Coast to coast
Subtitle: a family romance
By: Nora Johnson.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2004
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 274
Subjects: Johnson, Nora -- Childhood and youth; Johnson, Nunnally -- Family; Johnson, Nora -- Family; Novelists, American -- 20th century -- Biography; Adult children of divorced parents -- United States -- Biography; Motion picture producers and directors -- United States -- Family relationships; Screenwriters -- United States -- Family relationships; Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Biography; New York (N.Y.) -- Biography
Genres: Biography.
Description: "Nora Johnson was a young child when her parents' marriage collapsed. Her father, Nunnally Johnson, the writer, producer, or director of many acclaimed movies, such as The Grapes of Wrath and The Dirty Dozen, remained in California, where he would continue to be a major Hollywood presence for more than three decades. Nora's mother, Marion, a beautiful but unsettled woman, took her to New York to start a new life - one surrounded by her mother's lovers and eccentric literary friends instead of movie stars and studio heads." "Coast to Coast is Nora's account of a childhood spent shuttling between Manhattan and Hollywood. What emerges is a portrait of American life in the 1940s and 1950s - from the movie lots of California to the cocktail parties of the Upper East Side - and also a story of a shrewd, observant girl who would grow up far too fast. Nora shares the details of a childhood spent in privilege, but also captures the painful loneliness of changing schools, four-day train trips from one coast to the other, and never being quite sure of where she belonged. She also brings to life her droll, charming, talented father - a Thurberesque character in Hollywood - and her beautiful and erratic mother, a woman who fled the Los Angeles movie celebrity life but was unable to forget the husband who took her there."--BOOK JACKET.