Five for Hollywood: Their Friendship, Their Fame, Their Tragedies

This book is a portrait of the lives and times of five of the biggest stars of the 1950's- Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Natalie Wood, Monty Clift and James Dean. As well as the long extinct HollyWood Studio system that played a large role in helping to create almost all of them. (James Dean as everyone knows pretty much created his own image in defiance of the system.} There may not be much new information in this book, but some of it was based on personal interviews and correspondence. Once such correspondence was with Elizabeth Taylor as late as 1988.(The first Edition of the book came out in 1989) The book is definitely worth reading. It is well researched and I liked the way the writer was able to condense the tumultuous events of 5 lives and the books time span of 40 years or so into 297 pages without taking any of the depth away from the extraordinary lives of these remarkable people.