Below I’ll give you my selections for the best Hollywood books by a few categories. I will cover these and other great books more in depth later.
1. The Story of Hollywood: An Illustrated History (2011)
The Story of Hollywood follows Hollywood from its dusty origins to its glorious rise to stardom. Lavishly illustrated with over 800 vintage images from the author’s private collection, the book tells the complete story of Hollywood including its eventual decline and urban renewal. Both the playground of stars and the boulevard of broken dreams, Hollywood transformed American society with its motion pictures that revolutionized the entertainment world. The Story of Hollywood brings new insights to readers with a passion for Hollywood and its place in the history of film, radio, and television….
2. The Hollywood Standard: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to Script Format and Style (Hollywood Standard: The Complete & Authoritative Guide to) (2009)
The Hollywood Standard describes in clear, vivid prose and hundreds of examples how to format every element of a screenplay or television script. A reference for everyone who writes for the screen, from the novice to the veteran, this is the dictionary of script format, with instructions for formatting everything from the simplest master scene heading to the most complex and challenging musical underwater dream sequence. This new edition includes a quick start guide, plus new chapters on avoiding a dozen deadly formatting mistakes, clarifying the difference between a spec script and…
3. A Hollywood Deal (Billionaires’ Brides of Convenience Book 1) (Volume 1) (2016)
I’m used to cleaning up after my boss, Hollywood superstar and all-around bad boy Ryder Pryce-Reed. Nothing can shock me now–not the countless “humped and dumped” women or the wreckage left in the wake of his wild ways–until he asks me to marry him……for a year.He says it’s strictly so he can claim his beloved grandfather’s painting, but I know there’s more. There’s always more with Ryder.My instincts say no, but he’s offering to take care of the baby in my womb. Since my self-centered ex isn’t going to play the father, I say yes, while steeling my heart. I can’t afford to fall for a man who…
4. Hollywood Heyday: 75 Candid Interviews with Golden Age Legends (2018)
"What audacity!" exclaimed actor Robert Wagner when he heard about the authors’ adolescent exploits in nabbing interviews with Hollywood celebrities. In 1978, Fantle and Johnson, St. Paul teenagers, boarded a plane to meet with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. They had written the stars requesting interviews–and to their amazement, both agreed. Over the years, more than 250 other stars also agreed–Lucille Ball, Bob Hope, James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Debbie Reynolds, George Burns, Rod Steiger, Milton Berle, Frank Capra and Hoagy Carmichael, to…
5. Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood’s Darkest and Best Kept Secrets (1981)
Kenneth Anger is a former child movie actor who grew up to become one of America’s leading underground filmmakers. Hollywood Babylon was originally published in Paris, and quickly became an underground legend. Not a word has been changed. Not a story omitted. Here is the hot, luscious plum of sizzling scandal that continues to shock the world….
6. Hollywood’s Lost Backlot: 40 Acres of Glamour and Mystery (2018)
Hollywood is a transitory place. Stars and studios rise and fall. Genres and careers wax and wane. Movies and movie moguls and movie makers and movie palaces are acclaimed and patronized and loved and beloved, and then forgotten. And yet…And yet one place in Southern California, built in the 1920s by (allegedly murdered) producer Thomas Ince, acquired by Cecil B. DeMille, now occupied by Amazon.com, has been the home for hundreds of the most iconic and legendary films and television shows in the world for a remarkable and star-studded fifty years. This bizarre, magical place was the location…
7. Garson Kanin’s Hollywood (1976)
441 PAGES….
8. Hollywood Secrets and Scandals (2018)
Some of the most amazing secrets from Hollywood you never knew. “Jimmy Stewart really was in love with me.”- Kim Novak“The police accused me of killing Sharon Tate.”- Cass Elliot“I want a vibrator for my birthday.”- Debbie Reynolds“I’m going to throw up. Keep Sonny away.”- Cher“Sue, you’re the terror of the west coast.”- Mario Puzo, Godfather author“I have your balls now, you Nazi, and you’re not getting them back.”- Joan Rivers…
9. Hollywood Godfather: The most authentic mafia book you’ll ever read (2019)
Gianni Russo was a handsome twenty-five-year-old mobster with no acting experience when he walked onto the set of The Godfather and entered Hollywood history. He played Carlo Rizzi, the husband of Connie Corleone, who set up her brother Sonny, played by James Caan, for a hit. Russo didn’t have to act – he knew the Mob inside and out, from his childhood in Little Italy, to Mafia legend Frank Costello who took him under his wing, to acting as a messenger to New Orleans Mob boss Carlos Marcello during the Kennedy assassination, to having to go on the lam after shooting and…
10. Hollywood (2002)
Hank and his wife, Sarah, agree to write a screenplay, and encounter the strange world of the movie industry….
11. Hooked on Hollywood: Discoveries from a Lifetime of Film Fandom (2018)
Leonard Maltin is America’s best-known film historian, film reviewer, and author of books that have sold more than 7 million copies. He remains a thought leader on past and present Hollywood through his website www.leonardmaltin.com, and a social media presence that includes an active Facebook page and a Twitter feed with more than 66,000 followers. In Hooked on Hollywood, Maltin opens up his personal archive to take readers on a fascinating journey through film history. He first interviewed greats of Hollywood as a precocious teenager in 1960s New York City. He used what he learned from these luminaries to…
12. The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood (2006)
In this unprecedented, all-encompassing, and thoroughly entertaining account of the movie business, acclaimed writer Edward Jay Epstein reveals the real magic behind moviemaking: how the studios make their money.Epstein shows that in Hollywood, the only art that matters is the art of the deal: Major films turn huge profits not from the movies themselves but through myriad other enterprises, from video-game spin-offs and soundtracks to fast-food tie-ins, and even theme-park rides. The studios may compete for stars and Oscars, but their corporate parents view wth one another in less glamorous…
13. Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon — The Case Against Celebrity (2005)
Hollywood, Interrupted is a sometimes frightening, occasionally sad, and frequently hysterical odyssey into the darkest realms of showbiz pathology, the endless stream of meltdowns and flameouts, and the inexplicable behavior on the part of show business personalities. Charting celebrities from rehab to retox, to jails, cults, institutions, near-death experiences and the Democratic Party, Hollywood, Interrupted takes readers on a surreal field trip into the amoral belly of the entertainment industry. Each chapter — covering topics including…
14. Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Live of the Stars (2013)
Newly discharged from the Marines after World War II, Bowers arrived in Hollywood in 1946. Young, charismatic, and strikingly handsome, he quickly caught the eye of many of the town’s stars and starlets. He began sleeping with some himself, and connecting others with his coterie of young, attractive, and sexually free-spirited friends. His own lovers included Edith Piaf, Spencer Tracy, Vivien Leigh, Cary Grant, and the abdicated King of England Edward VIII, and he arranged tricks or otherwise crossed paths with Tennessee Williams, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price, Katharine…
Best Hollywood Books: The Ultimate Collection
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Genesis and download some hollywood books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Tales of a Hollywood Housewife: A Memoir by the First Mrs. Lee Marvin
Author(s): Betty Marvin
Publisher: iUniverse, Year: 4 Mar 2010, Size: 5 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 2440830
The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood
Author(s): Sam Wasson
Publisher: Flatiron Books, Year: 2020, Size: 8 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 2473849
The Billion Dollar Hollywood Heist: The A-List Kingpin and the Poker Ring that Brought Down Tinseltown
Author(s): Houston Curtis; Dylan Howard
Publisher: Skyhorse, Year: 2020, Size: 4 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 2491638
The American West on Film
Author(s): Johnny D. Boggs
Publisher: ABC-CLIO, Year: 2020, Size: 3 Mb, Download: pdf
ID: 2493458
The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler's Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood
Author(s): Donna Rifkind
Publisher: Other Press, Year: 2020, Size: 20 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 2494321
Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.
Author(s): Lili Anolik
Publisher: Scribner, Year: 2019, Size: 8 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 2307842
The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film
Author(s): W.K. Stratton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, Year: 2019, Size: 55 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 2332284
The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick
Author(s): Mallory O’Meara
Publisher: Hanover Square Press, Year: 2019, Size: 9 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 2338477
Post-Fordist Cinema: Hollywood Auteurs and the Corporate Counterculture
Author(s): Jeff Menne
Publisher: Columbia University Press, Year: 2019, Size: 8 Mb, Download: pdf
ID: 2370002
Hollywood Black: The Stars, the Films, the Filmmakers
Author(s): Donald Bogle
Publisher: Running Press Adult, Year: 2019, Size: 344 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 2371297
Please note that this booklist is not absolute. Some books are truly best-sellers according to The New York Times, others are composed by unknown authors. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant links you could recommend? Leave a comment if you have any feedback on the list.