The Bad & The Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties by Sam Kashner and Jennifer MacNair
If you've ever wanted a portrait of Hollywood at a particular crossroads, look no further than The Bad & The Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties.
You'll find out how scandal mags got their start, how the studio system started to break with the advent of new stars and new acting methods, and how those firmly entangled in the fabric of the decade navigated their personal struggles and professional stumbles (spoiler alert: not all of them made it out unscathed). Each chapter is devoted to a different actor, player, or scandal.
The chapter about director Nicholas Ray and his teen actors James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo charts how tragic all of their lives were, whether they were downfalls of their own making or quirks of circumstance. How did James Dean become such an overnight sensation? How did Natalie Wood transition from child star to succesful adult actress? How did Sal Mineo navigate a career spent in the closet? Kashner and MacNair trace all of these lines and how they were products of the 1950s.
Lana Turner gets a similar treatment. By the late '50s, she was a melodrama queen whose personal life was full of scandal. Imitation of Life and Peyton Place turned her career around, but she's likely more famous today because of her gangster boyfriend Johnny Stampanato and his death at the hands of her teenage daughter Cheryl Crane.
The silent film queens who attempted comebacks in the fifties, namely Gloria Swanson, also feature. Their stories are chartered from the days they ruled an early Hollywood kingdom to their near-erasure by the 1950s. Gloria's successful turn as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard is written as a triumph for one of Hollywood's earliest stars, but her attempts to reinvigorate her career beyond Norma were not succesful, and Kashner and MacNair focus on how Hollywood and the public would never let go of that image.
The chapter about director Nicholas Ray and his teen actors James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo charts how tragic all of their lives were, whether they were downfalls of their own making or quirks of circumstance. How did James Dean become such an overnight sensation? How did Natalie Wood transition from child star to succesful adult actress? How did Sal Mineo navigate a career spent in the closet? Kashner and MacNair trace all of these lines and how they were products of the 1950s.
Other chapters include figuring out Rock Hudson and how he became such a sensation, and how he remained in the closet while other closeted stars were outed to keep salacious gossip about other stars from leaking; the children of Charlie Chaplin, Edward G. Robinson and John Barrymore, and how they never stood a chance so long as they stood in their fathers' shadows; the then-scandalous relationship (or non-relationship) between Kim Novak and Sammy Davis Jr.; how Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper and Sheilah Graham became the gossip queens of Hollywood; and how biblical epics became all the rage in the mid-'50s and helped to launch Richard Burton's career.
I can't recommend this book enough.
On another note, Sam Kashner is one of my favourite non-fiction writers. He's also behind Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century and The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters: The Tragic and Glamorous Lives of Jackie and Lee, and, like this book, I couldn't put them down until I'd finished them. He's a very immersive writer who transports you into the world he builds. I'm always checking his Goodreads profile to see what he's up to next.
If you have any book recommendations for me, leave them in the comments!
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