Illuminating the world that has brought viewers both cinema classics and small-screen delights, these books—ten works of nonfiction alongside a novel of 1940s Hollywood—find pathos, suspense, heroism and laughter in the moments after the camera looks away.

Liveright
Big Red: A Novel Starring Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles

By Jerome Charyn | Liveright

The narrator of Jerome Charyn’s novel is “an actress who couldn’t act, a dancer who couldn’t dance, a singer who couldn’t sing,” who finds herself entangled in the tumultuous union between Orson Welles and the sultry star Rita Hayworth. A tale of movieland love and war based on the brief but eventful marriage of two film legends.

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Knopf
The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham—Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit

By Ron Shelton | Knopf

When ex-ballplayer Ron Shelton scored the chance to pitch Hollywood on directing a script of his own, he turned to the subject matter he knew best. To Shelton’s simultaneous surprise and panic, a producer said yes—which meant the yet-unwritten script for “Bull Durham” had to hit a home run.

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Abrams Press
Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven’s Gate, and the Price of a Vision

By Charles Elton | Abrams Press

The director Michael Cimino was a maximalist master of overstatement for whom no budget was too large. His film “The Deer Hunter” was shot in eight locations in four states and cost a total of $15 million to produce. The picture was a box-office success and Oscar prizewinner—and the worst possible fate for the director’s career.

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Ballantine
Directed by James Burrows: Five Decades of Stories From the Legendary Director of Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Will & Grace, and More

By James Burrows | Ballantine

The musical adaptation of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” flopped—but its assitant stage manager James Burrows made a connection with star Mary Tyler Moore that would kickstart a long and fruitful career. From working on Moore’s groundbreaking show to collaborating with the Charles brothers on “Cheers,” Burrows reimagined the sitcom as a moment of theater.

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Chicago Review
The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation’s Golden Age

By Jake S. Friedman | Chicago Review

Behind the lovable Gepetto of Disney’s “Pinocchio” and the dancing mushrooms of the dazzling “Fantasia” was an artist the studio later sought to erase. In 1941 Art Babbitt was Disney’s top animator. He was a leader among his colleagues and had a keen sense of justice—both put him at odds with Walt Disney himself.

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Ecco
Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles

By Mark Rozzo | Ecco

Through the doors of Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward’s Los Angeles home, the stars of a distinctly Californian counterculture came and went. Cameos of the era’s most celebrated artists, from Andy Warhol to Tina Turner, light up this account of the couple at the center of a Hollywood revolution.

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Grand Central
Forever Young

By Hayley Mills | Grand Central

Hayley Mills was insecure about her success. At 12 years old, she landed her first role in a film alongside her father. After a review praised her acting above his, she hid the notice so as to not hurt his feelings. Two years later, the deluge of fan mail was overwhelming.

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University of Texas
Making ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’: The Hollywood Classic That Inspired a Nation

By Alison Macor | Texas

William Wyler’s 1946 drama, about three vets’ rocky return to civilian life, was the highest-grossing film since “Gone With the Wind” and the winner of seven Oscars. Between the score, the script and the cast, “The Best Years of Our Lives” turned the plot offered by an ill-fated book into a cinematic classic.

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Simon & Schuster
The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies

By Paul Fischer | Simon & Schuster

In October 1888, Louis Le Prince invited his family into the garden, cranked his motion-picture camera and ordered them to “move.” The French inventor had thus created the oldest film still in existence today— perhaps the first ever made. Was his later disappearance an act of murder?

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Knopf
Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up

By Selma Blair | Knopf

In films like “Legally Blonde,” “Cruel Intentions” and “Hellboy,” the actress Selma Blair established herself as a captivating and unusual screen presence. Her struggles with abuses past—and the illness that would change the course of her adult life—are woven through a recollection of life as “one of the luckiest girls in Hollywood.”

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Bloomsbury
The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

By Isaac Butler | Bloomsbury

Ever since Stanislavski’s theatrical revolution, performers have debated the value and meaning of his “method.” When Dustin Hoffman told his “Marathon Man” co-star Laurence Olivier that he exhausted himself jogging to capture his character’s stress, Olivier shot back: “My dear boy, why don’t you try acting?”

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