Robert Allen Jenkins

An intimate look into the lives of the rich and famous and many top movie stars from early Hollywood. Personal stories from my relationships with stars like Bette Davis, Mae West, Cher, Jack Oakie, Diane Linkletter (daughter of TV personality Art Linkletter) and others that you can’t get anywhere else. Humorous and nostalgic. A great read.  

I was just a poor country boy from South Georgia who had an opportunity to see a different way of life. I spent most of my teenage years living in Beverly Hills with my aunt, whose close friends included celebrities, movie stars and dignitaries. I was fortunate enough to get to know many of these people myself and spent a lot of one on one time with them. Bette Davis and I became very close and she confided many details about her career and her years in Hollywood.

Mae West hosted my sixteenth birthday party in her Santa Monica home.

Before Cher was a star, her mother was a close friend of my Aunt’s and she was one of the first people I met. She took me out and showed me Sunset Strip when I was a kid of fourteen and she was fifteen. Just a few years later, Sonny and Cher were at the top of the charts.

I dated Art Linkletter’s daughter Diane for nearly a year.

My aunt was very wealthy and lived in one of the most lavish homes in Beverly Hills. She was a celebrated hostess whose parties were attended by the likes of Lauren Bacall, Al Jolson, Mickey Rooney, longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Melvin Douglas, Broderick Crawford, and Sugar King of Havana Julio Lobo to name a few. The book contsins many personal photographs.