You Must Remember This

December 9, 2013
With great affection and a twinkle in his eye, veteran actor Wagner (A Kiss Before Dying; Hart to Hart) recalls Hollywood’s glory days of the 1940s and early 1950s, when class, manners, friendship, and a code of values ruled the city of stars. Although Wagner regales readers with tales of many of his Hollywood friends—from Mary Pickford and Harold Lloyd to Andy Williams and Jimmy Stewart—he never stoops to kiss-and-tell gossip about the stars nor does he wax nostalgic about a past for which he desperately longs. An expert storyteller, Wagner entertains with tale of restaurants like the Brown Derby—where the Cobb Salad was invented—the Trocadero, and the Mocambo, where elegance, entertainment, and great food filled a triple bill every night; in their day, restaurateurs such as Mike Romanoff and Dave Chasen were stars as big as Frank Sinatra and Bette Davis. Wagner fondly recalls growing up in a Hollywood where there was still land and space enough for him to have a horse named Sonny, and he looks back warmly on the various hotels and houses that sprang up in Hollywood and Beverly Hills as the area became a magnet for the movies. As he takes us on a trip down memory lane, showing us how deeply Hollywood has changed, he concludes that “nothing lasts forever, except the movies.”Eyman also worked with Wagner on the actor’s autobiography, Pieces of My Heart, published in 2008. Agent: Mort Janklow, Janklow & Nesbit.

January 15, 2014
The star of such films and TV shows as A Kiss Before Dying and It Takes a Thief revisits the architecture, fashion, restaurants and pastimes of Hollywood's golden age through anecdotes and personal memories. With veteran biographer and film historian Eyman (Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille, 2010, etc.), with whom he collaborated on his previous memoir (Pieces of My Heart, 2008), Wagner presents a brisk account of early Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, their surrounding neighborhoods and the silver screen notables who frequented them, including James Cagney, Gloria Swanson, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart and many others. Topical chapters provide generous vistas on a world marked by exclusivity. The author dedicates a substantial, meticulous chapter to houses and hotels, with emphasis on the home of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, Pickfair; Rudolph Valentino's Falcon Lair; the Beverly Hills Hotel; and similarly iconic structures. Tracking the shift from a pre-1929 "architecture as entertainment" perspective to a less opulent style, Wagner enlivens many sites and landscapes that have largely disappeared. For dedicated movie buffs, a handful of choice remarks on the personal habits of stars provides respite from tedious details. Other chapters consider facets of privilege, from a preference among certain male stars for English-inspired wardrobes to the nightlife of the times. A few mild, curmudgeonly laments on current realities--such as paparazzi swarms, the bottom-line nature of moviemaking and an increasing informality that sharply contrasts with bygone glamour--underscore the actor's nostalgia for the studio days, yet they stop short of idealizing; he briefly acknowledges the industry's later midcentury problems. Ultimately, the book is a charmed and mostly charming tribute to off-screen lives during a period many may regard as Hollywood's finest. A diverting ancillary note to heavier biographies.

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February 15, 2014

A handsome young journeyman actor in the 1950s, Wagner observed what were to be the last years of the golden era of Hollywood. The studio system and the old-time moguls were beginning to fade but were still powerful. Stars still displayed their glamorous lifestyle in fashionable clubs and restaurants; gossip columnists like Louella Parsons, Jimmy Fidler, and Hedda Hopper feverishly sought their exclusives. Although Wagner sporadically inserts some of his own experiences in this account, it is not a memoir; rather it is more a social history of that era, divided according to broad topics such as the fabulous Hollywood homes (Pickfair, the Marion Davies beach "cottage," etc.), the nightlife, the memorable personalities, the columnists, and how the stars spent their leisure time. Introducing this is a general history of Hollywood before and during the height of that legendary era. Most of what Wagner and Eyman (former literary and art critic, Palm Beach Post; coauthor Pieces of My Heart) describe has been written about very often and sometimes in more interesting ways. But Wagner has had a decades-long career and has certainly been in the "thick" of the lifestyle he describes. VERDICT Despite the pedestrian writing style, the insider's view that Wagner provides may well appeal to nostalgia buffs, and he does offer the occasional illuminating insight on that long-vanished time.--Roy Liebman, formerly with California State Univ., Los Angeles

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2014
Wagner and Eyman, who coauthored Wagner's 2008 autobiography, Pieces of My Heart, this time tell the story of a place and a time: Hollywood from the 1930s through the '60s. Divided into topical chapters, including Houses and Hotels, Style, and Nightlife, the book follows Hollywood from its early daysuntil Cecil B. DeMille arrived in 1913, Hollywood was just another place outside Los Angelesthrough its heady decades as the trendsetter in style and popular culture, and ending with the collapse of the studio system, when profits were in steep decline and many of the Golden Age stars were dying or aging out of the spotlight. You can tell that Wagner, whose acting career started when the Golden Age was its most golden, truly misses that time and place; his fondness for it and his distaste for the modern way of moviemaking come through on almost every page. For Wagner, the emblems of Hollywood at its grandestthe mansions, the stars, the parties, the watering holesevoke a better world, and his account of how it was then just may leave nostalgic readers similarly affected.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)