Legends and Lipstick

My Scandalous Stories of Hollywood's Golden Era

By: Nancy Bacon

Narrated by: Jennifer Knighton

Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's Summary

You won’t believe your ears! Relentlessly listenable insider stories. 

Hollywood love affairs

For the first time ever, Nancy Bacon, famed gossip columnist and editor of Confidential Magazine, is telling her whole story of what it was like to have love affairs with the likes of Paul Newman, Errol Flynn, Tommy Smothers, Rod Taylor, Vince Edwards, and Hugh O’Brian, plus exciting friendships with the Rat Pack, Judy Garland, Bobby Kennedy, Jay Sebring, Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne, and Marilyn Monroe (to name only a few!). 

Beverly Hills, Rome, London, Paris 

A young and gorgeous pinup model and starlet before she became a writer, Nancy dove right into the kinds of parties found only in the glittering and glamorous playgrounds of Beverly Hills and Hollywood - and beyond to Rome, London, and Paris. Legends and Lipstick is an uncensored peep inside vintage showbiz, Jayne Mansfield’s horrible descent and death, the Manson family murders, saucy sex romps, exclusive nightclubs and parties, and detailed, firsthand descriptions of where and how celebs played in the old days. 

The tarnished side of Tinseltown 

Here is the untold story of Nancy’s courageous battles with breast cancer and alcoholism during a time when no one spoke openly about such things. The tarnished side of Tinseltown is the fascinating flipside to a tale that needs to be told. This is Nancy’s inside account from her humble beginnings as one of nine children growing up on a farm in Washington state and what happened after all the fun and games in Hollywood were over - she went through divorce, depression, and a botched radical double mastectomy...and she overcame it all. Her life is one of stunning extremes. 

Why Legends and Lipstick is a must-hear

For those who can’t get enough of candid, no-holds-barred memoirs like The Kid Stays in the Picture (Robert Evans), You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again (Julia Phillips), Shirley Jones: A Memoir, Watch Me (Anjelica Houston), and I’m With the Band (Pamela Des Barres) - this audiobook is for you.

Legends and Lipstick goes hand-in-hand with her daughter Staci Layne Wilson’s own tell-all memoir, So L.A. Take a listen to both audiobooks! 

©2017 Staci L. Wilson (P)2018 Staci L. Wilson

What a colossal, tacky waste of time

Five points to ponder before you commit to this tripe:

1. Trust your instincts when selecting a book. Love a good Hollywood gossip tale as much as the next person, but THIS...no. Just no. I learned a good lesson.

2. How easy would it be to claim that a famous dead person was a "friend." Just parrot what you've read in a few bios or saw on A&E's Biography, personalize it a bit and voila...you, too, can be a BFF and confidant of Marilyn, Judy or ElizabethTaylor. What a slap in the face to these women.

3. I know this woman was a Grade D actress, but had to check IMBD and she wasn't even listed in the credits of the movies she claimed she was in. Plus the writer she claims to have had an European adventure with told Nancy he was still married to Gwen Verdon in 1960 and couldn't get a divorce. Verdon divorced him in the late 40s and was married to Bob Fosse in 1960. Might have been smartest lie that guy ever told a gal. Sheesh.

4. I'm so not a prude, but seriously. So smarmy. I take the lurid descriptions of her liaisons with the now demised male celebrities with whom she allegedly had relationships with a large grain of salt and a great amount of tequila.

5. Best laugh in the book was when the narrator mispronounced the word "coiff." She pronounced it as "coyff." "Oy"as in "Oy vey." Indeed.

Didn't finish this one. Yuck.

The Golden Era of Hollywood!

To be honest, when I bought this book, I had no idea who Nancy Bacon was. I'm a sucker for anything about old Hollywood, so I decided to buy it. I found Bacon's account of her time in Hollywood to be a cautionary tale, but still very interesting and sad. I really enjoyed this book and would suggest it to friends to read.

Heart and Humor in Hollywood

There are many remarkable attributes of Nancy Bacon. To start with, her warm, inviting personality shines throughout this memoir. She’s also insightful, nonjudgmental and funny! I wasn’t expecting to laugh as much as I did, but she’s humorous in an oftentimes unexpected way. Her natural optimism shines throughout, and it’s certainly admirable that she can laugh through adversity. Her ‘boob history’ (boob her-story? ) recounting is hilarious—joking through the real life horror is quite praiseworthy. Wordplay abounds and her descriptions are delightfully detailed. Hollywood’s Golden Era is palpable as is her heartbreaking struggle with alcoholism.

She did more than merely rub elbows with some movie idols in Hollywood’s Golden Era. Yet, she was discreet, and it’s readily apparent that she deeply cared for them. But, this is no book of Hollywood fluff, for there are some stories which are somewhat scarring to hear (I listened to this memoir via Amazon’s Audible). A major female Hollywood star of the Golden Era who was into brutality comes to mind first, and one of Ms. Bacon’s abusive boyfriends next. Yikes! However, these examples aren’t in the same ballpark with the light BDSM that she experienced later on (but long before E.L. James’s “50 Shades of Grey” made BDSM more mainstream) with a love interest. Ms. Bacon was ahead of her time in some respects, yet she also had a finger on the pulse of the times she experienced. Plus, her life wasn’t filled with just movie stars, as she also spent time with famous men in politics. Impressive is an understatement!

In closing, the expression to ‘pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps’ comes to mind as her beginnings were modest, yet she achieved so much by her own ingenuity and positive outlook. In fact, she was also a magazine editor, co-author of “Whitney Houston: Good Girl/Bad Girl,” and she wrote 10 romance and adventure novels.

Highly recommended!

G.L. Giles

Certainly has a high opinion of herself~

Had never heard of this person previously. Found it incredibly sad that she spoke more fondly of her breasts than her child.

Ugh.

What a colossal mess. I don't believe a word of it. This woman supposedly remembers every detail of things that happened 60 plus years ago? Sure, Nancy. Sure. The person reading the book has a very flat tone to her voice , which makes believing Nancy's stories even harder. Plus the narrator's attempts at imitating a man's voice bordered on ridiculous . What a waste of a credit.

Interesting Hollywood gossip, lousy narration.

A fun, largely light-weight read for lovers of 1960s Hollywood lore. Loads of sex & drug experiences described by the delightfully uninhibited author, who must have been a real man-killer. The narration leaves something to be desired- occasional mispronunciations & an insistence on a comical imitation of the male voice achieved by speaking in a low-register.

Some Do Not Go Quitely Into The Night

There seems to be a glut on the market of aging and elderly women and former B-C actress', models, groupies working hard to supplement their social security with "Tell All" of other people's indiscretions. Desperate "journalists" that have been unemployed for years printing "secrets and slander" while they can still self-publish. The sadistic disregard for other people's spouses, children, grandchildren is flagrant and ruthless. I made it through chapter 26 and felt guilty reading that much. This memoir is basically a name-dropping journal of men she slept with. Nobody was spared. Possibly some stories I would have been curious about at around age 12. But even then the ruthless and coy degradation of others would have made me very squeamish.

Absolutely shocking.

I had to laugh when Nancy wondered why Paul Newman was treating her like a prostitute,and not leaving Joanna,Well I ask you ?..but that was
then, and now,she is older and much
much wiser...all in all very enlightening,and entertaining.

DREADFUL on so many levels!

Basically, this book is just a failed actress boasting about the celebs shes slept with in detail that reads like cheesy Mills and Boone romance! The writing is truly awful...I mean CRINGE LEVEL AWFUL! Full of super cheesy cliches! It makes 50 Shades seem highbrow, I kid you NOT! I couldn't punish myself any longer and admittedly QUIT but unless it took a massive turn for the better (as in, the author being replaced by a proper writer and an entire new storyline) I feel justified that I heard enough to review it. I only gave this 1 star because 0 wasnt an option!

Not my cup of tea

I have no idea why I downloaded this book, no idea of who Nancy Bacon is even. The book is more usually about people I have never heard of and I found it a depressing little book, although, I confess, I have skipped the majority.