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Few actresses lived their lives in the public eye more than Marilyn Monroe, and yet her life remains shrouded in mystery to this day. While it's common knowledge that Marilyn's life is a rags-to-riches story, her life is bookended by hazy details surrounding her early life and even more mysterious death.

A central figure in the Hollywood Ten and one of the most successful screenwriters in Hollywood history, Trumbo epitomized the spirit of American capitalism, yet he went to jail refusing to talk about his membership in the Communist party.

When Bogart died in 1957, Bacall was still in her 30s, yet from 1957 onward her name scarcely surfaces in popular culture, as though Bacall was simply wiped away with her late husband.

For people familiar with Dolores Fuller only through her work and professional association with notorious 1950s film director Edward D. Wood, Jr., A Fuller Life: Hollywood, Ed Wood, and Me will provide readers with a surprising revelation: throughout her career, Dolores has proven her talent and versatility in numerous facets of the entertainment industry. From fashion model, dancer, and actress to renowned songwriter and talent manager, she has done it all.

Buckle up for the ride through the lesser known side of Hollywood. The side you don't see on the screen and have only heard about on the news. In this book we will take a deeper look into the lives and deaths of ten of Hollywood's most famous and infamous deaths. You already know their names and their movies - now learn what drove them to death's door and what finally pushed them through.

Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon are probably best remembered for their films together, but both were clearly established actors in Hollywood by the time they appeared in their first film together. The great film director Billy Wilder once noted of Jack Lemmon that Lemmon "was my everyman", and Lemmon did indeed represent a great everyman to American audiences during the latter half of the 20th century.

When the American Film Institute assembled its top 100 actors of all time at the close of the 20th century, Jimmy Stewart ranked third, behind only Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant. There is a certain inevitability to these three actors ranking at the top of the list; after all, they were the dominant faces of Hollywood during the height of the era known as classical Hollywood cinema, a time before the onset of television when the movies still enjoyed relatively uncontested supremacy over American entertainment.

In 1939, Olivia de Havilland had her most memorable role as Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind (1939), perhaps the most famous movie in American history, but Hollywood legend has it that she only got the role because her own younger sister, Joan Fontaine, was asked to audition for the part and recommended Olivia instead so that she could audition for Scarlett O'Hara.

The life of Joan Crawford is one of the most famous Hollywood rags-to-riches tales. While it is common to think of Hollywood as a land offering great opportunity to hardworking actresses, the Horatio Alger myth rarely applies in reality, but it applied almost perfectly to Joan Crawford. Joan Crawford's life and career also shed light on the treatment of women in pop culture and in cinema during the early 20th century. Her career was not only limited to film acting, as she acted in musical revues and was previously an unabashed flapper during the Roaring Twenties.

Virtually all famous actors are regaled by the public, but even still, Fred Astaire occupies a privileged position in American pop culture. The specific films in which Astaire acted may not be especially famous in their own right - most people likely cannot recall the title of Top Hat (1935), his most decorated film - but Astaire's dancing prowess invariably creates a lasting impact on viewers.

On January 16, 1942, a plane crashed into the side of a mountain southwest of Las Vegas. Aboard the plane were 15 servicemen, but the plane was also carrying one of Hollywood's biggest stars: actress Carole Lombard. Although Lombard's death and her marriage to Gone with the Wind star Clark Gable have overshadowed her career, her untimely death in 1942 cut short the life of one of Hollywood's most prominent stars at the time.

Of all the great movie stars, there may be none more enigmatic than Greta Garbo, who remains internationally famous despite the fact her life and career raise more questions than answers. How did a Swedish actress with very little film acting experience in her native land arrive in the United States and achieve instant stardom? Most actresses had to wait years before they were offered starring roles in major films, yet Garbo was ushered to the front of the line and perched atop the MGM pantheon.

Growing up in the shadow of one of America's most famous actors would be intimidating for anyone, but few have emerged out of that shadow like Jane Fonda, the oldest daughter of screen legend Henry Fonda. In fact, when Jane costarred with her father in the last film he made, On Golden Pond, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for it. However, she has accomplished more than enough in her own career to make her father proud, winning two Academy Awards, an Emmy, and seven Golden Globe Awards herself.

Kitty Carlisle surely stands as one of the most recognizable figures of the 20th century, but unlike major actors, actresses, and other artistic luminaries, however, Carlisle was not decorated so much for any specific performances. Instead, she came to embody the very face of art in the United States.

"I was a 13 year old boy for 30 years." (Mickey Rooney) In 1939, the year of Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, Time magazine noted, "Hollywood's No. 1 box office bait in 1939 was not Clark Gable, Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power, but a rope-haired, kazoo-voiced kid with a comic-strip face, who until this week had never appeared in a picture without mugging or overacting it."

By the 1920s English comic Stan Laurel had been in dozens of films, and American Oliver Hardy had appeared in hundreds, but it was not until they formed a duo together in 1926 that they began to be noticed. Once they did, however, Laurel & Hardy became one of the most famous comedy teams in American history, with a career that spanned four decades and included over 100 combined shorts and feature films.

In the 1960s, the most popular actor in the world was Richard Burton, a hard-drinking Welshman who was nevertheless so professional that he was one of the preeminent stage performers of his day. In fact, he performed Shakespeare so magnificently that he was compared to British legend Laurence Olivier, and that success ultimately led to a film career that earned him seven Academy Award nominations, as well as BAFTA and Golden Globe awards for Best Actor.

Over the course of his long film career, Paul Newman was one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood during his peak. Having come to prominence as a handsome but rebellious young man in the mold of James Dean, Newman was able to maintain an aura that viewers found both cool and irresistible even into his 60s, typically an age when leading men find themselves on the outs. Newman was even nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Road to Perdition (2002) when he was in his late 70s.

Few actresses have ever gotten the kind of career start that Natalie Wood did during the 1950s. After appearing in film and on TV as a child, Wood broke out by appearing in the classic Rebel Without a Cause alongside James Dean in 1955, despite the fact she was still just 15 years old. She earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for that role, one of three Academy Award nominations she would rack up before the age of 25. Altogether, she was in over 50 films.

One of the more well-known Mel Brooks quips is his statement, in reference to his birth, that "we were so poor, my mother couldn't afford to have me; the lady next door gave birth to me." While obviously fabricated, the story is worthy of note, as it illustrates Brooks' self-deprecatory Jewish humor and his way of transforming a childhood of deep adversity into fodder for comedy.