Get Your Free Audiobook

  • Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard

  • Billy Wilder, Norma Desmond, and the Dark Hollywood Dream
  • Written by: Sam Staggs
  • Narrated by: Donald Corren
  • Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins

Prime logo New to Audible Prime Member exclusive:
2 credits with free trial
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks
Download titles to your library and listen offline
₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.
Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard cover art

Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard

Written by: Sam Staggs
Narrated by: Donald Corren
Free with 30-day trial

₹199 per month after trial ends. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for ₹937.00

Buy Now for ₹937.00

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice.

Publisher's Summary

Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, a classic film noir and also a damning dissection of the Hollywood dream factory, evokes the glamour and ruin of the stars who subsist on that dream. It’s also one long in-joke about the movie industry and those who made it great - and who were, in turn, destroyed by it. One of the most critically admired films of the 20th century, Sunset Boulevard is also famous as silent-star Gloria Swanson’s comeback picture.

Sam Staggs’s Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard tells the story of this extravagant work, from the writing, casting, and filming to the disastrous previews that made Paramount consider shelving it. It’s about the writing team of Billy Wilder and Charles Bracket - sardonically called “the happiest couple in Hollywood” - and their raucous professional relationship. It’s about the art direction and the sets, the costumes, the props, the lights and cameras, and the personalities who used those tools to create a cinematic work of art.

Staggs goes behind the scenes to reveal: William Holden, endlessly attacked by his bitter wife and drinking too much; Nancy Olson, the cheerful ingenue who had never heard of the great Gloria Swanson; the dark genius Erich von Stroheim; the once famous but long-forgotten “Waxworks”; and of course Swanson herself, who - just like Norma Desmond - had once been “the greatest star of them all”.

But the story of Sunset Boulevard doesn’t end with the movie’s success and acclaim at its release in 1950. There’s much more, and Staggs layers this stylish book with fascinating detail, following the actors and Wilder into their post-Sunset careers and revealing Gloria Swanson’s never-ending struggle to free herself from the clutches of Norma Desmond.

Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard also chronicles the making of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical production of Sunset Boulevard and the explosive diva controversies that dogged it. The book ends with a shocking example of Hollywood life imitating Hollywood art. By the last word of this rich narrative, listeners will conclude: We are those “wonderful people out there in the dark”.

©2002 Sam Staggs (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing

What listeners say about Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.