HOT NEWS
There will be a French edition of the book out soon.
There will be an audio book available from Audible
Hollywood royalty documentary
HOLLYWOOD ROYALTY DOCUMENTARY
A FAMILY IN FILMS
offers an intimate account of America’s visionary film pioneer Jesse L. Lasky. In 1913, he produced the first full-length feature in Hollywood and founded Paramount Pictures with partners Cecil B. DeMille and Sam Goldwyn. When his final credits rolled in 1958, Lasky had produced over 1,000 films. His beloved son Jesse Lasky Jr., a decorated Captain in World War II, became an acclaimed novelist, poet and top Hollywood screenwriter (The Ten Commandments, Samson & Delilah). Pat Silver-Lasky (Lasky Jr’s collaborator and wife for 30 years) has written a masterful history of the birth and development of Hollywood, intimately revealed in over 400 private letters from father to son. Silver-Lasky’s insider knowledge creates a uniquely passionate mix of history and biography told with all the drama of a Hollywood blockbuster. The history of the movies is the history of America. Hollywood Royalty: A Family In Films is a rare personal slice of that history.
Film historian and author Michael G. Ankerich, whose most recent book, Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels, was named one of the top 10 silent film books of 2010 wrote this review on my new book Hollywood Royalty – a Family in Films. It will be published by Bearmanor Media mid 2017.
“Just when I think no more books can be written about early Hollywood and its beginning from a personal and intimate perspective, along comes Hollywood Royalty. The author has taken personal letters written from the hand of a true Hollywood pioneer to his son and woven them into an illuminating view inside one of early Hollywood’s most influential families.
The letters between Jesse Lasky Sr. and Jesse Lasky Jr., father and son, provide a rare and unique perspective of a man who shaped the film industry. There are intimate details about the Lasky family; Lasky’s complex relationship with his wife; day-to-day interactions with Adolph Zukor, Samuel Goldwyn, Cecil B. DeMille; behind-the-scenes negotiations and development of some of Hollywood’s finest classics; and perhaps most interesting, fatherly advice Lasky gives his son about life in general and his son’s career in films.
The beauty of the book is Silver-Lasky’s use of personal letters between Jesse Sr. and Jesse Jr. and to set the context, her own personal recollections and anecdotes provided her by husband Jesse Jr.
Hollywood Royalty will be of wide appeal to fans of classic cinema in these special areas: Beginnings of Hollywood and the film industry, silent films, Cecil B. DeMille, Adolph Zukor, transition to sound films, day-to-day development of a film (from adaptation to premiere).
The book should appeal to general readers other than film buffs and historians, as the author explores the intricate dynamics of a family who gains wealth and prestige and how they coped when studio politics and the Depression rocked their lavish lifestyle.
The photos for the book are especially interesting, as many are from Lasky’s personal collection.”