Sloan De Forest

As a relative of talking-pictures pioneer Lee de Forest, Sloan de Forest has film history in her blood. She has authored three books in the Turner Classic Movies library: The Essential Directors: The Art and Impact of Cinema’s Most Influential Filmmakers; Dynamic Dames: Fifty Leading Ladies Who Made History; and Must-See Sci-Fi: Fifty Movies That Are Out of This World.

Her contributions as a writer/researcher include Warner Bros.: 100 Years of Storytelling by Mark Vieira; More Than Love: An Intimate Portrait of My Mother, Natalie Wood by Natasha Gregson Wagner; Natalie Wood: Reflections on a Legendary Life by Manoah Bowman; and Grace Kelly: Hollywood Dream Girl by Jay Jorgensen. 

Sloan has made guest appearances on Turner Classic Movies, as well as appearances on the CNN series The Movies, the documentary Julia Roberts: A Hollywood Fairytale, and the TCM mini-documentary Out of This World. She was the primary consultant on the HBO/Amblin documentary Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind. 

She has guested on too many podcasts to name, and recently gave a presentation on historic women of Los Angeles for the 2025 Women’s History Symposium at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, with Sarah Clothier of the American Film Institute.  

Like Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Dorothy Malone, Debbie Reynolds, and Jayne Mansfield, Sloan made the leap from Texas to Hollywood and has never looked back.