In the 1940s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was at the epicenter of the film world. Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, and Elizabeth Taylor were only a few of the many stars under contract at the studio. The author, Claude Jarman Jr., takes us from his discovery in a small school in Nashville, Tennessee, through his life among the movie elite. After receiving a special Academy Award for his performance in
The Yearling
in 1946, he remained at MGM until 1950 when the arrival of television savaged the studio and the star system. He appeared in ten additional films, including playing the son of John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in John Ford’s epic western
Rio Grande
and
Intruder in the Dust
, a story of racial strife in Mississippi based on a novel by William Faulkner. After retiring from films in 1956 at the age of twenty-one, he returned to the movie world in 1965 as the director of the San Francisco International Film Festival which reunited him with famous legends in the film industry.