Hollywood Through My Eyes

By Monica Lewis

Subjects: Singers, Biography, radio, Hollywood, Motion picture actors and actresses, television, Chiquita Banana, Women singers, disaster movies, jazz

Description: HOLLYWOOD THROUGH MY EYES is the intimate portrait of "America's Singing Sweetheart": Monica Lewis. It chronicles a young girl's rise from Depression-era Chicago, through the glamour and grit of New York City's nightclub scene and live broadcasting (including the very first *Ed Sullivan Show*), and finally to the privileged environs of Beverly Hills as the wife of top MCA/Universal Studios executive and producer Jennings Lang. Follow Monica as she gets her first job with Benny Goodman, sings on the radio with Frank Sinatra, tours war-torn Korea with Danny Kaye, goes out on the town with Ronald Reagan, clowns with Red Skelton at MGM, and opens her Beverly Hills mansion to an impressive list of Who's Who including Senator Ted Kennedy, Barbra Streisand, Clint Eastwood, Ava Gardner, Steven Spielberg, and the Beatles. With her wholesomely sexy voice, Monica was the darling of servicemen during two major wars. With her mile-wide smile and million-dollar legs, she was a popular magazine cover girl worldwide. For fourteen years, Monica was the voice of cartoon character Miss Chiquita Banana in a series of classic commercials. She topped the charts with hits like "Autumn Leaves," "A Tree in the Meadow," and "I Wish You Love," earning the respect and adoration of jazz and pop music fans internationally. As an actor, Monica sang and danced through 1950s MGM musicals like *Excuse My Dust* and *Everything I Have is Yours*, and later she survived the cinematic disaster scenarios of Universal Pictures' *Earthquake*, *Airport '77* and *Rollercoaster*. HOLLYWOOD THROUGH MY EYES, published by Cable Publishing of Brule, Wisconsin, chronicles the excitement of entertainment's Golden Age as only one who lived it can.