ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I come from a family of movie people. That doesn’t mean actors or directors or screenwriters. It means people who love the movies. My mother was incapable of hearing the title Now, Voyager without emitting a sigh that sprang from the depths of her soul. She brought me up on musicals and “women’s pictures.” I knew Elizabeth Taylor and Bette Davis as well as I knew my own aunts. And Katharine Hepburn? Don’t even get me started.

 

My dad loved musicals as well, but his heart belonged to the swashbucklers and sleuths of his childhood. Errol Flynn was a god in my house. I cannot count the number of times I saw The Adventures of Robin Hood. And Burt Lancaster? Humphrey Bogart? Please. They were obvious. Talk to me about Wallace Beery or Alan Hale. Then I’ll think you have an idea of the kind of people I come from.

 

I didn’t realize until later in life how precious that legacy is. What a gift it was to be surrounded by people who conversed in movie quotes, who – in the case of my mother and her sister – would bust out a few bars of ‘People Will Say We’re In Love’ or ‘The Hills Are Alive’ at the slightest provocation. I thought everyone’s mother got them up in the morning doing Judy Garland’s greatest hits.

 

So when the fabulous team at Henery Press asked me for an idea for a series, the world of classic movies was obvious. It was like going home. I owe huge thanks to Rachel Jackson, Maria Edwards, Art Molinares, Christina Rogers, Kendel Lynn, and a bunch of people I haven’t met yet who are all amazing and supportive and wonderful.

 

Massive thanks as always to Denise Lee, Erick Vera, and Anne Dickson for your early and insightful comments, and to Claire M. Johnson and Michael J. Cooper for your sort-of-every-other-Thursday critiques and support.

 

My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my brothers thank you, and I thank you. (And if you know what movie I stole that line from, you must be a movie person too.)