The Golden Years

THE GREAT MOVIE STARS THE GOLDEN YEARS FROM THE BEGINNING TO 1945. It's true: this is the first comprehensive book on the rise and fall of the great movie stars. Of course some fans already know all there is to know about John Wayne, and most people have heard something of the Garbo mythology, but how many remember that at one time Paramount considered Frances Farmer too important to play a lead opposite Gary Cooper? That, according to Gracie Fields's Hollywood Studio, she was once being paid "the highest salary ever paid to a human being"? That when David O. Selznick first announced the leads for Gone With the Wind they were Ronald Colman and Tallulah Bankhead? These are the kinds of facts that make up the epic of the Golden Years: a tragicomedy that is told here through 181 stories - each about a star whose name was made before the end of the Second World War. Some of these stories have lain hidden in the old magazines and memoirs, just waiting to be put together for the first time. Some, of course, are not complete, and are continued every week in your local movie house.