Reading

Yesterday, I picked up the first of my library books. "People Will Talk" by John Kobal, which is basically just a bunch of interviews with movie stars from the 30s and 40s. The section with Irene Dunne is disappointingly short, but insightful into her character. Since hers was such a quick section, I moved on to the section on Eleanor Powell, tap-dancer extraordinaire.

Her musings were much more in-depth and personal, and extremely helpful as to who was on the Hollywood scene at the time and how the studios worked. On that note, I learned this week that Irene Dunne was one of the first, if not the first person to challenge the studio contract system and was able to freelance and set her own terms in her contracts (she had to okay every director she worked with on a project). I also learned from Eleanor Powell's section that Powell got the William Morris Agency established on the West Coast (they were in New York before that).

All in all, I'm getting more of a sense of the atmosphere of New York and Hollywood in the time period, which will be immensely helpful when writing the script.

Here's to summer reading (and writing, obviously).

Cheers!