Bride of Golden Images

"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.'"