Drama Queens: Wild Women of the Silver Screen »

From the 1920s through the '80s, women in Hollywood were largely limited to appearing before the camera. Directors, writers, producers, studio heads, and other influential behind-the-scenes players were usually men. But that's not to say that strong, free-spirited women of the sort that author Autumn Stephens celebrates in her Wild Women series didn't hold great sway in Hollywood's Golden Age. Independent-minded women like Mae West, Katherine Hepburn, and Bette Davis (and the scandals that sometimes brewed around them) are celebrated in dishy, irreverent fashion in Stephens's new work, Drama Queens: Wild Women of the Silver Screen.