Since the early 1920s, Los Angeles has been a magnet for artists of all stripes. Even though movie-studio politics and a blockbuster ethos wore down literati from Bertolt Brecht and the Mann brothers to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, still the scribes kept coming. The Industry’s callousness extended to the way aging sex symbols like Marilyn Monroe were eventually, shrewdly packaged into the romance of falling stars. It’s as though the nation feeds on the cruelty of our city. Those inside Hollywood, or aiming to be so, eventually snap, or surrender, or retire... More >>>