Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s [Paperback]

Valeria Belletti (Author), Cari Beauchamp (Editor), Sam Goldwyn Jr. (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2006

Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary is an insider's view of the film studios of the 1920s--and the first from a secretary's perspective. Rich in gossip, it is also an eyewitness report of Hollywood in transition. In the summer of 1924, Valeria Belletti and her friend Irma visited California, but instead of returning home to New York, the twenty-six-year-old Valeria decided to stay in Los Angeles. She moved into the YWCA, landed a job as Samuel Goldwyn's personal and social secretary and proceeded to trip over history in the making. As she recounts in her dozens of letters to Irma, Valeria Belletti encountered every type of Hollywood player in the course of her working day: moguls, directors, stars, writers, and hopeful extras. She shares news about Valentino's affairs, Sam Goldwyn's bootlegger, the development of the "talkies," her own role in helping to cast Gary Cooper in his first major part and much more--often in hilarious detail. She writes of her living and working conditions, her active social life, and her hopes for the future--all the everyday concerns of a young working woman during the jazz age. Alternating sophistication with naiveté, Valeria's letters intimately document a personal journey while giving us a unique portrait of a fascinating era.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Those who, like Valeria Belletti, worked entry-level jobs in early Hollywood had ringside seats at one of the country's most happening scenes. Belletti, the daughter of Italian immigrants, worked as a secretary for Samuel Goldwyn and Cecil B. DeMille from 1925 to 1929 and this volume presents her naïve letters to a friend back home in New Jersey. Alas, her missives read like a young girl's diary (Belletti was in her late 20s), not a savvy view of Tinsel Town. Despite Belletti's proximity to the rich and powerful—Rudolph Valentino and Gary Cooper, to name two—her musings are remarkably chaste by 21st-century standards. All she can muster for Goldwyn is: "I don't particularly like him, but he's no worse than the others." Although she hints at tawdry interludes—star affairs, scandalous deaths, studio shenanigans—she refuses to reveal anything of substance. Editor Beauchamp, an Emmy-nominated documentary film writer, interjects commentary throughout, contextualizing the events Belletti relates. But dispatches on Belletti's outfits for movie screenings and details on her dates ("We had real champagne.... It was a case of love at first sight") don't make for scintillating—or even enlightening—reading. Only readers with an ardent interest in the period will find these letters of note. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

In 1924, Valeria Beletti, a twenty-six-year-old from New Jersey, moved to Los Angeles and got a job as the personal secretary to the studio head Samuel Goldwyn. In spare moments, she wrote a series of chatty, heartfelt letters to a friend back home. She describes Goldwyn's mercurial temper; encounters with stars like Valentino and the young Ronald Colman; gossip about Charlie Chaplin and Marion Davies; the traumatic arrival of sound; and her own success in bringing a handsome young actor named Gary Cooper to the studio's attention. A mass of satisfying detail about early Hollywood suggests that essential features haven't changed much. "I know you would enjoy these people," Beletti tells her friend, "even though you have to more or less overlook their moral characters."
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (May 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520247809
• ISBN-13: 978-0520247802
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #617,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Letters for Those Interested in the Period, February 6, 2007

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Scaramouche (Redlands, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s (Paperback)

Valeria Belletti was an energetic, intelligent young woman who came to Los Angeles from New York and worked as a secretary to some of the most powerful and interesting people in Hollywood in the late 1920s. During this period, she wrote dozens of letters to her best friend, describing not only her experiences at the movie studios, but her personal feelings and day-to-day life in southern California and on an extended trip to Europe. These letters make up the bulk of this short book, which left me liking Valeria very much and wishing there had been more. Well-written background notes are provided by editor Cari Beauchamp.

While Beauchamp supplies some valuable padding-out of the events and personalities Valeria described, she tends to give the compilation a modern feminist point of view the author of the letters did not seem to have in mind. In contrast, the letters indicate that rather than being the victim of an "iron ceiling" (Beauchamp's term), Valeria, although a high school dropout, had opportunities to grow professionally beyond being a secretary, but chose not to pursue them. Furthermore, rather than half-heartedly marrying a man she was "only fond of" (Beauchamp again) as a sort of economic expedient in an oppressive patriarchal society, Valeria was an independent woman who went where she wanted to go and did what she wanted to do. She had no trouble supporting herself comfortably, and she enthusiastically married a man of modest economic means, of whom she wrote, "The more I'm with him, the more I love him."

I have the paperback edition and find it odd that the name of Valeria Belletti, the delightful author of the letters comprising this book, does not appear on the front cover or the spine, while Beauchamp's name is displayed in large print. For enthusiasts of early Hollywood or 1920s southern California, Valeria's letters are well worth reading, while taking her editor's feminist leanings with a large chunk of salt.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read for Anyone with an Interest in Vintage Hollywood, May 20, 2006

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Donna Hill (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s (Paperback)

This book is not only for film buffs, it is a window to a world that is long gone. It is a bird's eye view of Hollywood at the end of the silent era and transitioning into the age of the talkies.

Aside from the great Hollywood dish, of which there is plenty, Belletti was remarkably candid and refreshingly not star struck. Although, I must confess that I can totally relate to having a crush on Ronald Colman. In the end it is the delightful, matter of fact, take no prisoners Valeria Belletti that you come so much to admire in reading her letters. She was a wonderful letter writer and these letters are, indeed, treasures. At the turn of each page you are delighted anew with some insight or adventure. She was one spunky girl and wrote letters that are filled with details of her days and nights in Hollywood. We need to bless her beloved friend Irma for saving these letters and presenting them to her many years later.

We must also thank Cari Beauchamp for bringing these letters to light and annotating them carefully with her own delightful and informative prose. As I said before, this is a window to a lost world. More than that, it is a celebration of an independent young woman making her way in a man's world and celebrating her life at the height of the jazz age. This will be a volume I will turn to again and again. Don't miss it, this will brighten the gloomiest and dampest spirits on a rainy day.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars HOLLYWOOD HISTORY AT ITS BEST, July 3, 2006

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Violet2000 (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s (Paperback)

Fabulous Book. If you want to know the inner-workings of the star-studded Hollywood Machine in the 1920's then this is the book for you. An insider's account with all the trimmings. Cari Beauchamp does it again. BRAVA!