This is a list of Hollywood novels i.e., notable fiction about the American film and television industry and associated culture. The Hollywood novel is not to be confused with the Los Angeles novel, which is a novel set in Los Angeles and environs but not overtly about the movie business and its effect on the lives of industry participants and moviegoers. For instance, the works of Paul Beatty, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence are Los Angeles novels but not Hollywood novels; The Oxford Companion to English Literature deems Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust a standard example of the Hollywood novel.[1]
The Hollywood novel genre dates to 1916 and is the "only American regional genre determined by a specific industry."[2] Hollywood novels portray the entertainment industry as "glitzy, powerful, and often sleazy."[3] According to the New York Society Library, "Yes, there is a part of Los Angeles called Hollywood, but the Hollywood of our imagination is so much more. It is the locus of the motion picture industry. Home to stars and producers and writers. A glamorous place. A place that is quintessentially American—where strivers and connivers can reinvent themselves and where there is always the possibility of being discovered. For better or worse, it has helped to define our country to ourselves and to the world. It is easy to see why writers have taken it up as a subject so frequently."[4]
According to author Michael Friedman in Publishers Weekly, "My informal taxonomy revealed that, as far as subject is concerned, Hollywood novels tend to fall into the following loose categories: moguls (Fitzgerald), divas (McCourt, Vidal), train wrecks (Stone, Didion), ingénues en route to stardom (Lambert), foolish dreams of being discovered (West, McCoy), and Brits who have had enough of our philistine ways and ersatz culture and return home to civilization (Waugh, Wodehouse)."[5]
| Author | Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remember Valerie March | 1939 | ||
| Coldheart Canyon | 2001 | ||
| True Grandeur | 2017 | ||
| The New Confessions | 1987 | ||
| A Graveyard for Lunatics | 1990 | ||
| Father of Frankenstein | 1996 | ||
| Tomorrow Is Forever | 1943 | ||
| The Late Great Creature | 1971 | ||
| Hollywood | 1989 | ||
| The Girl from Hollywood | 1922 | ||
| Serenade | 1937 | ||
| A Couple of Comedians | 1979 | ||
| The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan | 1975 | ||
| Turnaround | 1981 | ||
| Love Affair | 1958 | ||
| The Little Sister | 1949 | ||
| Hollywood Wives | 1983 | ||
| Shadows on a Wall | 1995 | ||
| Lullaby Town | 1992 | ||
| The Dealmakers | 1981 | ||
| Play It as It Lays | 1970 | ||
| True Confessions | 1977 | ||
| The Big Nowhere | 1988 | ||
| The Black Dahlia | 1987 | ||
| L.A. Confidential | 1990 | ||
| White Jazz | 1992 | ||
| What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? | 1960 | ||
| The Comedy Writer | 1998 | ||
| Postcards From the Edge | 1987 | ||
| I Wake Up Screaming | 1941 | ||
| The Last Tycoon | 1941 | ||
| The Pat Hobby Stories | 1962 | ||
| The Western Coast | 1972 | ||
| The Golden West | 1989 | ||
| Marlene | 2016 | ||
| The Marrakesh One-Two | 1983 | ||
| The Missing Person | 1981 | ||
| You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up | 1938 | ||
| Screenplay | 1982 | ||
| My Face for the World to See | 1958 | ||
| Marabelle | 1980 | ||
| After Many a Summer | 1939 | ||
| The Silver Castle | 1996 | ||
| Prince Bart | 1952 | ||
| Delayed Rays of a Star | 2019 | ||
| Queenie | 1985 | ||
| The Goodbye People | 1971 | ||
| Inside Daisy Clover | 1963 | ||
| Running Time | 1982 | ||
| The Slide Area | 1959 | ||
| The Dream Factory | 2002 | ||
| House of Destiny | 1995 | ||
| Get Shorty | 1990 | ||
| A Mouse is Born | 1951 | ||
| No Mother to Guide Her | 1961 | ||
| The Deer Park | 1955 | ||
| Of Streets and Stars | 1960 | ||
| Maybe the Moon | 1992 | ||
| Kaye Warfaring in "Avenged" | 1985 | ||
| I Should Have Stayed Home | 1938 | ||
| They Shoot Horses, Don't They? | 1935 | ||
| Somebody's Darling | 1978 | ||
| Hollywood Blonde | 2014 | ||
| Blonde | 2000 | ||
| A Way of Life, Like Any Other | 1977 | ||
| Hope of Heaven | 1938 | ||
| The Big Laugh | 1962 | ||
| West of Sunset | 2015 | ||
| Mary, Mary | 2006 | ||
| Medusa's Web | 2016 | ||
| The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo | 2017 | ||
| The Carpetbaggers | 1961 | ||
| The Dream Merchants | 1949 | ||
| Flicker | 1991 | ||
| The Zoot Suit Murders | 1978 | ||
| The Disenchanted | 1950 | ||
| What Makes Sammy Run? | 1941 | ||
| Ride The Tiger | 2010 | ||
| The Actress | 2014 | ||
| Third Girl from the Left | 2006 | ||
| American Dream Machine | 2014 | ||
| Sister Hollywood | 1989 | ||
| Children of Light | 1986 | ||
| Valley of the Dolls | 1966 | ||
| All the Stars in the Heavens | 2016 | ||
| Hollywood | 1990 | ||
| White Hunter Black Heart | 1953 | ||
| Dead Stars | 2012 | ||
| I'm Losing You | 1996 | ||
| The Day of the Locust | 1939 | ||
| Merton of the Movies | 1922 | ||
| Who Censored Roger Rabbit? | 1981 |
| Author | Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boy Wonder | 1988 | ||
| Zeroville | 2007 | ||
| Michael Friedman | Martian Dawn | 2006 | |
| Epiphany Jones | 2016 | ||
| City of Angels | 1941 | ||
| The Hollywood Dodo | 2004 | ||
| Blue Movie | 1970 | ||
| The Player | 1988 | ||
| Myra Breckinridge | 1968 | ||
| Myron | 1974 | ||
| Force Majeure | 1991 | ||
| I'll Let You Go | 2002 | ||
| Still Holding | 2003 | ||
| The Loved One | 1948 | ||
| Laughing Gas | 1936 | ||
| Interior Chinatown | 2020 |