Nell Beram is coauthor of Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, at Vogue.com, and elsewhere.
The Award for the Best Old Hollywood Boston Accent…
January 15, 2026: …does not go to Bette Davis. Find out who wins in my latest hymn to film’s golden age, “Bostonians of Old Hollywood,” which the great Bright Lights Film Journal has just posted (see here).
Won’t You Be My Rector?
January 14, 2026: A minister is out for justice. Her fellow avenger is her husband, an atheist. Sounds shticky, but it works (you might say) divinely in At Midnight Comes the Cry, Julia Spencer-Fleming’s latest Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery, which I review today in the Portland Press Herald (see here).
More New Old Hollywood Books
December 31, 2025 You didn’t ask for it, but you’ve got it: the ten new books about Old Hollywood that I read and (mostly) reviewed in 2025. Here they are, in the order in which I read them.
It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time by Bruce Vilanch
The World of Nancy Kwan: A Memoir by Hollywood’s Asian Superstar by Nancy Kwan with Deborah Davis
And Introducing Dexter Gaines: A Novel of Old Hollywood by Mark B. Perry
Sick and Dirty: Hollywood’s Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness by Michael Koresky
Bogart and Huston: Their Lives, Their Adventures, and the Classic Movies They Made Together by Nat Segaloff
Hitchcock and Herrmann: The Friendship and Film Scores That Changed Cinema by Steven C. Smith
The Lasts Spirits of Manhattan by John A. McDermott
Love Johnny Carson: One Obsessive Fan’s Journey to Find the Genius Behind the Legend by Mark Malkoff with David Ritz
Joan Crawford: A Woman's Face by Scott Eyman
Dark City Dames: The Women Who Defined Film Noir (revised and expanded edition) by Eddie Muller
Bully? Don’t! Be a Hero!
December 3, 2025: In Kate Russo’s second novel, Until Alison, which I review today in the Portland Press Herald (see here), there’s some Nelson Muntz–grade bullying afoot, and while I would love to include Nelson’s picture here, I don’t want to get on the bad side of copyright law (again), so I won’t.
Cheers to you, AJLT
August 1, 2025: News flash: And Just Like That... is kaput with season three. Not a news flash: And Just Like That... wasn't Sex and the City. It couldn't be. But AJLT could have been...better. Today Vogue.com kindly runs "10 Things I'd Have Liked to See in And Just Like That... Season 4 (see here), my annotated list of storylines that might (and really should) have been.
He Said It (Not Me)
June 20, 2025: By “he” I mean Northern Irish novelist Steve Cavanagh, not Anthony Hopkins. And by “it” I mean that in my interview with Cavanagh, he admits that his gangbusters new thriller, Fifty Fifty, pays homage to Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs, which I suspected but did not say because I didn’t want him to think I was accusing him of being derivative. Anyway, Cavanagh told me other interesting things, and you can find out what they were by reading my interview, which runs today in Shelf Awareness (see here).
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Kris and Babs, Joan and John
March 8, 2025: Yeah, well, I kind of like the 1976 remake of A Star Is Born. (“To think this came out the year punk broke,” I wrote in the notes I took while watching it for the first time recently.) And I will never not find it marvelously weird that Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne wrote the screenplay (with an assist from screenwriter/director Frank Pierson). I wrote about Didion and Dunne’s screenwriting partnership for Vogue.com, which kindly runs my piece today (see here).
Naomi Watts and I…
February 5, 2025: …have something in common besides an appreciation for…Kyle MacLachlan. To find out what, you can read my piece at Allure, posted today (see here).
It’s a Reunion!
February 2, 2025: I mean a college reunion. In Elise Juska’s novel Reunion. Which I review today in the Portland Press Herald (see here). Not at the home of Peter, Paul, and Mary, who had an album called Reunion, though. (The three of them lived together, right?)
Me and My Pulitzer (-Nominated Interview Subject)
January 10, 2025: Me, I have not been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, but Adam Haslett has been (twice). I had the pleasure of conducting an email interview with Adam for Shelf Awareness that ran a few days ago (see here). It’s largely about his new and, I think, Pulitzer-able novel, Mothers and Sons.
…But Younger
January 1, 2025: In Susan Minot’s Don’t Be a Stranger, which I review today in the Portland Press Herald (see here), a fiftysomething single mother falls for a dishy thirtysomething guitar-slinging ex-jailbird New Yorker, who kind of sounds like a young…
New Old Hollywood (Books)
December 31, 2024: This year I read five corking good books about Old Hollywood, all published in 2024; they’re listed here in the order in which I read and reviewed them.
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Philip Gefter
Dancing on the Edge: A Journey of Living, Loving, and Tumbling Through Hollywood by Russ Tamblyn with Sarah Tomlinson
The Girl from the Grand Hotel by Camille Aubray
The Devil Raises His Own by Scott Phillips
Giant Love: Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film by Julie Gilbert
Here, Not on Gilligan’s Island
June 9, 2024: By “Here” I mean here in New England, a good chunk of which is Maine, a significant portion of which is Bangor, which is basically where Thomas E. Ricks set his thriller Everyone Knows But You, which I review today in the Portland Press Herald (see here). Oh, and I chose the photo at left because (a) as you should know by now, Gilligan’s Island amuses me; (b) Gilligan did his share of lobstering, like the people in Ricks’s book; and (c) following a dark turn of events, I have been advised that it’s unwise under copyright law to copy photographs that aren’t from Wikimedia Commons or another public-domain site.
All Hanna, No Barbera
May 17, 2024: Here’s my Shelf Awareness interview with Kathleen Hanna to coincide with the release of her swell new memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk. It’s definitely one of my non-terrible interviews, mostly because I let her get a word in edgewise. (I still feel bad about my Tippi Hedren interview of some years back. Do you think that’s why she’s stopped giving interviews?)
Mary Richards Was (Kind of) My Mom
May 12, 2024: Today, on what some are calling Mother’s Day, Salon is kindly running a piece I wrote (original title: “A Mary Tyler Mom: Remembering a stylish mother and a bad daughterly moment”) about my mom, Judy McConnell (1941-2010); see here. (I’m honestly a little relieved that the essay takes a dark turn at the end; otherwise I would have worried that I’m getting soft.) Incidentally, this marks the third piece, after this one and this one, that I’ve written about my mom and her side of my family. Who knew there was still so much left to say about Wasps?
They’ll Be There for You (in Hell)
May 12, 2024: With its cast of six animated thirtysomethings in perfect male-female balance, Darby Kane’s thriller–horror novel crossbreed The Engagement Party kept reminding me of the Friends friends having a murderously bad day. In my review, out today in the Portland Press Herald (see here), I milk the Friendsparallel more than it probably deserves, but please don’t mistake that for an apology.
No, Not Like Fatal Attraction
April 7, 2024: Liv Andersson’s new thriller, Leave the Lights On, is nothing like Fatal Attraction, as I say in my review, out today in the Portland Press Herald (see here). To prove the negative, here’s Glenn Close in a scene not from Fatal Attraction.
Old Hollywood (As If You Care)
December 31, 2023: I’m back (not that you were waiting) with another list of books on Old Hollywood; listed alphabetically below are the ten I read (and I’m pretty sure you didn’t), with links to my reviews (that you shouldn’t feel obliged to read), in 2023.
A.K.A. Lucy: The Dynamic and Determined Life of Lucille Ball by Sarah Royal
The American Way: A True Story of Nazi Escape, Superman, and Marilyn Monroe by Helene Stapinski and Bonnie Siegler
Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided by Scott Eyman
C’mom, Get Happy: The Making of Summer Stock by David Fantle and Tom Johnson
Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang
The Devil’s Playground by Craig Russell
Hitchcock’s Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director’s Dark Obsession by Laurence Leamer
Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen by Sarah James
The Story of Cuddles: My Life Under the Emperor Francis Joseph, Adolf Hitler, and the Warner Brothers (1954) by S. Z. Sakall
Up with the Sun by Thomas Mallon
Hey Look! It’s Cuddles!
December 6, 2023: In 1953’s Small Town Girl, a character played by Hungarian-born S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall (1883-1955) frets about a big-city lady-killer played by Farley Granger: “That fellow makes monkeyshines with all our daughters. He keep them up till three a.m. and kisses them New York–style.” It’s an adorable line delivered adorably by an adorable actor I’ve become a little obsessed with. Today the great Bright Lights Film Journal runs my Sakall piece (see here), which explains how, although those cuteness-spiked roles grated on him, his Hollywood career literally saved his life.