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"This book is a fascinating on-location excursion down the mean streets of a metastasizing metropolis and the shuttered backlots of a sputtering studio system, an anthropological thick description of the gangsters, stars, hustlers, hookers, and hangers-on in the lonely place that is Hollywood."—Thomas Doherty, Professor of American Studies, Brandeis University
"Where previously Lewis focused most on top-level power plays and money grabs, he now trenchantly probes Hollywood's underworlds: grifters, gossip-mongers, and gangsters, loners and losers—bodies 'left by the side of the road.' A fascinating rewriting of Hollywood history, especially around production culture, including cultures of failure and despair." —Dana Polan, Cinema Studies, New York University
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Real Estate of Crime: The Black Dahlia Dumped by the Side of the Road
2. Mobsters and Movie Stars: Crime, Punishment, and Hollywood Celebrity
3. Hollywood Confi dential: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles
4. Hollywood’s Last Lonely Places: The Sad, Short Stories of Barbara Payton and Marilyn Monroe
Notes
Index
About the author
Jon Lewis is the Distinguished Professor of Film Studies and University Honors College Eminent Professor at Oregon State University. He has published eleven books, including Whom God Wishes to Destroy . . . : Francis Coppola and the New Hollywood and Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle over Censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry, is past editor of Cinema Journal, and served on the Executive Council of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
Summary
Two spectacular dead bodies - Elizabeth Short, known as the Black Dahlia, found dumped and posed in a vacant lot in January 1947, and Marilyn Monroe, found dead in her home in August 1962 - bookend this new history of Hollywood's postwar transition.
Additional text
“The strength of Hard-Boiled Hollywood . . . is its detail. Lewis meticulously details each of the case studies he approaches, drawing from an impressive array of articles in trade journals and the popular press. Unearthing details that even those familiar with the era might have missed, Lewis affords us a portal into a Hollywood often overlooked.”
