What the secretary knew about Samuel Goldwyn.

Some secretaries take dictation. Some spend their days filing. Others type and type until carpal tunnel sets in. Few get to witness history in the making. But as evidenced by Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters From Inside the Studios of the 1920s (2006, University of California Press, 231 pages, U.S., $19.95), a collection of letters written by a woman who served as private secretary to film luminary Samuel Goldwyn, Valeria Belletti got to do just that. Written to a close girlfriend, the letters--often in unimpeachable and hilarious detail--describe everything from Goldwyn's penchant for bootlegged liquor to Charlie Chaplin's special affinity for females to the film industry's somewhat belated, begrudged shift to talkies.

Born and raised in New Jersey by an Italian immigrant mother, Belletti spent her youthful days wishing for something extraordinary out of life. When she turned 16, she abruptly left school and moved to New York to work for Lawrence Langer, who would later go on to found the Theater Guild and become a mover and shaker in the Broadway world. During her 10 years working for him, Belletti, who is described in Langer's biography The Magic Lantern as "unusually bright," eventually rose to head Langer's annuity department. But unable to shatter the glass ceiling in those days, Belletti was "little more than a glorified stenographer." She knew she wanted more. She gave notice. Her mother had died a year earlier and she had nothing to tie her to New Jersey any longer. Though Langer later said he hated to see her go, he penned a glowing letter of recommendation and some letters of introduction to friends in California. He knew better than to try to stop a woman on a mission.

At the age of 26, Belletti and her dear friend Irma Prina packed their bags and headed west. Prina had family in Berkeley, and the duo stayed with them while they toured the Bay Area, Santa Barbara, San Diego and Los Angeles. But when Prina was finished vacationing, she headed back to the cold climates of the east. Belletti, on the other hand, had fallen in love with L.A. and wanted to stay. She checked into a local YMCA, and armed only with her perseverance and Langer's letters, set off to find a job--quickly landing a position as Goldwyn's social secretary.

In an effort to keep in touch with Prina, Belletti sent dozens of letters to her over the next few years. The wonderfully gossipy correspondences keep her friend apprised not only of Belletti's own doings (her constantly revolving carousel of roommates and addresses, her cavalcade of unsuitable suitors, her newfound interests in golf, horseback-riding and bohemia), but also of the goings-on at the studios and the stars they produced. Her accounts of the famous folk she encountered on a daily basis ranged from the sidesplitting to the sad. Of Goldwyn: "I don't particularly like him, but I don't think he's any worse than the others." Of actress Phyllis Haver: "The hardboiled eggs on this lot is Phyllis Haver and she sure is hard--disgustingly so." Of actress Corinne Griffith, she "is very haughty and disdainful. She looks at no one but her dogs and is generally disliked by all."

In her letters, Belletti alternates between personas. One is a Hollywood sophisticate sharing her knowledge of the studio system with her backwater friend. The other is a naive girl plucked arbitrarily from the secretarial pool. She is credited by many with discovering Gary Cooper, who went on to star in such blockbusters as The Pride of the Yankees, For Whom the Bell Tolls and High Noon. "I raved so much about him to Mr. Goldwyn, Mrs. Goldwyn and [scenario writer] Frances Marion and our casting agent--and in fact to anyone who would listen to me--that Mr. Goldwyn finally wired to camp and asked our manager to sign him up under a five-year contract." While she had an eye for acting talent, she also had a small town distaste for the bed-hopping that was prevalent in Hollywood even in those days. In describing actress Pola Negri's inability to keep company with just one man, she wrote that the "brazen" Negri had "the audacity to bring [new conquest] Rod La Rocque to the very same apartment--in fact in the very same bed--where she had just previously had Chaplin."

After working for Goldwyn for a number of years, she decided it was time to see the world. She flew off to Italy to be with her father for a bit, but tragically, he died just weeks before she arrived. When she returned to California after months abroad, she found a job with legendary filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille. While working on a novelization of the director's latest film, The Godless Girl, she wrote to Prina that the talkies were "creating quite a revolutionary effect in the industry and productions are being held up pending the formation of new policies taking this element into consideration."

As we all know today, "a revolutionary effect" was quite the understatement. Talkies changed the face and voice of the movie business. Actors needed to actually emote, rather than just wave their hands around and bat their eyelashes. As Adventures editor Cari Beauchamp writes in one of her numerous illuminating annotations between letters, "Without necessarily realizing it, Valeria had witnessed a major shift in the business of filmmaking."

Belletti's letters to Prina offer the world a bird's eye view of the studio system of the 1920s as it thrived, crumbled, rose from the ashes and thrived again. Her candid descriptions of the way she saw things are more satisfying than any historian's secondhand musings on the era. The secretary told it like she saw it. And what she saw was better than any movie. Silent or otherwise. LH