My Last Movie Star: A Novel of Hollywood - Hardcover

Allegra Coleman is young, beautiful, and destined for stardom. Clementine James is a jaded journalist who has been persuaded to write one last celebrity profile, a piece on Allegra for Flame magazine. But when their road-trip interview ends in a car crash, Allegra vanishes into thin air, and America goes into a frenzy of round-the-clock TV coverage, candlelight vigils, and miraculous sightings.

Clementine becomes a celebrity by proxy—and while recovering from her injuries, she receives a series of ghostly visits from Natalie Wood, Clara Bow, Myrna Loy, Loretta Young, Gloria Swanson, and other screen sirens of the past. As Tallulah Bankhead tells her, “It’s agony, darling...bitter agony—watching everything slip away. Your looks. Your dough. Your mind. Your ass.” Has the missing Allegra escaped such a fate?

To find out, Martha Sherrill takes Clementine on a riotous, often hilarious journey inside the hideaways of Hollywood stars and the hangouts of Manhattan’s power editors. Along the way, Sherrill captures the erotic jolt of celebrity and the way it affects the celebrated. My Last Movie Star is both a parody and parable of Hollywood, at once absurdly funny and weirdly plausible.