This book details the history of Hollywood in the early silent days as well as the transition to sound. Addiitonally, you got to find out what it was like to grow up in New York City in the early 19th century. Maas was an independent woman who, after leaving Columbia University because they weren't teaching her anything, obtained work in Universal Studios New York story department and eventually worked her way to the top of the department. However, she really wanted to write and although they told her if she would manage the department for a year they would send her to California to write at the end of the year, when the time came, they did not follow through and she made her way to the West Coast at her own expense. She met many of the early Hollywood notables and did get a script produced as a major film (The Plastic Age) for Clara Bow. Her natural curiosity and ambition to succeed, as well as her manner of telling things like it was, did not endear her to the men running the studios. She had many writing assignments "appropriated by" and credited to higher ranking men in the studio. She also describes meeting her husband and their attempts to work together to write scripts for the studios but again getting shut out despite having many ideas that sounded so interesting but ended up being ahead of their time. It is a great picture of the way the studio system treated a bright, intelligent, amibitious woman and while they forced her out of the business, her amazing attitude toward life allowed her to write this highly readable book at age 99 and who outlived all the studio big wigs when she left us at age 111. ( )