Leaving Home

A Hollywood Blacklisted Writer's Years Abroad

Anne Edwards

• Publisher: Scarecrow Press
• Year: 2012
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780810882003
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Film & Video
• Index: Social Sciences

Anne Edwards is the author of several bestselling biographies of notable figures, including film stars Judy Garland, Vivien Leigh, and Katharine Hepburn, as well as Queen Mary and Gone with the Wind novelist Margaret Mitchell. A fastidious researcher and accomplished writer, Edwards received a Pulitzer prize nomination for her book Early Reagan: The Rise of an American Hero.

In this new memoir, Edwards turns the spotlight on herself, chronicling her 20-year exile from the United States from the 1950s until the early 1970s. After working for MGM as a junior writer, Edwards sold two original screenplays and was employed as a story editor on a television program. An attack of polio left her physically compromised and struggling to make ends meet, so the divorced mother of two left her homeland to find work in Europe. After arriving in London, she was able to find writing jobs under an assumed name, along with her expatriated colleagues.

Leaving Home is a personal story about a young mother and her two small children, but it is also about the many famous—and not so famous—people whose lives intertwined with theirs: Judy Garland, John Garfield, Rod Serling, Norman Mailer, Greta Garbo, and several others. This is an intimate story of a woman who refused to be subdued by her circumstances and determined to rebuild her life in the wake of McCarthyism. It is also a story about a woman who found and lost love and will appeal to any readers wanting to learn more about Hollywood history during one of its darkest periods.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Setting the Scene
• Chapter 1: Departure
• Chapter 2: An American in a Queen’s Land
• Chapter 3: In a London Kind of Fog
• Chapter 4: A Dream Is Born
• Chapter 5: Gentlemen Don’t Always Prefer Blondes
• Chapter 6: My Kid Seems to Like Your Kid
• Chapter 7: Everything in Life Is a Gamble
• Chapter 8: A Time for Dreams—and Norman Mailer
• Chapter 9: Love and Other Emotions
• Chapter 10: Funny Girl
• Chapter 11: Hollywood Calling
• Chapter 12: A Question of Adultery
• Chapter 13: The End of an Affair
• Chapter 14: Judy, Judy, Judy!
• Chapter 15: The Emerald City of Madrid
• Chapter 16: Swiss Interlude
• Chapter 17: On the Riviera
• Chapter 18: Going Home
• Chapter 19: Last Call!
• About the Author