"More than just a place where movies were made, Hollywood in its "golden years" was a highly charged symbolic site in America. It was a focal point for mass desires and expectations and a symbol of cultural decay and crumbling social values. The popular fiction of those decades - including novels, short stories, essays, autobiographies, fan magazines, and trade journals - portrayed the town as a place where hope and failure in American life tragically and inevitably collided.".

"John Parris Springer's incisive readings of these "Hollywood fictions" trace the contradictory ways in which Hollywood was represented and analyze the conflicting images it evoked."--BOOK JACKET.