage her in To Take And Take Not, where she began an affair with Bogart, her married co-star, who was 25 years older – although their subsequent marriage was very happy. This was the love of Bacall'due south life.
5. Everything and Nix: The Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy (1965) by Dorothy Dandridge
Co-written with the seasoned Hollywood ghostwriter Earl Conrad, this book was completed just before the death of the singing and acting star Dandridge, the first African-American to receive a best actress Oscar nomination (for Carmen Jones in 1954). She was a pioneering activist who had to contend with sexism and racism, and her career – after the sensational Carmen Jones – was hampered by her lover and director Otto Preminger, who told her to accept only leading roles. This was well-pregnant simply sick-judged advice. She was a campaigner with the NAACP and introduced Martin Luther King Jr at ane result.
4. A Life in Movies (1986) and Million Dollar Motion picture (1992) past Michael Powell
These two parts of Michael Powell'southward autobiography – he was the legendary director who worked with Emeric Pressburger – are an essential business relationship of cinephilia and movie inventiveness. His is a compelling story of his early career in silent movies, working with Rex Ingram and then Alfred Hitchcock, his after collaboration with Pressburger and so the passionate adoration of Martin Scorsese, which effectively relaunched his reputation in the 1970s. Powell writes simply but rather movingly about falling in beloved with Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese's brilliant editor, and their subsequent marriage.
3. The Kid Stays in the Picture (1994) by Robert Evans
Made into a movie in 2002, this memoir from the legendary actor-turned-Paramount producer is a great Hollywood insider tell-all, with a title quoting Darryl Zanuck's remark when some of Evans's erstwhile acting colleagues demanded he be fired from the 1957 film The Sunday Also Rises. He was married many times, including to the Love Story star Ali MacGraw, and as a producer, he was the driving strength behind Honey Story, Rosemary'south Baby, Chinatown and The Godfather – merely likewise the notorious flop, The Cotton Club. To make information technology, he associated with a shady financial capitalist called Roy Radin, whose drug connections and contract-killing murder resulted in a trial in which Evans scandalised the business concern by refusing to testify. He was himself bedevilled of cocaine trafficking in 1980, but always claimed he was only a user.
two. Mommie Dearest (1978) past Christina Crawford
For many, this memoir is the primal scene of Hollywood family dysfunction, with a title that has get ironic shorthand for bad parenting. Christina Crawford was the adopted girl of Joan Crawford. Her book declared that Joan was a controlling, boozing tyrant who would beat out Christina and who was more interested in her (flagging) career and many affairs with men and women than in being a mother. And so in afterward life, when Christina had an acting career, she insisted on temporarily taking over Christina'southward role in a TV soap called The Secret Tempest, equally Christina was in hospital for a cyst removal: at the time, Christina was 24 and Joan was 60. Perhaps this extraordinary fact alone would be enough to damn Joan Crawford, but many of her friends and her get-go husband Douglas Fairbanks Jr denounced the stories as untrue.
1. The Moon's a Airship (1971) past David Niven
This is the unchallenged champ of the Hollywood memoirs: glamorous, louche, heady, amusing, proper noun-dropping, ridiculous, outrageously sexual but seasoned with real tenderness and piquancy as Niven describes his unhappy childhood, the heartbreaking loss of his starting time wife, and also his military service in the second world war, which involved an see with Winston Churchill, who congratulated him on quitting the movies to volunteer, only added: "Young man, you lot did a fine thing to give up your film career to fight for your country. Marking you lot, had you not washed so information technology would have been despicable." Unlike most movie memoirs, there is no tough upbringing in the slums: Niven's childhood was comfortable (though unhappy); he was the public schoolboy who went from Stowe to Sandhurst and, different and then many Brit actors who had learned to fabricate a posh voice in rep, Niven'southward was the real thing, and his accurate light charm entranced Samuel Goldwyn at the high point of Hollywood'due south gold historic period. His book is packed with anecdotes nigh Hollywood pals, including the notorious Errol Flynn, but the most extraordinary anecdote is nearly losing his virginity at 14 to a Piccadilly sex worker. Before they went to bed, she told him to "launder" in a kidney-shaped metallic bowl by the bed. "Non yer hands!" she so rasped. Since the book's publication, its mythology has been debunked, Niven was subsequently plant to have concealed the extent of his compulsive infidelities and created the fiction of a happy second matrimony, and even exaggerated a footling his commitment to serving in the British Army during the state of war. Only this volume is addictive and unmissable.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/apr/02/the-top-25-most-compelling-hollywood-autobiographies-ranked
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