Hollywood Lives, Real and Imagined

Christopher Castellani is the author of three previous novels (the trilogy A Kiss from Maddalena, The Saint of Lost Things, and All This Talk of Love) and The Art of Perspective, a book of essays on the craft of fiction. He is the son of Italian immigrants, a Guggenheim fellow, and the artistic director of GrubStreet, one of the country's leading creative writing centers. Illuminating one of the great love stories of the twentieth century - Tennessee Williams and his longtime partner Frank Merlo - Christopher Castellani’s Leading Men (Viking) is a glittering novel of desire and ambition, set against the glamorous literary circles of 1950s Italy. What keeps two people together and what breaks them apart? Can we save someone else if we can't save ourselves? Leading Men seamlessly weaves fact and fiction to navigate the tensions between public figures and their private lives. In an ultimately heartbreaking story about the burdens of fame and the complex negotiations of life in the shadows of greatness, Castellani reveals the hidden machinery of one of the great literary love stories of the twentieth-century.

Patrick McGilligan is the author of Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light; Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast; and George Cukor: A Double Life; and books on the lives of directors Nicholas Ray, Robert Altman, and Oscar Micheaux, and actors James Cagney, Jack Nicholson, and Clint Eastwood. He also edited the acclaimed five-volume Backstory series of interviews with Hollywood screenwriters and (with Paul Buhle), the definitive Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist. Funny Man: Mel Brooks (Harper), his latest, is a deeply textured and compelling biography of comedy giant Mel Brooks, covering his rags-to-riches life and triumphant career in television, films, and theater. The fourth and last child of Max and Kitty Kaminsky, Mel Brooks was born on his family’s kitchen table in Brooklyn, New York, in 1926, and was not quite three-years-old when his father died of tuberculosis. Growing up in a household too poor to own a radio, Mel was short and homely, a mischievous child whose birth role was to make the family laugh. Beyond boyhood, after transforming himself into Mel Brooks, the laughs that came easily inside the Kaminsky family proved more elusive. His lifelong crusade to transform himself into a brand name of popular humor is at the center of Funny Man. In this exhaustively researched and wonderfully novelistic look at Brooks’ personal and professional life, McGilligan lays bare the strengths and drawbacks that shaped Brooks’ psychology, his willpower, his persona, and his comedy. Engrossing, nuanced and ultimately poignant, Funny Man delivers a great man’s unforgettable life story and an anatomy of the American dream of success.

Rocky Lang has been involved in the motion picture and television business all his life. He has produced, written and directed motion pictures, documentaries, television shows, movies-of-the-week and mini-series. He is the author of nine books, including How I Broke Into Hollywood, , Confessions of Emergency Room Doctors, The Big Nasty, and Growing Up Hollywood, Differences Differences, Lara Takes Charge and If You Thought Your Divorce Was Bad, Wait Until You Read This Book. Letters from Hollywood: Inside the Private World of Classic American Moviemaking (Abrams) reproduces in full color scores of entertaining and insightful pieces of correspondence from some of the most notable and talented film industry names of all time—from the silent era to the golden age, and up through the pre-email days of the 1970s. Culled from libraries, archives, and personal collections, the 135 letters, memos, and telegrams are organized chronologically and are annotated by the authors to provide backstories and further context. While each piece reveals a specific moment in time, taken together, the letters convey a bigger picture of Hollywood history. Contributors include celebrities like Greta Garbo, Alfred Hitchcock, Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Katharine Hepburn, Marlon Brando, Elia Kazan, Cary Grant, Francis Ford Coppola, Tom Hanks, and Jane Fonda.