Book Talk: Hollywood Rides a Bike

As a prelude to the Oscars, PUBLIC is pleased to host author Steven Rea who will share photos and discuss his new book Hollywood Rides a Bike. Hollywood Rides a Bike shows classic stars from Shirley Temple to Brigitte Bardot and Humphrey Bogart to Kevin Bacon all on the best bikes Hollywood has to offer. This book is inspired by Rea's popular movie star and bicycling photo blog, Rides A Bike.
Hollywood Rides a Bike includes candid backlot shots, taken by publicity lensers who happened across stars as they wheeled around the Burbank, Culver City, Universal City, and Hollywood lots; the production stills from movies where the actor, in character, rides a bike (Jane Fonda made her screen debut crashing a Rollfast into two of her co-stars; Julie Andrews and her towheaded charges were singing “Do-Re-Mi” as they took to the alpine blacktop); the staged studio portraits—a lot of cheesecake (Deborah Kerr and Veronica Lake and Rita Hayworth, oh my!) and beefcake; and then just real-life photos of the likes of Kim Novak, Cicely Tyson, and Julie Christie riding along on palisades paths, Central Park byways, and English country lanes.

Retro bike fiends will note the streamlined angles, artful detail, and old-school craftsmanship on the cruisers and roadsters, folders and tandems, English lightweights and the occasional trike, triple- and high-wheeler pictured herein. They mark a time and place when things were built to last, when design and function dovetailed neatly—well, perfectly, in fact.

For bike aficionados there's a special index just about the cycles! And another index is made for movie fans--full of Hollywood facts.

Author Steven Rea has been a movie critic with the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1992.

SNACKS & DRINKS WILL BE SERVED.

AUTHOR-SIGNED BOOKS WILL BE FOR SALE AT THIS EVENT.