Description:

"A celebration of that curious dreamscape called Hollywood--a phantom town that has produced a universal myth and invented an image of America that much of the world still embraces. In Movieland, Jerome Charyn mingles his own life as a moviegoer with the history, romance, and sadness of Hollywood, taking an in-depth look at the legends--the studios, the stars, the scandals--to reveal that special quality which has so influenced fiction and popular culture. He meets with Paul Newman, Viveca Lindfors, and Mae Clark, the actress who was the original bride of Frankenstein; explores Cinecittà, Mussolini's own "Hollywood on the Tiber"; unearths the movie palaces that have haunted so many of our childhoods; recalls his own life as Otto Preminger's "house writer" (and jester) during Preminger's decline; visits with Mickey Mouse on his sixtieth birthday; reinvents the lost years and lost stars of the silent era--the nights and days of Irving Thalberg, the Garden of Allah, Gloria Swanson, and Clara Bow--and seeks out the hieroglyphics of modern Hollywood; writes of the Nazi officer who saved the Cinémathèque Française and its library of American films; talks to Arthur Penn, the director of Bonnie and Clyde, about his Dickensian childhood and the madness of moviemaking; attends a festival in a Spanish town that has been turned into a Hollywood street of crime; and pays homage to Hollywood's heroes, victims, goddesses, and neglected lords: Louise Brooks, Raymond Chandler, Carole Landis, Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, and many, many more. ... Movieland is a fascinating, entertaining, and insightful tribute to one of our most adored yet puzzling icons.

"--Dust jacket.