Margaret in Hollywood

A novel of a rebellious young actress in the early twentieth century, by the PEN/Hemingway Award–winning author of A Way of Life, Like Any Other.
Back in the days when Shakespeare still meant something to a lot of people, I wanted to be a great dramatic actress. Before I knew it I was in Hollywood . . .

So begins this remarkable novel, in which Margaret Spencer tells us of her own journey from the vaudeville stage of the Midwest, to performing as a child in Buenos Aires, through sexual awakenings to Broadway success, and her arrival, against her will, in the Hollywood of 1927.

I was only one among numberless hordes of fatherless girls who, with mothers pinching at their elbows, had descended onto Hollywood as the fruit flies on the citrus groves.

But Margaret is anything but ordinary. Feisty, lusty, tart-tongued, willing to use her body as well as her brains to stay afloat, Margaret has her mind and heart set on liberation in every sense of the world. She demands freedom—sexual, artistic, and financial—and her battle to achieve it makes her a heroine well ahead of her time. Margaret in Hollywood is the tale of a young woman who refuses to be owned and will not be cowed, and whose love of life propels her onward.