New Books

Lauren Bacall has been written about so frequently— mythologized, quoted, imitated—that any new biography presents itself almost as an implicit dare: prove you can tell us something true about the woman underneath the lacquer of “cool.” In Lauren Bacall: The Queen of Cool, film historian Anthony Uzarowski (following his excellent biographies of Ava Gardner and Jessica Lange) rises to meet that challenge head on with a brisk, photo-rich portrait of Bacall as both icon and working actress: ambitious, watchful, sometimes insecure, and above all else, keenly aware of how an adopted persona can become a prison. Published by the University Press of Mississippi as part of its ongoing Hollywood Legends Series, this compact 192-page hardcover packs in an impressive amount of substance along with its sleek style—substantial supporting apparatus like source notes and an index, plus a treasure trove of black-and-white illustrations that give the book the satisfying heft and layout of a well-curated exhibit as much as a straight narrative life.

Bernard F. Dick has written an elegant, clear-eyed biography of Hollywood's smartest and most self-possessed screen star, a woman who could order a director out of her trailer for going too fast (or too slow) and who hid a will of steel and an exacting need for control behind a glamorous screen presence. The paperback edition of Claudette Colbert: She Walked in Beauty (University Press of Mississippi), is the latest entry in UPOM's admirable Hollywood Legends series, and like those other books it is at pains to present its subject whole, shunning easy mythmaking and gossip. Dick's biography is carefully researched, deeply contextualized, and as sober and controlled as his subject. It covers Colbert's life from a Parisian childhood to her days as one of the most powerful actresses in the Golden Age, and like the best of Colbert's work, it is refined, disciplined, and quietly authoritative.

With Sisters in Death: The Black Dahlia, the Prairie Heiress, and Their Hunter (Citadel Press, on sale October 28, 2025), producer-turned-investigative writer Eli Frankel aims at the most infamous unsolved murder in American history: the 1947 killing of Elizabeth Short, the “Black Dahlia.”

Thomas J. Slater’s June Mathis: The Rise and Fall of a Silent Film Visionary restores one of silent Hollywood’s most important figures to film history by undertaking the process of finding and parsing the relevant materials.