"There's No Business Like Show Business!"

     The stories you see on your movie and television screens often pale in comparison to the behind the scenes tales of insanity, excess, power, greed, corruption, good, and evil that you don't see on screen. The early Hollywood movie making scene and the early days of television in New York and Hollywood are full of great stories that often make for great books.

    Julian David Stone started out in show biz as a rock and roll photographer and then became a director and screenwriter. He's also written a couple of enjoyable books about the early days of the screen. The Strange Birth, Short Life, and Sudden Death of Justice Girl takes the reader into the earliest days of tv, the early 1950s, the days of live television and several competing networks. The protagonist is a writer for a comedy show on a struggling small network, on its last legs. Because of the Red Scare and his association with blacklisted writers, he's fired. As a last gesture of defiance, he decides to sabotage the show by creating an inane character called Justice Girl and inserting her into the wrong sketch on the show. Lo and behold, she's a hit, and the network demands more.  Our hero has no idea that the actress playing Justice Girl is working undercover to root out the commies in tv and boost her father's political career. Justice Girl becomes larger than either expected and takes on a life of her own.  

    Stone's most recent book is It's Alive!, set during the couple of weeks before Universal Pictures starts production of the 1931 movie classic "Frankenstein." Following the blockbuster "Dracula," starring Bela Lugosi. "Frankenstein" propelled Universal to the top, launching Boris Karloff into stardom and leading to a whole franchise of classic monster movies. This time, the protagonist is Junior Laemmie, de facto head of the studio, after his father relaxed the reins. It was Junior who released "Dracula," and it was huge, despite his father's disapproval. Now, his father returns to the studio, planning to stop "Frankenstein" before it begins filming. So a father-son battle ensues, but there is also a competition between Bela Lugosi and relative newcomer Boris Karloff, both of whom want the role of Frankenstein's monster.  It makes for a great story.

    Let's go back a few year's to William Mann's Tinseltown, published in 2014, and set during the Roaring Twenties in Los Angeles. If you like narrative nonfiction and true crime, you will enjoy this non fiction work about the murder of William Desmond Taylor, noted director and producer and president of the Motion Picture Directors Association. The murder is still officially unsolved, but Mann lays out his theory, using many sources, including recently released FBI files. Along the way, he paints Hollywood as a place where starlets, moviemakers, and studio heads will do just about anything to get on top, and drugs, sex, violence and cover-ups are never too far out of the picture.

    I LOVE MEL BROOKS! It will be an incredibly sad day when the 96 year old superstar comedian, writer, director, and producer dies. Last year, he published his autobiography, All About Me! Now, I've pretty much seen and read almost all of his interviews and have heard a lot of stories multiple times, but this book is still fantastic. And of course, the Audiobook, narrated by Brooks, is even so much awesome-r. (Come to think of it, I listened to all of these books.) He covers his entire life and goes into great detail about each project and how it came into being. This book is a master class on creativity, comedy, directing, producing, and just simply being an outstanding human being. There is no man on earth who is more supportive of his friends and collaborators, and that shows through in his work. I loved every second of the book, and I really want to watch all of his movies again.