Preparing for a trip to Hollywood? Get a sneak peak with audio books that you can download into your iPod or laptop. These one-minute vignettes can give you an insight on the city’s colorful history. Very educational and full of trivia you may not hear on a standard tour.

Test your knowledge of Hollywood history with this fun quiz. Too easy? Try this one. At least you know you’ll score points if you ever see this category on Jeopardy!

Want to get into the Hollywood industry? or just interested in knowing what it’s like behind the scenes — the drama, the intrigue, the million-dollar deals?

Then look at this
list of books about the real Hollywood and how to survive in it.

The list includes advice for those who want entertainment careers to social and historical commentaries.

What do Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, the Marx Brothers, Clara Bow, Tallulah Bankhead, and Humphrey Bogart have in common?

These Hollywood stars were all residents of the apartment called Garden of Allah, which stood on Sunset and Crescent Heights. This was right in front of Schwab’s Pharmacy, and due to the location and prestigious residents, was a Hollywood hub. Celebrities gathered here for parties, lunches, private and very exclusive get-togethers. Get an invitation to the Garden of Allah, and you know you’ve arrived.

Unfortunately the apartment was torn down, a tragedy that Joni Mitchell sung about in her song “Big Yellow Taxi”: paving paradise and putting up a parking lot.

Welcome to the home of the Academy Awards
(and the American Idol grand finale) — the Kodak Theater.

It’s a huge place (big enough for 3,400 people, and features the deepest stage in the US at 120 feet wide and 75 feet deep). It comes with a huge price tag, too. It cost nearly $95 million to build, and another $75 million for Kodak to earn the rights to give it its name.
Well the cost isn’t surprising, considering the people who go there expect the star treatment because they are… stars. The VIP seats are even equipped with gizmos that let order drinks.

Sam Goldwyn is one of the key players in Hollywood History. He established many of the major studios — including paramount, MGM, and United Artists. He produced several films, including classics like “Guys And Dolls” and “Wuthering HEights” and worked with directors like Billy Wilder, and Ford, and actors like Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Brando.

Goldwyn epitomized the success of the Hollywood dream, rising from poverty as an uneducated Jewish immigrant to one of the industry’s movers and shakers. He had a quirky sense of humor.
and is credited with phrases like, “Gentlemen, include me out” and “a verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”

In 1946, he also said: “Hollywood pays too much attention on star value and not enough on entertainment value.” So true!

Here’s a fun way to not just visit Hollywood, but participate in a virtual economy. The website
Hollywood Stock Exchange lets you “invest” in different shows, celebrities, producers, directors or movies. You build a portfolio, earning “Hollywood Dollars” and meeting other players on the discusion board.

It’s fun, and gives you a view of the Hollywood industry never seen before.

Most directors are happy to stay behind the scenes, but a couple of them will slip into the scene for a couple of seconds — just for kicks.

Alfred Hitchcock, in particular, made 37 self-referential cameos, including his little “talk” in “The Wrong Man”. Others had a little more fun with their roles. Richard Attenborough played an escaped lunatic in “A Bridge Too Far” Elia Kazan played a Mortuary Assistant in “Panic in the Streets”and Rob Reiner was a helicopter pilot in “Misery”. Horror master M. Night Shyamalan was Dr. Hill in “The Sixth Sense”, a Stadium drug dealer in Unbreakable (2000), and the security guard at the desk in “The Village”. You’ll also glimpse Oliver Stone in “Platoon” — he’s the officer using the phone in the US bunker right before it was blown up.

There’s no business like show business — especially when you earn billions.

George Lucas heads the list of Hollywood’s richest producers, listed in Forbes’ count of “World’s BIllionairs” with an estimated net worth of 3 billion dollars! His Skywalker Ranch is worth US$50 million alone.

Steven Spielberg isn’t doing too badly, with a net worth of $2.7 billion. He has his own jet worth$30 million, and splurges on his favorite hobby: collecting movie memorabilia. He spent more than half a million each for the OScar trophies of Bette Davis and Clark Gable. He’s not selfish, either, donating $1.5million to the Tsunami Relief Fund.

Opah Winfrey, who owns Harpo Productions, is the first African-American woman to make it to Forbes’ billionaires list. She’s worth about $ 1.3 billion.

Hollywood producers are willing to invest millions on films if it can bring in the audience — you got to spend money to make some money, right?

That’s probably how the accountant of SpiderMan 3 justified a budget of $258 million, giving it one of the highest price tags of any movie before or after its release. But it’s not really the most expensive movie if you factor in inflation.

Cleopatra cost about $ 44 million, a princely sum considering it was filmed in 1963 (that would be worth about $295 million today). It is the most epensive movie made in HOllywood.

However, the Soviet movie “War and Peace” based on the Tolstoy classic cost $ 100 million in 1968, and took over 7 years to finish. It’s won the Guiness record for the largest battle scene (about 120,000 soldiers). If you compute for inflation, that would be worth abot $ 500 million today.