Hollywood's Best

Author: Phillips Wylly

ISBN 1-58939-900-5 (hardcover)

544 pages

They met at Nickodels - "RKO's Unofficial Commissary"
Laura, a beauty contest winner. Todd, a Canadian ice skater.
"Would you like to go?"
The voice startled her and she looked up quickly from the Hollywood Reporter article she had been reading about the Ice Capades big star studded, invitation only party to be held at the Pan Pacific Auditorium following tonight's Opening Night performance and telling herself it would be a good place to be "discovered."
With talent, ambition and youthful zeal, each had come to seek their fortune in Hollywood - where talent alone is seldom enough; where "connections," political intrigue, the "casting couch," and just plain luck may be equally important; where powerful, sometimes violent forces help some succeed while others fail.
In their struggles for success, Laura and Todd encounter a host of "show-biz" and underworld characters: A comedy team from Brooklyn; a multi-millionaire who wants to make movies, a City Councilman who is "on the take;" the son of a wealthy Hollywood family who has secrets, a famous English director who has more secrets, and Peter Best - west coast head of Staten Island's infamous Crawford family.
The intrigue and action takes Laura and Todd from Hollywood to New York, Europe, Canada and Las Vegas as they learn that Back Stage and behind the Silver Screen the sometimes savage, sometimes tragic, constantly exciting world of entertainment is not always what they expected and discover what it really takes to become, "Hollywood's Best."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phillips Wylly chuckles when he hears the old line: "Show business is my life," but the truth is, for him it really has been. A native New Yorker - born on Staten Island - he was working in dance bands before he graduated high school. Deciding life on the road was not really what he wanted, he found a job at NBC Television where he was soon producing and directing filmed interviews with such diverse celebrities as Jackie Kennedy, boxing champion Rocky Grazziano, poet Carl Sandberg and movie star Sophia Loren.
From NBC, Phil moved to Hollywood and MetroMedia's newly formed "Live Entertainment" division as a production executive for Ice Capades. Several years later he joined the Wolper Organization where he was part of the team that produced TV's epic mini-series, "Roots." Following his Wolper years, Phil became a free-lance producer and production executive working for Norman Leer's production company, Johnny Carson's company, Aaron Spelling, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Universal, Paramount and Warner Bros. Truly, "show-biz" has been his life. It has taken him from New York to Hollywood and half-way around the world: from Vegas to Venice, Malibu to Monaco.
"Hollywood's Best" is Wylly's second book dealing with the integrated worlds of crime and show business - "Staten Island" being his first. It is a work of fiction, but the lives of its characters are not dissimilar to those of people he has spent a lifetime with.