NPR

In Golden Age Hollywood, Film Stars Slid Into Each Others' Telegrams

The new book Letters from Hollywood offers a peek inside the inner workings of the film industry through 137 communiques from luminaries like Audrey Hepburn, Bette Davis and a very young Jane Fonda.
In a letter to the director of <em>My Fair Lady</em>, Audrey Hepburn asks for costume designer Cecil Beaton to send her the designs for her footwear — such that her bootmaker could replicate them. A replication of the note appears in <em>Letters from Hollywood.</em>

Ingrid Bergman was a so-so typist. Katharine Hepburn's signature was indecipherable. Marlene Dietrich signed her letter to Ernest Hemingway as "Your Kraut."

A collection of letters, memos, telegrams and other written communiques from the golden age of Hollywood are collected in a new book. Letters from Hollywood, edited and compiled by Barbara Hall and Rocky Lang, is a delicious peek into very famous people's private lives.

Take Audrey Hepburn. On screen, she was perfection: the bangs, the long cigarette-holder in , the lavish hat at Ascot in .

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