The Ultimate Hollywood Tour Book (3rd edition)

The self-guided tours in this book help travelers discover where today's Hollywood lives, works. The book covers a little of everything: celebrity homes and haunts; locations all over greater Los Angeles where popular and classic motion pictures and television shows were filmed; the studios; sites of infamous Hollywood scandals, murders, and suicides; and other sites where entertainment history, including sites that inspired songs. The book is updated annually and covers 17 different areas of greater Los Angeles (from Pasadena to Malibu and the northern San Fernando Valley to the South Bay.) Readers can also ask the publisher to send e-mail updates.

The Ultimate Hollywood Tour Book is the joyously affirmative answer to the question "Is there an alternative to the prepackaged bus tour of Tinseltown?" William Gordon's guide delivers all the juicy scandal you've come for, but at your pace, at your discretion, and without crackly speakers blasting in your ear. You want to see former homes of Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, or Elvis Presley, current homes of Elizabeth Taylor, Ronald Reagan, or Hugh Hefner, and the site of the Charles Manson cult murders? Gordon helps you conduct your own exploration, and supplies invaluable tidbits of information, such as how Jayne Mansfield came to receive $50,000 worth of free merchandise to decorate her Pink Palace. Gordon covers 32 neighborhoods, providing a practical tour guide as well as a fun gift for the star-struck and Hollywood-bound.