Such Mad Fun: Ambition and Glamour
in Hollywood’s Golden Age (2016) 

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JUNE 24, 2017  GOLD MEDAL WINNER FOR ADULT NONFICTION/ BIOGRAPHY FROM FOREWORD REVIEWS INDIES

MARCH 15, 2017 FOREWORD INDIES BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS FINALIST  (BIOGRAPHY)

A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF 2016

GUEST BLOG POST ON WOMEN WRITERS, WOMEN’S BOOKS.

 click here for THE EXCERPT IN VANITY FAIR HOLLYWOOD! 

and here for ANOTHER EXCERPT IN THE DAILY BEAST 

AN AUTHOR INTERVIEW AND REVIEW BY HOMETOWNS TO HOLLYWOOD

SAMPLES OF OTHER  REVIEWS OR EXCERPTS : 

. . . . In this well-researched account . . .the author thoughtfully examines the allure and trap of glamour. In this, Hall’s story mirrors those of many female professionals even today, who face immense pressures to maintain a certain look. Hall’s brushes with Hollywood and literary celebrities make great reading. Fitzgerald gave her an inscribed copy of  Tender Is the Night (“the book may have been his warning to Jane about the consequences of marrying the wrong person, and the seductive power of wealth, alcohol, and a world of superficiality and showiness”). This portrait of a more literary mass-market America offers much food for reflection on modern culture.

A valuable, absorbing contribution to the history of women, golden-age Hollywood, and America’s magazine culture of the 1930s and ’40s.

KIRKUS STARRED REVIEW .

Precocious Jane Hall was only 10 years old when she was first published in the L.A. Times—and 22 when she started writing short stories for national magazines, fiction that soon caught the eye of a Hollywood agent. Soon enough, she’d traded the East Coast for Los Angeles, where she wasted no time befriending F. Scott Fitzgerald, writing screenplays for films starring the likes of Lana Turner, and chronicling her adventures in Hollywood for magazines like Cosmopolitan. Her time in Tinseltown is lovingly reconstructed in Such Mad Fun, a cultural history by producer and public historian Robin Cutler—who also happens to be Jane’s daughter. Get a taste of Jane’s high-spirited prose and effervescent spirit in this lightly condensed excerpt from the book, which finds our heroine traveling on assignment to the set of The Wizard of Oz for Good Housekeeping.

VANITY FAIR SEE THE EXCERPT

In Such Mad Fun, Robin Cutler’s story of her mother’s stint as a Hollywood screenwriter where she worked at MGM alongside Scott Fitzgerald, is the glittering centerpiece of an always fascinating tribute to a complex woman torn between home and career. Diary entries provide a window into the mixed emotions of a gallant woman trying to live an independent life, but shaped by the expectations of her class and time. Also revealing are the synopses of Jane’s short stories and screenplays, which illuminate the kinds of stories women were writing and reading — and watching — in that era of glossy surfaces and incipient rebellion.

Such Mad Fun adds much to our understanding of Depression-era American culture in this biography of Jane Hall, who in her early twenties became a successful magazine writer then made her way to Hollywood during the 1930s.  It provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the studio system during its heyday as Hall negotiated interminable story conferences, demanding producers, the strictures of the Production Code, and credit squabbles with occasional escapes to Palm Springs to regroup. It also reminds us of the many challenges women of talent at the time faced as they pursued their ambitions.  Robin Cutler tells the story of a remarkable woman and ably brings to life the milieus, both social and professional, Jane Hall inhabited during a fascinating life.

RICHARD A. FINE, Professor of English, Virginia Commonwealth University, and author of West of Eden: Hollywood and the Profession of Authorship

If you want to understand the power of a woman’s professional identity – and the effects of giving it up too soon – read this compelling history of ambition and success in Hollywood and New York. I hope “Such Mad Fun” inspires readers, especially women, to pursue their talents no matter what. Thoroughly researched, this is a beautifully written history of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and the role of the woman wunderkind writer who was the author’s mother. In the end, you’ll understand better your twentieth-century matriarchs, and most likely yourself. All my “womankin” are getting copies of Such Mad Fun. I hope this page-turner teaches them to never surrender their talents and brainpower

BETTY BOOKER, specialist in generational writing, long-time reporter/columnist, Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch and Boomer Magazine

Such Mad Fun is about the golden age of Hollywood, about mothers and daughters, about the ways people disappoint each other and themselves. It’s a seamless story of twentieth- century life narrated with style and verve and empathy.

Robin Cutler is pitch-perfect in her description of the glittering social worlds of 1930’s New York and Hollywood. Such Mad Fun chronicles the adventures of Cutler’s prodigy mother, Jane Hall, a beautiful and gifted young writer whose wit and creativity assured success in these meccas of glamour. Working from her mother’s writings and diaries, Cutler has crafted an absorbing coming-of-age story that shows what it took for a brilliant young woman to make it as a Hollywood screenwriter. Exposed to a breathtaking world of celebrity, Jane ultimately had to choose between her creative ambitions and the glamorous life she cultivated for social success. Written with the momentum of a page-turning novel, Robin Cutler’s excellent new book is a must read for anyone who appreciates both genius and glamour, especially when they are combined in one fascinating individual.

LINDSAY C. GIBSON, Psy.D, author of Who You Were Meant To Be :A Guide to Finding or Recovering Your Life’s Purpose.

Robin Cutler is a writer/historian who has written a biography of her mother, who led a rather extraordinary life from Depression-era debutante balls in Manhattan, to being a screenwriter at MGM, and beyond. Robin sent me an ARC of the manuscript because her mother once stayed at the Garden of Allah, and Robin wanted to know what I thought. I loved her book! It turns out that Jane Hall lived a life not unlike one of the characters in my books, only for realsies. It’s now available for pre-order, and comes with my highest recommendation.

MARTIN TURNBULL,  author of five Hollywood’s Garden of Allah novels. 

.. . . .Shortly after we finished reading this book, we watched a 1930s screwball comedy. “This is Jane Hall’s world,” we thought. With Hall’s adventures in mind, we found ourselves experiencing the film in a different way. In fact, it was almost as if we were watching a screwball comedy for the first time.

We realized Such Mad Fun filled a gaping hole in our knowledge of 1930s America. You see, we (as in, yours truly) have read very little about rich New Yorkers during the Depression. Cutler explains the culture of the rich and, in doing so, gives us a greater understanding of them as portrayed in the films of the 1930s.  We’re not joking when we say we regard this book as an anthropological guide.

We highly recommend Such Mad Fun for its engrossing look at an extraordinary woman of the 1930s, one who is still considered remarkable nearly 100 years later.

SILVER SCREENINGS  https://silverscreenings.org/2016/08/31/jane-hall-goes-hollywood/

You had me at “Hollywood’s Golden Age.”

In Such Mad Fun: Ambition and Glamour in Hollywood’s Golden Age, historian Robin R. Cutler undertakes a daunting task—a biography of her own mother, Jane Hall, who worked as a screenwriter, fiction writer, and journalist during the 1930s and early 1940s. Jane Hall is a character worthy of her own Hollywood movie, and thanks to Cutler, she pops to vivid life from these pages. . . . . .Cutler has carefully pieced together her mother’s story through diary entries, letters, and other documentary evidence. Her portrait of Jane Hall is a rich, poignant account—not just of one woman’s life or of a single glamorous decade, but of a time when women writers forged names for themselves and enjoyed fulfilling careers.

Story Circle Book Reviews 2016_

I personally found the story of Jane Hall very inspiring. In a time where it was pretty much expected for a woman’s life to follow a particular pattern, Jane proved that not only was it possible to break that mould, but to also be successful at it. Such Mad Fun is not only a book for fans of Golden Hollywood, it has the potential to inspire anyone to believe that their dreams and ambitions are possible if they put their heart and soul into what they are doing.

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