My Father Was a Bit Player

During the Depression, the motion picture industry spun timeless fantasies of romance and adventure through the silvery images of its glamorous stars. The movie theatre was a house of dreams; a place of refuge for a population struggling with economic hardship and emotional despair. We continue to study and adulate the icons of Hollywood's golden era, but what do we know of the lives of the hard-working, middle class people that made Los Angeles a unique and thriving community? My Father Was A Bit Player gives us an engaging glimpse into that other, and far more real, Hollywood of the past. In 1933, Joe Cunningham, a struggling Philadelphia journalist, got his shot at realizing the Hollywood dream. Hired as a screenwriter at Fox Studios, he was confident that he had a lucrative and secure future in the movie business when he moved his large family to California. However, when his contract was not renewed, his ambitions were redesigned by necessity. The family's fortunes consequently began to rise and fall as Cunningham strove to carve a professional niche as a character actor, while continuing his freelance writing career. In this way he kept his lively family afloat and on the fringes of the exciting entertainment industry. In My Father Was A Bit Player, Joe Cunningham's daughter, Joan, remembers her extraordinary childhood with a clear eye and a fond heart. She writes with beautiful clarity and graceful humor to relate her recruitment to attend Shirley Temple's fifth birthday party; how she came to witness the legendary back lot burning of Atlanta, and what it was like to cheer her own dad's larger-than-life appearances on the big screen. My Father Was A Bit Player vividly evokes a childhood experience that is uniquely American. Joan Cunningham transports us to a time and place that continues to captivate us, as she tells the compelling life story of a man who was far more intriguing than any character he depicted on film.