MY PLACE IN THE SUN

In this memoir, a Hollywood writer, director, and producer reminisces about his career and pays tribute to his legendary father.

Few are as closely associated with Hollywood’s golden age as George Stevens, the Academy Award–winning director and producer of iconic films like A Place in the Sun, Shane, and Giant. In this work, George Stevens Jr. both celebrates the life of his acclaimed father and recalls his own distinguished career. The book begins with his father’s upbringing in California as the son of silent film star Landers Stevens, and it delights readers with behind-the-scenes anecdotes about Hollywood stars from the 1940s through 2000s. The volume recounts, for instance, how James Stewart rejected a leading part in a film about racial violence in Georgia because the role supposedly did not “align with Jimmy’s conservative views.” The author also devotes significant space to interactions with politicians, in particular his close relationship with American presidents that spanned his early involvement with the Lyndon B. Johnson administration in creating the National Endowment for the Arts through his tenure as co-chair of Barack Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. As founder of the American Film Institute (which received initial financial support from Johnson) and co-founder of the Kennedy Center Honors, the author provides a rare glimpse into the intersection of Hollywood and Washington, D.C., and their occasionally conflicting agendas. The author recalls, for instance, John F. Kennedy supposedly relaying an obscenity-laden remark to Jack Warner of Warner Brothers after shutting down a screening of the movie Marines, Let’s Go in disgust. The book also relates a subsequent tense conversation between Kennedy confidant Pierre Salinger and Warner about the would-be director of the film PT 109. And while at times self-indulgent, the volume is written by a born storyteller who is at his best when regaling readers with intimate stories from his heyday as a central figure in Hollywood and representative of the film industry in Washington. In addition to ample name-dropping, the work includes myriad historical photographs, newspaper clippings, handwritten letters from celebrities and presidents, and other visual aids, making for an engaging read that will intrigue any fan of classic cinema.

A gripping glimpse into 20th-century Hollywood.