The Tarnished Truth Beneath Hollywood's Golden Age Glitter

They led lives of bed-hopping and partying. They had same-sex affairs and courted scandal even as they swanned down the red carpet at Oscar ceremonies. At the same time, the American public lapped up every detail of their lives and worshipped them through the tabloid press.

That's not a modern description of Paris Hilton and her C-list celebrity friends. It is the picture that emerges from a number of new books on some of the greatest names of Hollywood's golden age.

From Katharine Hepburn to Jimmy Stewart, the new books reveal lives that chime more than just a little with the fame-hungry starlets of today. Except, unlike Hilton, these stars were also producing some of the greatest movies to grace the silver screen.

The literary world is now swamped with new books on Hollywood's past greats. A biography of Katharine Hepburn, claiming that she and her lover Spencer Tracy were both bisexual, has already created headlines. A life of Audrey Hepburn is also in the shops and depicts the star of Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany's as sleeping with several co-stars, including Albert Finney, while she was married. It also delves into her life in Europe under Nazi occupation and portrays an often lonely figure who allowed herself a piece of chocolate and a scotch each day.

This week a book on Jimmy Stewart will be published that closely examines the star's private life, including how he lost his virginity to Ginger Rogers when he was in his twenties. Ellen Burstyn, 74, who won a best actress Oscar for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, is bringing out her tell-all autobiography, and in November a book on the life of sex bomb Mae West is published, which is whispered to contain more salacious material than all the rest of the books put together.

Certainly the phenomenon seems to show that sex is expected to sell, even if it took place at a time when - publicly at least - sleeping around was a taboo subject. Or assumed to never happen.

The publications pull few punches in unveiling the details of their subjects' private lives. Both Audrey Hepburn's husbands are depicted as philanderers, as is the star herself. Stewart, who so often seemed the very soul of smalltown America in his film roles, was forced to visit a brothel by his studio, MGM.

Burstyn, meanwhile, confesses that she lost her virginity with a married man, had an abortion and her own father tried to have sex with her. However, few popular culture experts are surprised that old-time Hollywood stars behaved like their modern counterparts. 'We often believe in a "golden age", but it is often just not true,' said Professor Robert Thompson, a pop culture expert at Syracuse University.

Amid all the salacious details, the new books offer a chronicle of top-class movie-making that carved out high art. It is movies such as Stewart's Mr Smith Goes To Washington or Audrey Hepburn's Sabrina that are the real reasons why these stars are still big names. In Kate, academic William Mann's biography of Katharine Hepburn, the star's later film career is described as what really cemented her as a legend, including such films as The Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond. 'Film personalities came and went but Katharine Hepburn had intentions of sticking around. The only way to do that was to become an institution,' Mann said.

She certainly achieved that. As did the subjects of the other books. In fact, one of the hottest adverts on American TV features Audrey Hepburn, despite the fact that she died in 1993. The ad, for Gap, doctors a scene from her movie Funny Face. The actress dances across the screen in tight black pants.