There's a 1920s Hollywood Mystery Series in Development Titled TINSELTOWN
There’s an interesting new mystery series in development set in 1920s Hollywood titled Tinseltown. The show will be based on William J Mann’s 2014 book Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, And Madness At The Dawn of Hollywood.
Tinseltown is set “against the seamy, glamorous backdrop of silent film era. It explores the lives of four pioneer women filmmakers whose lives and livelihoods were threatened by a scandalous murder and the brutal patriarchy of Hollywood’s nascent studio system.” The story also takes place immediately after the Spanish Flu pandemic.
The project is being produced by Spectrum Originals and Paramount Television Studios, and it’s being developed by Mann and The Son executive producer, Kevin Murphy. Mann and Murphy will write the series, and Murphy had this to say in a statement:
“The show centers on four accomplished women filmmakers who get dragged into the grotesque media circus surrounding a murder. Their careers are upended and they find themselves pushed out of the burgeoning Hollywood studio system, a system Paramount founder Adolph Zukor has been building by strong-arming independent producers and exhibitors ravaged by the Spanish Flu shutdown.”
Mann added:
“I believe this is a story about women in Hollywood and the resiliency of women in Hollywood. We wonder how we got to where we are today, well, this is the origin story of so much.”
As someone who’s been fascinated with the history of Hollywood and the entertainment industry, this is a show that I’m looking forward to watching.
Below you’ll find the full description form the book:
The Day of the Locust meets The Devil in the White City and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in this juicy, untold Hollywood story: an addictive true tale of ambition, scandal, intrigue, murder, and the creation of the modern film industry.
By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America’s new favorite pastime, and one of the nation’s largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence. Yet Hollywood’s glittering ascendency was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies—including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.
In a fiendishly involving narrative, bestselling Hollywood chronicler William J. Mann draws on a rich host of sources, including recently released FBI files, to unpack the story of the enigmatic Taylor and the diverse cast that surrounded him—including three beautiful, ambitious actresses; a grasping stage mother; a devoted valet; and a gang of two-bit thugs, any of whom might have fired the fatal bullet. And overseeing this entire landscape of intrigue was Adolph Zukor, the brilliant and ruthless founder of Paramount, locked in a struggle for control of the industry and desperate to conceal the truth about the crime. Along the way, Mann brings to life Los Angeles in the Roaring Twenties: a sparkling yet schizophrenic town filled with party girls, drug dealers, religious zealots, newly-minted legends and starlets already past their prime—a dangerous place where the powerful could still run afoul of the desperate.
A true story recreated with the suspense of a novel, Tinseltown is the work of a storyteller at the peak of his powers—and the solution to a crime that has stumped detectives and historians for nearly a century.
Source: Deadline