Chasing the Stars: The Golden Age of Movies and TV...and Beyond

Georgia Gianakos Buchanan's  book, Chasing The Stars: The Golden Age of Movies and TV…and Beyond, is an illustrated memoir of her encounters—and, often, friendships--with many famous stars while serving as the TV-Radio and Movie Editor of The Indianapolis News in the early 1950s. Her book also contains photos and stories about the many political and sports stars she met during her years as a fundraiser for nonprofits.

Buchanan, whose latest book was released on her 99^th birthday, may be the last person alive who interviewed film and TV stars in that era. Chasing The Stars contains many photographs and anecdotes of her interviews in New York, Hollywood, and her home base of Indianapolis with film and television personalities, including Rosemary Clooney, Jack Benny, Cary Grant, Edward R. Murrow, Ed Sullivan, and Rock Hudson.

Her bylined articles and columns appeared in the News (some of which are reproduced in her book), fulfilling a dream she had as a young girl, being let in the stage door of Indianapolis theatres, with her equally star-struck sister, to see live performances and films, taking a detour from walking home from school to their family’s apartment in the Foreign District. That time in their lives, as high school students, is vividly described in the prologue to her book.

Following her journalism career at the News and WTTV-TV, and with Mutual Broadcasting in Washington, D.C., Buchanan became involved in Indianapolis and on a state and national level in mental health causes, including Special Olympics and the Mental Health Association, in part due to her special-needs son, Bryan. For 15 years, she chaired more than 30 fundraising events, raising millions of dollars for charitable causes, and served on boards of several nonprofits.

During her years as a major fundraiser, she became acquainted with prominent political and sports figures--Joe Theisman, Bruce Jenner, Senator Birch Bayh, Eunice Shriver, Lady Bird Johnson, and many others whose photos (often with the author) are in the book.

She is also a pastel artist whose subjects are locations in Greece, her parents’ homeland. Her story of her father’s emigrating to Indianapolis, all alone at age 17, is the subject of “I Remember When: The Traveler,” in the Summer 2025 issue of Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, a publication of the Indiana Historical Society.

Paperback, 120 pages with Black and White photos.  2025, Mesa Verde Press.  By Georgia Gianakos Buchanan.