F. Scott Fitzgerald died just one day before West in 1940 and before he could finish The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western. It is the story of a young Hollywood film executive and an exposé of the Hollywood studio system in the 1930s. In 1995, Scribner released an edition that restores the 1940 version (published as The Last Tycoon) and includes Fitzgerald's manuscripts, drafts, and working notes.

Horace McCoy's 1935 novel, They Shoot Horses, Don't They, presents a picture of 1930s Hollywood every bit as cynical as the view West offers. A couple who take part in the depressionera craze for weeks-long dance marathons, in hopes of earning some money, become pawns in a Hollywood publicity stunt.

John Steinbeck's 1940 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath (1939), gives a very different picture of 1930s California than the one seen in West's The...