Hollywood Leg Man

(no dust jacket) [light shelfwear, spine very slightly turned, a touch of fading to spine cloth]. Anecdotal sort-of memoir by a genuine old-Hollywood character. Rosenstein learned his trade, if you can call it that, digging up dirt on movie people for renowned Hollywood gossip-monger Hedda Hopper -- and even though he'd left her employ by the time he penned this book, he dedicated it to her "because she's Miss Hollywood / unpredictable and perverse / but never, never a bore." (You could say the same thing about Jaik himself.) A fair amount of the book, in fact, is about H.H. herself, and near the end he reports that "before she ever read a line of the copy, she made all kinds of hysterical threats, and bared her fangs." Jaik (or "Joe," as he styles himself for purposes of his scattershot narrative) is a vigorous if not especially elegant writer, and he dishes big-time on the personalities of his day, from movie stars to moguls; he also spills a lot of ink on "Joe's" relationship with "Gwen," a wannabe actress. The thing about Rosenstein was that regardless of the veracity of any of his tales, he is endlessly entertaining. Eight years after this book appeared, he founded the publication "Hollywood Close-up," which for the next twenty years or so he used to tout his friends and attack his enemies in The Biz (he had a particular thing about Frank Sinatra), bringing approbation and libel suits galore down on his head, and in the process earning himself a kind of low-life Tinseltown immortality. Somebody (seriously) should write a real book about this guy, or at least a decent Wikipedia page.

Product Info

Publisher: The Madison Press

Year: (c.1950)

Type: Used

Binding: Hardcover

First Edition

Seller Info

ReadInk

Address: 2261 West 21st St. Los Angeles, California

Website: https://www.readinkbooks.com

Country: United States