Anyone under the impression that a Hollywood upbringing is nothing but glamour and red carpets will find a sobering reality check in Matthew Specktor's The Golden Hour, a well-written memoir that is both coruscating toward the bare-knuckle boxing that is the film industry and warmhearted toward members of his family. Foremost among the latter is Specktor's father, Fred, a UCLA grad who wanted to become a talent agent because he thought the work was "admirable." He became factotum to Lew Wasserman, president of Music Corporation of America (MCA) and "the most powerful person in the film colony." Wasserman often chewed Fred out for various transgressions, such as failing to deliver a script on time to Gregory Peck. Soon, however, Fred became a high-powered agent at Creative Artists Agency, "the man who tells the studio what to do," with clients such as Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro.
Imagine being the child of a guy like that. Readers won't have to, as Specktor describes what his L.A. story was like, including the time at age three when he and his dad bumped into a promising up-and-comer named Jack Nicholson; his mother, Katherine, and her experiences with alcohol dependency and fledgling attempts at screenwriting; and Matthew's own struggles with addiction (he listened to Led Zeppelin while on Quaaludes in his bedroom at age 10); and his high-profile office jobs within the industry. The jobs are only intermittently glamorous, but this memoir never fails to enthrall. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer