The bad & the beautiful - Sam Kashner

THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL is a dazzling account of Hollywood in the 1950s - arguably America's most flamboyant, prosperous, yet paranoid decade.

Its typical publication was Confidential magazine, 'the most scandalous scandal magazine in the history of the world' whose lens on Hollywood was the window to America's collective fears and fantasises: race, Communism, sex, homosexuality, criminality, and mistrust of most basic institutions.

Hollywood in the 1950s was a bizarre juxtaposition of high and low culture, a place where the sublime paid tribute to the ridiculous. Yet for all their banality, mainstream Hollywood films also dealt with challenging issues such as race (The Defiant Ones, Imitation of Life, Baby Doll), sex (Some Like It Hot, Rebel Without a Cause), anti-Semitism (Crossfire), drug abuse (The Man With the Golden Arm), mental illness (Cobweb, Lust for Life), and the possibility of nuclear annihilation (On the Beach, Kiss Me Deadly). THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL is a gripping account of a decade that helped shape Hollywood today.