December 31, 2024: This year I read five corking good books about Old Hollywood, all published in 2024; they’re listed alphabetically below.

Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Philip Gefter

Don’t you want to read a book that Eric Idle read too?

Dancing on the Edge: A Journey of Living, Loving, and Tumbling Through Hollywood by Russ Tamblyn with Sarah Tomlinson

A real heartbreaker because Tamblyn doesn’t even pretend that he got everything he wanted.

The Devil Raises His Own by Scott Phillips

This novel was, I mean, jeez. What? Wow. This novel. Yikes.

Giant Love: Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film by Julie Gilbert

I finally understand the photo I have of my grandparents with some of the cast and crew of Giant, including Liz looking imperious and George Stevens looking drained but satisfied. My grandparents look, of course, dapper and mystified.

The Girl from the Grand Hotel by Camille Aubray

For anyone who ever thought that Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton should have played married detectives in a movie.