The whole truth and nothing but

Ed blasted me twice before I tried to fire back. He was still banging away like thirty-nine weeks of “Wagon Train.” He tried another tactic. He complained to two show-business u...

He insisted on throwing a birthday party at his studio for her, with her whole school class, their mothers and teachers invited. We all watched a special showing of some Disney...

I’m told that when you write a book with a title like this, you must let your readers know something about your life. Well, I was born into the home of David and Margaret Furry,...

It doesn’t require the prompting of Emily Post or that other authority on etiquette, Polly Adler, to cause me to write a note of appreciation.... As I dined and sat beside two o...

“No, I like breakfast when I get up. I’ll put our order in tonight.” I settled for juice, coffee, and a boiled egg. That taken care of, we agreed that eight-thirty in the mornin...

A sister of hers was another of the six chorus girls. Marion Cecilia Douras--she changed the name to Davies later--wanted to be with her sister and work beside her. Neither her...

He had two years at UCLA, keeping in touch with his father, who had married again, and establishing good terms with his stepmother, Ethel. Jimmy discovered that James Whitmore,...

No more. The tradition that the designers fostered has vanished. Women used to follow Hollywood fashion as avidly as they copied Veronica Lake’s peekaboo hairdo or dreamed that...

Even Frank Sinatra had to come to terms with Louella in her heyday. He stood high in her disfavor for months. It seemed there was nothing he could do to stop the attacks she mad...

“Oh, he’ll be back here tomorrow,” she answered dutifully. Of course he wasn’t. He took a detour by way of Grossinger’s, that Catskill haven of rest and romance, where he had ma...

He begged Gene Fowler to cross the Atlantic as his guest when he opened at the Palladium in the summer of 1951, following Danny Kaye, who was cutting it up all over London town...

His director, Norman Taurog, and Joe Pasternak appealed for help to Dore Schary, who, with Mayer on his way out, was now in charge of production. Schary luxuriated in an impecca...

I believe Grace caught the movie-making bug again after Jacqueline Kennedy went off without John F. on her triumphant trip to India and Pakistan. After all, if a great lady who...

Sylvia’s best friend and next-door neighbor in Santa Monica was Norma Shearer, who decided one day to give the Fairbankses a party, inviting Doug’s closest friends. At 7 P.M. th...

Stage mothers are nothing new. I remember as far back as the Tartar we lovingly called “Ma” Janis, who took care of all the cash her daughter Elsie earned. When “Ma” died, Elsie...

Come eleven o’clock I was dancing with Frank. _Confidential_, the scandal sheet which was the scourge of Hollywood in those days, had very recently printed the doleful reminisce...

But on a visit to New York soon after, a Hollywood press agent who was close to Davidson bumped into a Madison Avenue advertising man whom he hadn’t seen for years. The old frie...

“I don’t think there’s any actress in the world that can produce like she can when she’s going,” said one member of the group that accompanied her to London. “When she’s going,...

She was so weak that her nurse, Mrs. Mauser, had to help her downstairs to the dressing room where the two wizards were waiting to ply their arts. I went off to the bottom of he...

He occasionally hankers after the days, thirty-four years and more than 150 movies ago, when he was the easygoing ex-prop man making his first Monogram picture on a total budget...

The second version of _Mutiny_ got under way when an MGM expedition arrived on Tahiti at the height of the rainy season. It had to run before the weather and go back later for a...

Elvis is lucky, too, in having an agent like the “colonel,” whose itch for money hasn’t outpaced his protégé’s talents. A good agent doesn’t allow his client to take on more tha...

He paced his thick white carpet, pausing only to stand in front of the mirror in the room to admire the effect he hoped he was making. “Kay Koverman talks too much,” he raved. “...

Money is talked about in our town more than elsewhere, perhaps, because there’s more of it around. Bob, who could safely be called thrifty, has splurged on a private three-hole...

When I first saw Hollywood, Sam Goldwyn was still Goldfish, and a grain store stood on Sunset Boulevard at the corner of Cahuenga. Cecil B. De Mille, looking for some place to p...

In the early days Los Angeles socialites lent their gardens and exteriors of their houses to movie making on a business basis, donating proceeds to charity. But they didn’t invi...

Marty set out to do over Doris, making her an entirely different kind of woman. A long list of subjects was barred in interviews now. Questions were welcome that let the two of...

The idea is that if enough people are watching, some of the advertisers’ message will rub off on them to make the series worth while. But if enough people stop watching the stuf...