Contact: Director Bill McIntosh, 305-396-2806, ocasomedia@gmail.com; www.ocasomedia.net 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- Former Reagan and George HW Bush speechwriter Mary Claire Kendall has launched a media tour promoting book Oasis: Conversion Stories of Hollywood Legends. America's Catholics are largely unaware that many of Hollywood's "Golden Age" legends became Catholic converts or returned to Catholicism including: Gary Cooper, Lana Turner, Alfred Hitchcock, Patricia Neal, Bob Hope, Mary Astor, John Wayne, Jane Wyman and Spencer Tracy. Collectively they were endowed with fame, talent, great looks and wealth but also afflicted with alcoholism, scandals, addictions, ruined marriages, personal failures, and emptiness.

The Forbes magazine contributor relied on interviews with retired Hollywood figures, family members of stars and others who offered astonishing portraits and details about leading actors and actresses. Their opulent lives were splashed on entertainment magazine covers often hiding complex inner struggles and difficult marital problems that uneasily co-existed with deep artistic achievement and professional fulfillment. Oasis relates these moving and rarely heard dramas of stars lives made whole by personal journeys of faith, repentance and conversions.

"Wonderful, revealing book....spellbinding" -- Fr. C John Mccloskey Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington DC 

Stories include:
Spencer Tracy -- His disabled son John Tracy spurred a lazy actor to become a legend-considered by his peers to be the greatest actor Hollywood had ever seen.

Jane Wyman -- Abandoned by parents by age 4, Wyman found the Catholic Faith early thanks to many including her nanny. She related that husband Ronald Reagan gave speeches in his sleep!

Alfred Hitchcock -- Legendary director of The Birds, Psycho, and Vertigo was reduced to tears when he returned to the church and attended Mass.

Lana Turner converted to Catholicism at age 9, going against her father's wishes. Then, after eight husbands, rediscovers the truest love of all--God, whom she called her "power partner."

Gary Cooper's daughter-Maria Cooper Janis, famously spat on Patricia Neal, with whom he was having an affair. Years later she offers Patricia help at a critical juncture in her life, ultimately leading her to the Catholic faith.

John "Duke" Wayne -- Mega star would write letters to God and pray on his knees at mass. Discovered the saint of ordinary work, Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer. Miraculously, Duke received the sacraments & entered the Catholic Church hours before his death.