Hollywood

Hollywood memoir and the People Who Made It by Garson Kanin (1974) — Kanin was what one might call an artist with intellectual aspirations, a skilled writer who worked in many different capacities in the film and Broadway's theatre worlds from the 1930s onwards. In 1937, Garson Kanin was called to Hollywood by Samuel Goldwyn to "learn the business." Twenty-four, fresh from New York, Kanin longed to become a movie director, but found himself frustrated at every turn by the mogul who had already forgotten why he had signed Kanin to a contract. When Kanin finally did direct a film (for another studio, starring John Barrymore) Goldwyn groused; "You dirty so and so, why didn't you ever tell me you wanted to direct?" Sam Goldwyn, with his famous Goldwynisms, his arrogance, his outrageous behavior, is the centerpiece of this book, symbolizing the mystique of Hollywood's glamorous, heady years, but Kanin, playwright, director, novelist and screenwriter, seemed to know nearly everyone and includes reminiscences and anecdotes about hundreds of the movie capital's famous people: The producers and directors — Carl Laemmle, David O. Selznick, Billy Wilder, René Clair, George Cukor... The Studio Czars — Harry Cohn, Jack Warner, Sam Goldwyn, Darryl F. Zanuck, Walt Disney... The Glittering Stars — Tracy and Hepburn, Gilbert and Garbo, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, Charles Laughton, Groucho Marx. Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner... The Writers; and even Hollywood's colorful, if unknown but players. Hilarious, audacious, poignant scandalous, HOLLYWOOD is everything — and more than — its name implies, From his own adventures there Garson Kanin has drawn the material for a witty, wise, and dazzling panorama of the magical place it once was.