For info about Joseph Kennedy's Hwood fling, read Gloria Swanson's autobio. She was involved with him both personally and professionally and has a lot to say.
Jacobs' book also has info about the elder Kennedy---and what a racist he was.
My all-time fave story about the slippery slope to Hollywood fame and fortune is singer Eddie Fisher's tale.
At his peak he was making so much money, it was rolling in like high tide.
He was offered a piece of a Las Vegas company planning to build a casino called Ceasar's Palace. No money, all he had to do was to agree to appear there exclusively, giving the owners a connection to get top talent to perform there.
But b/c he was in the throes of the infamous Elizabeth Taylor break-up during the Cleopatra filming, Fisher stupidly declined the offer.
He would have been a billionaire today.
Sorry for the ping recidivism here, but there's no getting away from A.P., it seems.
AP Giannini made a career out of lending to out-of-favor industries. He helped the California wine industry get started, then bankrolled Hollywood at a time when the movie industry was anything but proven.
In 1923 he created a motion-picture loan division and helped Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith start United Artists. When Walt Disney ran $2 million over budget on Snow White, Giannini stepped in with a loan.
Giannini, had helped Cecil B DeMille complete The Ten Commandments in 1923, when the film's producers threatened to cut off DeMille's funding. Organizers have filmed over 40 hours of interviews with old-timers and DeMille associates, all now deceased, who worked on The Ten Commandments. The interview material will eventually be donated to the Arts and Communication Archives at Brigham Young University, which houses the collected papers of Cecil B. DeMille.
A PBS documentary profiled Bank of America founder Giannini on or about November 14, 2004. Just after the big San Francisco earthquake in 1906, an Italian fruit peddler guided a horse-drawn cart of oranges through North Beach. But there was bread as well as oranges on that cart, and that was no produce man: It was banker A.P. Giannini, secretly moving $80,000 in cash and gold from his recently founded Bank of Italy to his home in San Mateo. He then deposited the deposits in his fireplace's ash bin.
In the next few days after the disastrous quake, banks were ordered closed -- most of their vaults were too hot from the fires to open anyway. Only Giannini was paying out, lending San Franciscans money to rebuild their lives: He'd opened a loan office on the street.