Books by Eve Golden

Charming and classically handsome, John Gilbert (1897--1936) was among the world's most recognizable actors during the silent era. He was a wild, swashbuckling figure on screen and off, and accounts of his life have focused on his high-profile romances with Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, his legendary conflicts with Louis B. Mayer, his four tumultuous marriages, and his swift decline after the introduction of talkies. A dramatic and interesting personality, Gilbert served as one of the primary inspirations for the character of George Valentin in the Academy Award--winning movie The Artist (2011). Many myths have developed around the larger-than-life star in the eighty years since his untimely death, but this definitive biography sets the record straight.Eve Golden separates fact from fiction in John Gilbert: The Last of the Silent Film Stars, tracing the actor's life from his youth spent traveling with his mother in acting troupes to the peak of fame at MGM, where he starred opposite Mae Murray, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, and other actresses in popular films such as The Merry Widow (1925), The Big Parade (1925), Flesh and the Devil (1926), and Love (1927). Golden debunks some of the most pernicious rumors about the actor, including the oft-repeated myth that he had a high-pitched, squeaky voice that ruined his career. Meticulous, comprehensive, and generously illustrated, this book provides a behind-the-scenes look at one of the silent era's greatest stars and the glamorous yet brutal world in which he lived.

Comedic film actress Kay Kendall, born to a theatrical family in Northern England, came of age in London during the Blitz. After starring in Britain's biggest cinematic disaster, she found stardom in 1953 with her brilliant performance in the low-budget film, Genevieve. She scored success after success with her light comic style in movies such as Doctor in the House, The Reluctant Debutante, and the Gene Kelly musical Les Girls. Kendall's private life was even more colorful than the plots of her films as she embarked on a series of affairs with minor royalty, costars, directors, producers, and married men. In 1954 she fell in love with her married Constant Husband costar Rex Harrison and accompanied him to New York, where he was starring on Broadway in My Fair Lady. It was there that Kendall was diagnosed with myelocytic leukemia. Her life took a romantic and tragic turn as Harrison divorced his wife and married Kendall. He agreed with their doctor that she was never to know of her diagnosis, and for the next two years the couple lived a hectic, glamorous life together as Kendall's health failed. She died in London at the age of 32, shortly after completing the filming of Once More with Feeling!, her husband by her side. The Brief, Madcap Life of Kay Kendall was written with the cooperation of Kendall's sister Kim and includes interviews with many of her costars, relatives and friends. A complete filmography and numerous rare photographs complete this first-ever biography of Britain's most glamorous comic star. Eve Golden is the author of several biographies of actresses, Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway, as well as a collection of essays on silent film stars.

"Back in 2001, I put together Golden Images, a collection of silent movie star articles originally published in Classic Images and Films of the Golden Age. It's taken me nearly ten years-oh, I keep busy-but here is the sequel, Bride of Golden Images (if Abbott and Costello were in this book, yes, it would have been called Abbott and Costello Meet Golden Images)."As in the first book, these articles have all been seen in CI and FGA. But, also as in Golden Images, I have gone over them with a fine-toothed comb: rewriting, doing additional research, and handing it over to my fabulous editor, Richard Kukan, so that clunky phrasing and just plain bad writing can be fixed. "I loved writing for CI and FGA (I basically ran out of subjects, so only do an occasional piece for them now, such as a recent tribute to the late Anita Page). What other publication will happily print pieces on the Duncan Sisters? Judy Tyler? Jimmy Durante? The research and writing were fun for me, and I hope that comes through in these articles. It was an additional kick for me to be able to illustrate this book with photos from The Everett Collection, where I work as an archivist. Bride of Golden Images covers the talkie years, from the late 1920s through the 1960s. It's an eclectic collection of superstars, second bananas, character actors, and stage stars dipping their toes into the movies. Some of them immortal (Garbo, Dietrich, Crawford, Monroe). Some fondly remembered mostly by movie and pop-culture buffs (Carmen Miranda, Edward Everett Horton, Betty Grable, Inger Stevens, Constance Bennett). And then, those whose stories are known only to us few real fanatics: Lyda Roberti, the Hilton sisters, Helen Kane, Renate Muller, Phillips Holmes. If I can bring those people back to life for just a few moments, I will be, as Edith King Hall wrote in a 1900 children's book, 'the happiest little girl in all of Toyland.'"