In 1933, Margaret Sullavan made her film debut and was an overnight sensation. For the next three decades, she enchanted audiences and critics in any medium she chose--film, theater, television--and was regarded as one of the foremost dramatic actresses. Off screen, she epitomized the Southern Belle--beauty, hospitality and flirtatiousness. Deep down, she suffered from crippling insecurity, especially as a mother--a feeling exacerbated by progressive hearing loss. By age 50, she could no longer cope and took an overdose of sleeping pills. This biography covers her film career with insightful criticism from the period and details her personal life, including her marriage to Henry Fonda, her special friendship with James Stewart and her bitter rivalry with Katharine Hepburn.

ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S 100 GREATEST FILM BOOKS OF ALL TIME • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A celebrated Hollywood memoir: Brooke Hayward was born to a famous actress and a successful Hollywood agent—beautiful, wealthy, and living at the very center of the most privileged life America had to offer. Yet at twenty-three her family was ripped apart. From the moment of its original publication in 1977, Haywire was a national sensation, a celebrated Hollywood story of a glittering family and the stunning darkness that lurked just beneath the surface. Who could have imagined that this magical life could shatter, so conclusively, so destructively? Brooke Hayward tells the riveting story of how her family went haywire. “Haywire is a Hollywood childhood memoir, a glowing tapestry spun with equal parts of gold and pain.... An absolute beauty.” —The New York Times Book Review

“[A] remarkably absorbing, supremely entertaining joint biography” (The New York Times) from bestselling author Scott Eyman about the remarkable friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart, two Hollywood legends who maintained a close relationship that endured all of life’s twists and turns. Henry Fonda and James Stewart were two of the biggest stars in Hollywood for forty years, but they became friends when they were unknown. They roomed together as stage actors in New York, and when they began making films in Hollywood, they were roommates again. Between them they made such classic films as The Grapes of Wrath, Mister Roberts, Twelve Angry Men, and On Golden Pond; and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Philadelphia Story, It’s a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, and Rear Window. They got along famously, with a shared interest in elaborate practical jokes and model airplanes, among other things. But their friendship also endured despite their differences: Fonda was a liberal Democrat, Stewart a conservative Republican. Fonda was a ladies’ man who was married five times; Stewart remained married to the same woman for forty-five years. Both men volunteered during World War II and were decorated for their service. When Stewart returned home, still unmarried, he once again moved in with Fonda, his wife, and his two children, Jane and Peter, who knew him as Uncle Jimmy. For his “breezy, entertaining” (Publishers Weekly) Hank and Jim, biographer and film historian Scott Eyman spoke with Fonda’s widow and children as well as three of Stewart’s children, plus actors and directors who had worked with the men—in addition to doing extensive archival research to get the full details of their time together. This is not just another Hollywood story, but “a fascinating…richly documented biography” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) of an extraordinary friendship that lasted through war, marriages, children, careers, and everything else.

LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.

Based on years of painstaking research, this tell-all biography unveils the secret, closeted life of the indomitable grande dame of American actresses, Katharine Hepburn, covering the years between her birth in 1907 and the debut of her role in The African Queen in 1950.

LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.