Book Review: Hollywood Café

Book: Hollywood Café: Coffee with the Stars by Steven Rea

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Description:

Put on a pot of your favorite coffee, perk up, and enjoy nostalgic black-and-white photos that celebrate screen icons from the Silent Era through the eighties, making and drinking their own cups of joe, java, pour-overs, and percolated brews.

Hollywood Cafe bridges the vibrant coffee culture of right-now with the glamorous coffee culture of the star-studded past. A dream cast of nearly 200 stars—Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Clara Bow, Charlie Chaplin, W. C. Fields, Robert Mitchum, Rita Hayworth, Bob Hope, Michael Caine, Jane Fonda, Ava Gardner, Jackie Gleason, Lucille Ball, Elvis Presely, Jayne Mansfield, Sammy Davis Jr., William Holden, Lauren Bacall, John Wayne, and many more—is captured on the set, on the run, in costume and out, behind-the-scenes and at the kitchen table, refilling and refueling, sipping and savoring, drinking the good stuff, just like us.


Rating: 5 stars

Review:

I may not drink coffee (I'm a tea drinker) but I do love looking at coffee table books. I have quite a few of them sitting on the shelf and on my coffee table. In Hollywood Café, there are wonderfully clear high quality black and white pictures showing some of old Hollywood's top stars at home, in scenes of movies and TV shows and on set and behind the scenes enjoying a cup of coffee. There were also even a few promotional shots for coffee advertisements featured.

Although most of the pictures are of old Hollywood there were pictures included from the 70's and 80's including a scene from the 1989 movie Say Anything. Even though the focus is truly on the pictures, each one includes a little description to provide the reader with information such as Preston Sturges actually drank a quart-sized cup of coffee. That's a lot of coffee.

What I love the most are the candid shots, they give you an interesting look at some of the quiet moments as well as the busy ones such as this picture with Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball.

This was a fascinating book and it was nice looking at all of the pictures even if there were some actresses and actors I was unaware of, that is until now.