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This is Hollywood, 1948. You are a beautiful young actress. He is a rich and powerful film producer. He can make you a star or send you back to the sticks, and you have something he wants, right now. What are you willing to do? How much of yourself are you willing to give?
Synopsis
It is the postwar Forties. Priscilla Preston and her husband Ken are struggling New York actors when Priscilla is picked as the lead in a new movie and goes to Hollywood. Studio head Morton Blackwell is a despotic, charming monster who tries to control everything and everyone he touches. Priscilla quickly has her name changed to Pamela Carr and becomes Blackwell's lover. The movie they make is the story of an innocent teenage nun, St. Angeline. Pamela has the sweet, radiant look to play the role, but the filming-and her burgeoning affair with Morton-are very stressful. Thankfully, she is befriended by Morton's executive assistant, a widowed mother named Mrs. Brown, who seems to be able to handle any problem. Husband Kenny Preston is upset and troublesome about the loss of his wife, but he conveniently dies from an overdose of booze and pills. Was it an accident, a suicide, or perhaps something else?
Anna Andrzejewski is a recent immigrant from the ashes of bombed-out Berlin trying to succeed in a Hollywood that may not be ready to accept a blonde, Nordic beauty with a complicated past. On the night that Kenny dies, Anna is raped by Morton at his office. Anna's bind: how can she punish him when he controls her future and no one else cares?
Screenwriter/mystery author Lyman becomes involved in the lives of both Pamela and Anna in the midst of his own crisis. He meets Pamela at the sanitarium where he is undergoing alcohol rehab and she is recovering from the trauma of Ken's death, and her own suicide attempt. She tells Lyman her fear that Morton somehow had Ken killed. Around the same time, Lyman has a chance encounter with Anna, who lies that she heard Morton threaten Kenny and leave the office suddenly that night. She knows that Mort's only true alibi is that he was raping her when the death occurred and she wants him to have to admit that.
Lyman contacts a friend in the LAPD who tells him that Morton is not a suspect in Ken's death. But then a story appears in the tabloid Hollywood Star that implicates him. The source of the story is unknown, but it is not Anna, who admits the truth to Lyman and the police. Morton is questioned by the police and admits the rape, so he's off the hook for Ken's death. But Lyman remains puzzled by aspects of the tragedy and cryptic comments by Mort and Mrs. Brown.
Life goes on. Lyman gets a job writing the screenplay for Morton's new picture. Pamela finishes her work on Angeline and tries to move on, determined now that her affair with Morton is over. Anna meets Marlene Dietrich, who introduces her to a group of Hollywood women who are also victims of the town's rampant sexual predators. Angeline and Pamela are nominated for Oscars. Mort's studio is saved, Anna gets a satisfactory revenge on Mort, and Lyman realizes who killed Kenny.
The story travels from wartime Germany to the "wartime" Broadway of struggling, hopeful actors, to the studios, offices, homes and beaches of Southern California. It is derived from real Hollywood scandals involving some of the most famous and most tragic figures of the classic studio era.
