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    From Ru Paul to Tallulah Bankhead, Larry Edmunds Bookshop Is the Place to Be!

    By Jan Wahl–

    Three glorious hours in Larry Edmunds Bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles is movie buff heaven. Posters, lobby cards, and scripts abound, but it is the books that rock this place off its foundation. From Matthew McConaughey’s Greenlights (it is beyond all right, all right, all right!) to Mean, Moody and Magnificent: Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend … from the out of print to the out of this world, the books are alive and exciting.

    Let’s set the scene. Larry Edmunds has been around since 1938. Edmunds himself is gone, but the people who worked with him kept the store up and running, deciding to focus on pirated books from Europe, including erotica and Henry Miller. In those days, all merchandise was wrapped in brown paper bags, which they use today as an homage. When they turned the focus on showbiz and Hollywood books and memorabilia, the nearby studios came running for research and information. 

    Hollywood Boulevard used to have many bookstores, but now Edmunds is all that’s left. Still, it was a perfect location back in the day, in 1973 next door to the famed Pussycat Theatre with the first punk club in L.A. in its basement. Ru Paul’s World of Wonder shop and production office are nearby, providing owner Jeffrey Mantor and Sean Hathwell with colorful characters visiting. 

    When Ru Paul signed his book GuRu, copies were sold out. No surprise there. John Cleese, Shirley Jones, Chelsea Handler, author Eve Golden, and so many more have dropped by. Faye Dunaway was researching a new book on the making of Mommy Dearest, so she came in and studied about Miss Joan. The fabulous Czar of Noir, Eddie Mueller, is a regular, and was recently signing his updated Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. Eddie is our own local, and the best part of my favorite channel: Turner Classic Movies.

    While at the bookstore, spending every penny I had, I was able to talk shop with Sean, a knowledgeable and friendly guy.

    “Director Quentin Tarantino, who has been coming here since he was a young one, Peter Bogdanovich, Jim Jarmusch, Orson Welles. It’s a director’s paradise found,” he told me. “Spike Lee was in here, buying up all of his photos since he was out of his own. Our modern audiences seem to love film noir, but musicals and silent films appeal to younger people, too. Marilyn is always popular. Michael Jackson would buy tons of Disney; Morrissey loved ’50s teen idols like Tab Hunter. Tippi Hedren was sweet and full of Hitchcock stories; Illeana Douglas brought acting colleagues to read from her book I Blame Dennis Hopper. Her family took Easy Rider seriously and led the family on a nomadic lifestyle. I meet amazing people, musicians and regular folks discovering the world of Hollywood, past and present.”

    I asked Sean about LBGTQ books. He was on it. “These books were originally hard to find. But around the time of the AIDS crisis, interesting and intellectual books began to appear. The opening of the floodgates for serious LBGTQ film history was Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet. Hollywood Babylon, William Mann’s Behind the Screen: How Lesbians and Gays Shaped Hollywood, is one of my personal favorites. When the documentary came out about Scotty Bowers, his Full Service sold out quickly. Mann’s book about William Haines, Wisecracker, does well. Boze Hadleigh has two good books, Hollywood Gays and Hollywood Lesbians. It is now a thriving genre.” 

    I was able to get many books shipped to me safely since travel and books are heavy lifting. Larry Edmunds has a website, but with the Motion Picture Academy Museum opening on October 1st of this year, maybe another trip down to L.A. is called for … I’ll see you there at Larry Edmunds.

    And I’ll see you at Respect, the terrific new biopic about Aretha Franklin. Everything works in this long, but engrossing movie about the Queen of Soul.  It shines as she will forever.    

    Larry Edmunds Bookshop: https://www.larryedmunds.com/

    Respect: https://www.unitedartistsreleasing.com/movie-site/respect-2

    Jan Wahl is a Hollywood historian, film critic on various broadcast outlets, and has her own YouTube channel series, “Jan Wahl Showbiz.” She has two Emmys and many awards for her longtime work on behalf of film buffs and the LGBTQ community. Contact her at www.janwahl.com

    Published on August 26, 2021