Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince, by Mark A. Vieira
Hollywood Dreams Made Real: Irving Thalberg and the Rise of M-G-M,by Mark A. Vieira
Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer, by Scott Ethan
Norma Shearer: A Life, by Gavin Lambert
Harlow in Hollywood: The Blonde Bombshell in the Glamour Capital, by Darrell Rooney and Mark A. Vieira
A Gaudy Spree: Literary Hollywood When the West was Fun, by Samuel Marx
This memoir by MGM story editor Sam Marx looks back on life in the Hollywood studio system in the 1930s.
I have a collection of photos of the Marion Davies beach house at Santa Monica. You can see them on my website here:
http://bit.ly/hearst-davies-beachhouse
To give you a clearer idea of how grand Irving’s Ben-Hur set was, you can see an aerial photo of it on my website: