MYSTERY TRAIN TO HOLLYWOOD: A MEMOIR OF LIFE AMONG THE STARS

‘Mystery Train to Hollywood’ - A Memoir of Life Among the Stars
The story of a working class English lad who went to Hollywood to write about screen magic
By Ray Bennett

‘Mystery Train to Hollywood’ is a testament to the power of dreams, ambition and dogged determination. It tells of the son of a railwayman who grew up in a converted railway in a small market town in rural England in the bleak years following World War Two. Captivated by movies, he dreamed of being a reporter and going to Hollywood to discover how screen magic is created.
He tells of being taken at a young age by his father into a railway signal box where a signalman moved a range of levers to change where a train was going. You might board a train headed to London and find yourself traveling to Paris. He decided that life was like that. You could pull the levers yourself or someone might pull them for you unexpectedly. Life was a ride on a mystery train and he soon learned, sometimes painfully, that you could never tell what would happen next.
It would be a long and winding trek to get even close to his dream. From his tiny corner of the world, Hollywood was farther away than the backside of the moon. It was like the old joke about the stranger in Devon who asks a local for directions to Dartmoor and is told, ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.’
An avid writer, he kept a log of the films he saw as a teenager, had a short story published in his school’s annual magazine, won a sportswriting competition on a national newspaper and started as a journalist on a local newspaper when he was 16.
It was the start of a mystery ride worthy of the movies he grew up loving, the first act unfolding as a young reporter in England and Canada, covering everything from accidents and murders, to criminal trials, the environment and Vietnam War protests.
He went on to spend decades as a writer, editor and critic covering the entertainment business on major newspapers and magazines in Canada and the United States including 20 years with trade paper The Hollywood Reporter.
His personal life has been a mix of bliss and heartbreak with three marriages that ended in divorce, his third wife the troubled eldest child of world-famous country music entertainer Charlie Rich. Ray writes of those times as he criss-crossed the States interviewing the biggest names in film, television, music, media and the stage.
Famous names fill the pages of his memoir — screen legends, top stars from television, music and the stage plus film directors, writers abd composers — with reports from international film festivals in Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, Karlovy Vary, Toronto, Edinburgh and Rio de Janeiro. From concerts by Elvis Presley, Elton John, David Bowie, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Doors, the Who, Led Zeppelin, Cream and many more to reviewing around 300 London stage productions and concerts with Led Zeppelin, Cream and more, covering the Oscars, the MTV Awards, the BAFTAS, the Olivier Awards and the Brits, Ray has been there.
He says that he has lived his life on two planes. One was filled with glamour, brilliant talent, fancy hotels and restaurants, exotic locations, premieres and launches of high-end entertainment. The other dealt with real life, the joys and pains of love affairs, marriages and divorces; living in dozens of places, changing jobs many times, being fired and living broke … always the railwayman’s son, always dreaming…