Hollywood Hellraisers: The Wild Lives and Fast Times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty, and Jack Nicholson

Sellers, a U.K. film writer and author of Hellraisers (on the lives of Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Richard Harris, and Oliver Reed), turns his attention to the careers of another four "bad boys." A paragraph describing Brando on Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire as "some women in the audience began hyperventilating" establishes the tabloid approach: what follows is a recounting of acid dreams, bad trips, amorous encounters, bedroom escapades, failed film projects, "creative differences" turned hostile, and family tragedies. Numerous pages detail the charismatic charm and sexual stamina of Beatty and Nicholson. The young Brando, according to Elia Kazan, was "a fuck machine," ending his life as a recluse whose ‘’eccentricities took on a sinister tone." During years of "self-destructive hedonism,’’ the wild-haired Hopper was a rebel, yet he survived to become part of the establishment, "almost Hollywood royalty, revered, iconic." Stirring together familiar and unfamiliar anecdotes—switching back and forth between actors with little transition—Sellers adds to the mix interviews he conducted with Hollywood insiders. 24 b&w photos. (July)