The Golden West: Hollywood Stories

By Daniel Fuchs

Book Overview

In the spring of 1937, Brooklyn's Daniel Fuchs, twenty-seven years old and already the author of three remarkable novels (now collected as The Brooklyn Novels), came to Hollywood to bang out a treatment of one of his short stories. His thirteen-week contract turned into a permanent residence--and a lifelong love affair with the movie business. Fuchs worked with the best: Warner and M-G-M and RKO, Wilder and Huston and Joe Pasternak, Raft and Cagney and Doris Day. He spent his days crafting screenplays, but off the lot he continued to write prose, mainly stories for Collier's and The New Yorker and non-fiction "Letters from Hollywood" for Commentary. The Golden West collects, for the first time, the best of Fuch's writings about studio life, from a novice screenwriter's anxious first impressions to a fifty-year veteran's mellow memoirs. Fuchs may have loved Hollywood, but he saw life as it is, gold and tinsel both, and described it without falling into easy sentiment or condescending laughter.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1574232053
• ISBN13: 9781574232059
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

An intriguing presentation by an industry insider

John Updike provides the introduction to The Golden West: Hollywood Stories, a blend of autobiography and an account of writing for the movies. It was 1937 when nearly-thirty author Fuchs came to Hollywood to provide a play of one of his novels - a contract which would introduce him to a magical city in which he was to spend the rest of his life. Fuchs worked with some of Hollywood's best writers and actors, producing screenplays and prose: The Golden West gathers his writings about his movie business encounters from 1937-39 and again in 1989, making for an intriguing presentation by an industry insider.