My First Time in Hollywood: Stories from the Pioneers, Dreamers and Misfits Who Made the Movies

In My First Time in Hollywood, over forty legends of the film business recount their first trip to Southern California. Actors, directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, and editors—half of them women—recall their initial impressions, their struggle to find work, and the love for making movies that kept them going. Drawn from letters, speeches, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies (and with over sixty vintage photographs and illustrations), each story is intimate and unique, but all speak to our univer¬sal need to follow our passions and be part of a community that feeds the soul.

“Through the first-person voices of some of the most fascinating, insightful, 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 and movies our internationally shared mythology. 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 creation is between these pages. 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. In their own words, actors, directors, writers, and others give vivid accounts of arriving in a young town to create and work in a brand-new industry, and at least half of them are women. 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.

“My First Time in Hollywood puts us in the heads of dozens of remarkable people who fell in love with moving images on a screen and set off to put themselves ‘in the picture.’ 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.

“Ace Hollywood chronicler Cari Beauchamp reminds us with scrumptious detail that even the greatest, when they went West, faced insecurities and challenges in finding their place in the world of filmmaking. 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.