Hollywood Beauty: Linda Darnell and the American Dream

In 1939, at the age of fifteen, Linda Darnell left her Texas home and ordinary world to live the Hollywood dream promoted by fan magazines and studio publicity offices. She appeared in dozens of films and won international acclaim for Blood and Sand, Forever Amber, A Letter to Three Wives, and the original version of Unfaithfully Yours.

Driven by her mother to become rich and famous but unable to cope with the true nature of Hollywood, Darnell soon was caught in a downward spiral of drinking, failed marriages, and exploitive relationships. By her early twenties, she was an alcoholic, hardened by a life in which beautiful women were chattel. By the time of her death in a house fire at age forty-one, she was struggling for recognition in the industry that once had called her its "glory girl."