Issue: Fall/Winter 2020

Fall/Winter Reading

More than thirty years after Grant’s death, biographer Scott Eyman sheds new light on the life of the Hollywood icon in CARY GRANT: A Brilliant Disguise drawing on Grant’s own papers, extensive archival research and interviews with family and friends. Born Archibald Leach, Grant came to America as part of an acrobatic troupe and never left. As a result of his unhappy childhood, he had a complicated personal life. Nonetheless, Grant’s acting career was extraordinary. Twice nominated for an Oscar, he worked with nearly every A-list actress in Hollywood. The book is filled with rich details about his life, classic Hollywood and film history, the book is an incisive, definitive portrait or an immortal movie star who remains as popular today as ever.

Best known as the woman who “ran MGM,” Ida R. Koverman (1896-1954) served as a talent scout, mentor, executive secretary, and confidant to American movie mogul Louis B. Mayer for twenty five years. She Damn Near Ran the Studio: The Extraordinary Lives of Ida R. Koverman by Jacqueline R. Braitman, a historian of American history who specializes in California women and politics, is the first full account of Koverman’s life and the true story of how she became a formidable politico and a creative powerhouse during Hollywood’s Golden Era. Her many lives took her from Ohio to New York and Los Angeles where she became a key architect of the Southland’s conservative female-centric network. As Mayer’s executive secretary, she then became one of the most formidable women in Hollywood.