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Maybe author William J.(Bill) Mann thinks Hollywood is a nice place to visit but he doesn't really want to live there. As a chronicler of movie stars and other film people, his work requires him to be in Los Angeles for interviews and research. But he lives on Cape Cod and in South Norwalk. In his biographies of Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor, Mann deconstructs their complicated personalities. In Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, Mann suggests Katharine Hepburn was her own mythmaker who, from an early age, craved fame. Her cherished romance with Spencer Tracy, he says, may have been part of her myth spinning. In a CBS This Morning interview, Mann revealed, Way before it became popular for celebrities to micro-manage their image, Katharine Hepburn was doing it, in the 1930's and doing it brilliantly. And did it for 70 years. Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn was called definitive by the Sunday (London) Times. Vanity Fair Magazine excerpted it and the NY Times named it one of the 100 Notable Books of 2006.
Mann describes How to Be A Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood, his 2009 book, as the quintessential story of fame. If Hepburn spun her own myth, Taylor battled her own compulsions. Columnist Liz Smith, Mann says, drew a vivid picture for him of Taylor's insatiable personality. She always wanted more of everything, Smith told him, more jewels, more men, more food etc. But in spite of her excesses, Mann says, he found that people who knew Taylor universally loved her and still do. With Hepburn, it was a split decision: there were those who knew and loved her, he says. And there were those who knew her and ...didn't love her. At all.
Mann's current subject, Barbra Streisand, fits his profile of a mesmerizing talent coupled with a force of nature personality. His book, due out in 2012, will focus on Streisand's early New York years, as she became famous, he says. Deeply immersed in all things Streisand, Mann spent the winter writing on Cape Cod. Currently, he's in South Norwalk but flies to Los Angeles soon to conduct more interviews. Whereever he is when he writes his Streisand book, we can be sure Bill Mann will bring her to life for us. How to Be A Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood is available in paperback from Mariner Books on April 1.
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