Rare behind-the-scenes photos show what it was really like to be on set during Hollywood's golden age

Hollywood's golden era is generally considered to have started in the 1920s and stretched until the 1960s. The latter half was the time of some of the industry's most legendary stars: Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marlon Brando, to name a few.

A child star during the time, Angela Cartwright still remembers the excitement she felt whenever the word "action" was announced on set.

She also remembers the photographers who would be snapping away to help filmmakers keep record of all of the costume, hair, and makeup choices made on set.

In the book she wrote with Tom McLaren, called "Styling the Stars: Lost Treasures from the Twentieth Century Fox Archives," Cartwright curated the best photos from 6,500 boxes of studio archives. These were negatives that had been kept away and mostly untouched until the late 1990s.

"Each photograph reveals the raw essence of Hollywood movie-making, a glimpse into the process never intended for the public eye," she wrote in the introduction.

Ahead, see behind-the-scenes photos of some of Hollywood's biggest stars from that era.