Starstruck: My Unlikely Road to Hollywood

Hollywood historian and film reviewer Leonard Maltin invites listeners to pull up a chair as he tells stories, many of them hilarious, from fifty-plus years of interacting with legendary movie stars, writers, directors, producers, and cartoonists. Maltin grew up in the first decade of television, immersing himself in TV programs and the 1930s and ’40s movies hitting the small screen. His fan letters to admired performers led to unexpected correspondences, then to interviews and the publication of his own fan magazine. Maltin’s career as a freelance writer and New York Times bestselling author, as well as his thirty-year run on Entertainment Tonight, gave him access to Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, Shirley Temple, and Jimmy Stewart, among hundreds of other Golden Age stars, his interviews cutting through the Hollywood veneer and revealing the human behind each legend. Starstruck also offers a fascinating glimpse inside the Disney empire, and Maltin’s tenure teaching USC’s popular film course reveals insights into moviemaking along with access to past, current, and future stars of film, such as George Lucas, Kevin Feige, Quentin Tarantino, and Guillermo del Toro.