On My Radar:

Starstruck: My Unlikely Road to Hollywood
by Leonard Maltin
GoodKnight Books
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

Hollywood historian and film reviewer Leonard Maltin invites readers to pull up a chair and listen as he tells stories, many of them hilarious, of 50+ years interacting with legendary movie stars, writers, directors, producers, and cartoonists. Maltin grew up in the first decade of television, immersing himself in TV programs and accessing 1930s and ‘40s movies hitting the small screen. His fan letters to admired performers led to unexpected correspondences, then to interviews and publication of his own fan magazine.

Maltin's career as a free-lance writer and New York Times-bestselling author as well as his 30-year run on Entertainment Tonight, gave him access to Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, Shirley Temple, and Jimmy Stewart among hundreds of other Golden Age stars, his interviews cutting through the Hollywood veneer and revealing the human behind each legend. Starstruck also offers a fascinating glimpse inside the Disney empire, and Maltin's tenure teaching USC's popular film course reveals insights into moviemaking along with access to past, current, and future stars of film, such as George Lucas, Kevin Feige, Quentin Tarantino, and Guillermo del Toro.

On My Radar:

Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II
by Robert Matzen
GoodKnight Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Twenty-five years after her passing, Audrey Hepburn remains the most beloved of all Hollywood stars, known as much for her role as UNICEF ambassador as for films like Roman Holiday, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Charade. Several biographies have chronicled her stardom, but none has attempted to cover her intense experiences through five years of Nazi occupation in the Netherlands, where she spent the entirety of World War II.

According to her son, Luca Dotti, "The war made my mother who she was." Audrey Hepburn's war included the brutal execution of her uncle and cousin on August 15, 1942, participation in the Dutch Resistance, work as a doctor's aide during the "Bridge too Far" battles for Arnhem and Oosterbeek, and the ordeal of the Hunger Winter of 1944-45. She also had to contend with the fact that her father sided with the Nazis and her mother was pro-Nazi for the first two years of the occupation.

The war years also brought triumphs as Audrey became Arnhem's most celebrated young ballerina. New interviews with people who knew her in the war plus wartime diaries and research in classified Dutch archives shed light on the riveting, untold story of Audrey Hepburn in World War II.