STARDUST BY THE BUSHEL: Hollywood on the Chesapeake Bay's Eastern Shore, film and actor anecdotes aplenty

STARDUST BY THE BUSHEL: Hollywood on the Chesapeake Bay's Eastern Shore
BRENT LEWIS
Secant Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$8.99 Kindle, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Hollywood on the Chesapeake Bay's Eastern Shore. One-hundred years of moviemaking on Delmarva, from Easton to Ocean City and Wilmington to Chincoteague. This is the first comprehensive history of the stars of stage and screen who called the Eastern Shore home during (or after) their lives...as well as major motion pictures produced on location here. Written with meticulous care and infectious joy by Brent Lewis, a tenth-generation Eastern Shoreman known for his mastery of regional history and lore.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'll admit it up fromt: I'm a sucker for tightly-focused histories of films, their stars, and the stories of their production. This book, then, is aimed at me.

This area, one of the longest colonized places on the continent, often plays host to individual productions or television series that benefit from the less-familiar-than-California landscape...and from tax benefits. Some actors from the area push for productions to go there.

the face of film noir, Robert Mitchum

Robert Mitchum spent a big part of his youth in Delaware, because his grandparents took on raising him when his mother had had enough. Apparently he was not acting too much in his mean-bastard roles.

Affection for the area persisted in him. It seems to cast quite a spell, does Delmarva!

A native to the area is Linda Harrison, Sixties and Seventies beauty of some renown who played Nova in the science-fiction film classic Planet of the Apes most famously.

her talents were on display

After being cast in one of the defining blockbuster films of the Sixties, Harrison has spent years coming to terms with that specific type of fame; she's returned to her Maryland hometown, moved back to open a business. Now she is active on the convention scene that celebrates the Planet of the Apes franchise. She only appeared in the first and second films, yet the fans still love and embrace her in the con scene. Not a bad career!

Films that've made the area part of their background include Harriet, starring the luminous Cynthia Erivo in an Oscar-nominated star turn:

the film was less famous than it should've been

Tubman was born on a Eastern Shore plantation so the area figures prominently in the film. Production included locations all over the area. There are two National Historical Parks in the area dedicated to Tubman and her legacy.

An enjoyable book, one I never had to talk myself into returning to; and one that a film fancying giftee with a taste for anecdotes will batten on.