Naked in Hollywood (1962)
Lancer Original
Not Naked Hollywood, which was a book of photographs by the famed Weegee, but Naked IN Hollywood, which is offered here as career advice for young starlets. Carla--who actually is only briefly "naked" (for an audition with an elderly gay director--which somehow makes it okay)--wants to turn her good looks into fame and fortune. She accomplishes this by befriending various hangers-on at the margins of the industry--agents, bodyguards, tv actors. Miraculously, Carla gets quite far without actually bedding anyone. All indications point to a standard tale of lurid casting-couch adventures, but overall the book is less interested in sex than in describing the state of the film industry in the early 1960s. Characters complain about the ubiquity of television, the decline of the studios, the inner mechinations of the ratings system, etc., etc. Author Lucas, as it turns out, was the editor of a movie magazine published in Manhatten and a frequent source for entertainment coverage in Black Digest and Jet. He also had plans to write a novel titled The Split-Level Plantation, but I can find no record of this book's existence.
