The Extra Girls

An acclaimed film critic’s entertaining history of a Hollywood dormitory that served as both home and sanctuary to generations of aspiring actresses. In 1916, in the world capital of an electrifying new invention called the movies, an unusual boarding house opened its doors. For the next six decades, the Hollywood Studio Club would shelter over 10,000 young women arriving in Los Angeles on a quest for film fame. The industry called these starlets, “extra girls.” Some became movie stars: Marilyn Monroe, Rita Moreno, Kim Novak, Sharon Tate, Evelyn Keyes, Farrah Fawcett, ZaSu Pitts, and Donna Reed. Others made their mark in radio and TV, while the writer Ayn Rand changed world politics. Yet, the majority left anonymous, a few suffering toxic affairs, suicide, and murder. In Extra Girls, Amy Nicholson, film critic of the Los Angeles Times and cohost of the podcast Unspooled, tells the interwoven stories of these strivers while mapping the evolution of the movie business from the silent era to the seventies. It’s the saga of Hollywood, set in one house. Combining rarely-seen archival research, original interviews, and a creative rendering of what went on inside the minds of these gutsy go-getters, Nicholson constructs a panoramic history that reads like a novel—a unique tour of this eccentric citadel of heartbreak and hope.