Front & Center

The second volume of  the influential director, producer, and actor’s memoirs, Front and Center focuses on Houseman’s Hollywood years in the forties and fifties as a producer of films such as The Bad and the Beautiful, The Blue Dahlia, and Lust for Life. Houseman, who was married to the actress Joan Fontaine, also provides literary portraits of famous Hollywood figures he knew and worked with, including Orson Welles, Raymond Chandler, and Herman Manciewitz.   [NY Times book review]