Garbo and Crawford. Ava, Hedy, Judy, Liz. They epitomized Hollywood’s golden era. With a trembling lip or sultry eye, with a tear or song or husky whisper, they held moviegoers across America in their sway from the hard times of the 1930s through the booming postwar years. They were royalty, they were box office. They led pampered public lives—furs, jewels, limos, designer gowns, handsome escorts—that captured the national imagination. They also signed seven-year contracts with a morals clause, and the more they slipped, the more the secret abortions, efficient cover-ups, legal legerdemain, and dropped charges bound them to the wizard in their Oz, Louis B. Mayer. The slips are here, and the successes, the personal triumphs as well as the private tragedies.
