My First Time In Hollywood

“Through the first-person voices of some of the most fascinating, insight¬ful, funny, ego-maniacal, and brilliant people, Cari Beauchamp’s My First Time in Hollywood chronicles the years when Los Angeles became the Hollywood of the world’s imagination. Essential reading for anyone interested in film history.”—John Landis, director of National Lampoon’s Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller

“A delight and a revelation. Cari Beauchamp, one of the great writers on early cinema, helps us re-see Hollywood. Its early days come alive like never before. My First Time in Hollywood is a treasure, and a fascinating read.”—Mark Cousins, writer and director of The Story of Film: An Odyssey and A Story of Children and Film

“If ever a book could act as your own personal time machine and make you feel the Tinseltown dust beneath your feet, it’s My First Time in Hollywood. As entertaining as it is informative, this is a book I will refer back to forever.”—Allison Anders, director of Orange is the New Black, Sex in the City, and Gas Food Lodging

“What a priceless parade of evocative and highly entertaining memories. Once you start reading you won’t want to stop.”—Leonard Maltin, film critic and historian

“Cari Beauchamp has curated a gallery of hopes, illusions, and keen observation, notable for its portrait of early Hollywood and its insight into our human longing to be part of something transcendent.”
—John Sayles, writer and director of Lone Star, The Brother from Another Planet, and Eight Men Out

“My First Time in Hollywood makes you laugh out loud while pulling at your heartstrings.”—Anne Thompson, founder and editor of Indiewire’s Thompson on Hollywood

“What every film fan yearns for—first-hand, eyewitness accounts of a Hollywood none of us can remember and all of us wish we’d known. Completely fascinating.”—Kevin Brownlow, Academy Award-winning film preservationist, historian, and author of The Parade’s Gone By, Napoleon: Abel Gance’s Classic Film, and David Lean: A Biography

The Turner Classic Movie Channel has picked My First Time in Hollywood as its May Book of the Month with promotion on its website and on television throughout the month. It will also be in Vanity Fair’s Hot Reads column. Expect extensive editorial and review coverage, as editor Cari Beauchamp is the award-winning author of Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood; Joseph P. Kennedy Presents; Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary; and other books on Hollywood history. She is the only person to twice be named as an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholar.