Above: a photo cover for Leo Guild’s 1969 sleaze novel The Studio. The rear tells you most of what you need to know, except that the book is written from the first person viewpoint of none other than—Leo Guild. Ego much, Leo? He takes on the guise of a journalist who becomes the publicity agent for Toni Tremont, described as a Hollywood bitch. He’s the latest in a long line of agents to represent her. The fiction is really just a guise for Guild to promote his personal brand while claiming to tear back the curtain from the “real” Hollywood, something at least a hundred authors did before him.
Guild has a reputation for being one of the worst authors ever—he once wrote a novel in which a werewolf and a vampire become television stars, and he churned out such books as Black Bait, Black Champion, The Black Shrink, The Girl Who Loved Black, Black Streets of Oakland, and Street of Ho’s [sic]. In other words, he was a consummate opportunist and trendjumper. He found his most lucrative subject matter in lurid biographies, but also wrote a joke book, a book about gambling systems, and a tie-in to the television show What Are the Odds? The man was one of a kind. Thankfully.
