By Valerie Milano & Judy Shields
Panama City Beach, FL (The Hollywood Times) 8/24/26 – What happens when a woman who has already reinvented herself more than once decides there is still another adventure waiting?
For author, actress, entertainment reporter and longtime Hollywood Times contributor Patty McCall, the answer is found in her newest book, Nana Hollywood Retires to Paradise.
During a lively and often emotional Zoom conversation with The Hollywood Times Senior Editor Valerie Milano and Managing Editor Judy Shields, McCall talked about the true-life journey behind the book, from Oklahoma to Hollywood and eventually to the white sands and aqua-blue waters of Panama City Beach, Florida.
Although Nana Hollywood Retires to Paradise is McCall’s fourth book overall, it may be the one that most completely brings together the different chapters of her life: marriage and divorce, Hollywood dreams, family, career, romance, friendship, grief, aging and the decision to keep moving forward.
McCall explained that her journey as a writer began not with plans to become an author, but with a journal she used to survive one of the most uncertain periods of her life.
“The first one was just a journal, and it was actually used for my healing,” McCall recalled. After the end of a 19-year marriage, she found herself unsure of what came next. Eventually she landed in Hollywood, working on movie sets with that journal nearby, “pouring my heart out with teardrops.”
Click below for our exclusive interview:
The private writing eventually became something bigger.
McCall began realizing that her experiences could provide encouragement to other people who had also reached moments when they had no idea what to do next.
“It’s given them inspiration, I think, and knowing that you can move on,” she said.
The title Nana Hollywood comes directly from McCall’s family.
She has three grown children and six grandchildren. When her oldest grandson was five years old, McCall was living and working in Hollywood.
“He would talk to me on the phone and say, ‘Where are you, Nana? I want to see you.’ I said, ‘In Hollywood.’ And he said, ‘Nana Hollywood.’”
The name never disappeared.
Her grandson is now 17 and still calls her Nana Hollywood.
The nickname became particularly appropriate because McCall really did immerse herself in Hollywood life.
She worked on movie sets in production and acting, earned her SAG card and took roles in films, experiences she described as something completely unexpected for a woman whose life had already taken several major turns.
Those experiences became an essential part of the new book.
“Everything in there, in my book, is true,” McCall said.
Rather than focusing on Hollywood scandal, however, she wanted to tell positive stories about the people who crossed her path, especially those who had struggled before succeeding.
McCall recalled meeting people who arrived in Hollywood nearly penniless and ultimately made their dreams happen.
For her, those stories carry an important message: if someone has a dream, sometimes taking the chance really can open a very big door.
Eventually, McCall’s journey brought her to Panama City Beach, Florida.
That part of our conversation was especially personal for me. Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, my mother, father, my three older sisters and I vacationed in Panama City Beach every summer. It remains a beach very close to my heart.
For McCall, the move came after COVID.
She had met someone new in Oklahoma, an electrician who told her that his work allowed him the flexibility to relocate. McCall knew exactly where she wanted to go.
Florida.
Her granddaughters were young and involved in dance, and McCall wanted to be present for their competitions and their lives.
“That’s what life’s about now for me,” she remembered thinking.
So, McCall and her partner sold nearly everything, keeping only what would fit into two vehicles, and headed for Florida.
She describes Panama City Beach as one of the best moves she has ever made, praising its “white, white sand and the aqua blue water.”
Paradise, it turns out, wasn’t simply a catchy word for the book title.
It became her life.
Nana Hollywood Retires to Paradise isn’t merely a collection of entertaining celebrity memories or beach adventures.
When I asked McCall whether the book also explores reinvention, friendship, romance, aging and finding adventure later in life, her response came immediately:
“All of that, girl! All of that!”
But one subject gives the book particular emotional depth: the loss of her mother.
McCall’s mother died last year, an experience she described as perhaps the hardest thing she has ever endured, even harder than her divorce.
She devotes an entire chapter of the book to that loss.
Her mother was also the reason McCall originally left Hollywood and returned to Oklahoma, where she could help care for her. Eventually, after her mother entered a retirement home, McCall was able to begin the next stage of her own life in Florida.
As McCall has gotten older, she has also watched friends experience the deaths of spouses and other loved ones.
That reality became part of the book’s message about aging.
“We can’t stop it,” she said of life’s later chapters and the losses that inevitably accompany them.
Her answer is to appreciate what remains.
“I try to live each day to the fullest,” McCall said, adding that she tries to remain thankful for “the genuine people” placed in her life.
That may be one of the most important ideas running through Nana Hollywood Retires to Paradise: reinvention doesn’t require forgetting the life that came before.
You carry it with you.
McCall gave us a wonderful visual example when she picked up her iPad and took us on a tour of her Hollywood Room.
The room grew out of years of photographs, keepsakes and entertainment memorabilia that had previously been packed away in boxes and storage.
When McCall finally began putting everything on the walls, she realized the collection told a story of its own.
Among her treasures are memories involving Mickey Gilley, Sammy Hagar, Eric Roberts, Lou Ferrigno, John Schneider, Quentin Aaron and many others.
McCall became particularly animated when she reached her photographs with Sammy Hagar.
“I was shaking when I met him,” she remembered, before adding that Hagar turned out to be “the nicest guy, like I’d known him forever.”
Here is Patty and Sammy Hagar’s interview:
There are also reminders of McCall’s own time on screen, including her appearance in Stepbrothers.
She recalled her daughter spotting her during the film’s famous Catalina Wine Mixer sequence and standing up in the movie theater to announce, “That’s my mom.”
The Hollywood Room also contains something more meaningful than celebrity memorabilia: photographs of McCall’s late mother and her family.
Once again, Hollywood and home exist side by side.
McCall’s years interviewing people for The Hollywood Times have also influenced the way she writes.
Rather than inventing worlds completely removed from her own experience, McCall gravitates toward true stories and the fascinating people she meets.
“I say everybody has a story in them,” she explained, “that could relate to somebody else.”
She has even taught a class encouraging people to tell their own stories.
Her writing philosophy can probably be summed up in five words:
Real people. Real things that happen.
That philosophy is what gives Nana Hollywood Retires to Paradise its personality.
Readers aren’t meeting an invented heroine.
They’re meeting Patty.
There is, however, one word in the title McCall may already regret.
Retires.
“I hated to really put that out there, ‘Retires,’ because I do want to do some more interviews,” she laughed.
What she doesn’t want is another traditional 9-to-5 job.
“I just want to be able to do what I want to do.”
Patty and Jim were featured on the cover of “Latitude PCB Neighbors” magazine and an article inside the magazine as well.
That includes continuing entertainment reporting when opportunities arise near her new home.
McCall recently had the opportunity to be part of the opening activities surrounding Dolly Parton’s pirate-themed attraction in Panama City Beach, exactly the kind of assignment she still loves.
She credits The Hollywood Times with giving her opportunities to continue meeting and interviewing interesting people even after leaving Hollywood.
And she certainly hasn’t stopped dreaming about what could come next.
To finish our conversation, I asked McCall a question she wasn’t expecting.
If Nana Hollywood could invite three people, living or gone, to cocktails on the beach, who would be sitting at the table?
The first was Dolly Parton, whom McCall admires not only for her extraordinary career but for the way she treats people and gives back to communities.
Then Judy Shields reminded Patty of someone whose absence from the list was almost unthinkable.
Elvis Presley.
“Oh, my Judy!” McCall exclaimed.
McCall actually saw Elvis perform in Oklahoma the year before his death. She later met Priscilla Presley and has visited Graceland six times.
So yes, Elvis would absolutely be there.
But McCall’s third choice changed the mood entirely.
Her mother.
“I have to say, just bringing my mom back for one last time,” McCall said.
She imagined her mother in her 40s again; vibrant, young and sharing another conversation with the daughter who still misses her.
That answer may tell readers more about Nana Hollywood Retires to Paradise than any synopsis could.
The Hollywood experiences are fun.
The celebrities are exciting.
The beaches may be paradise.
But ultimately, Patty McCall’s fourth book is about people, memories, love and what we do with the time we’re given.
And despite the title, something tells us Nana Hollywood is nowhere near finished.
She may have retired to paradise.
But she certainly hasn’t retired from life.
About Patty McCall
Patty McCall is an author, actor, producer and entertainment reporter with over 40 years of experience in the Entertainment industry. A former Teller Supervisor and Customer Service Banker at First National Bank in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Patty later co-owned a cable TV construction business and operated a clothing boutique. She left Oklahoma and lived in Hollywood, California for 8 years. Patty is the author of 4 books Unmasking the PAIN Within, U Can 2, CaliOkie and Nana Hollywood Retires to Paradise. She won an International Cover Contest for Heart of Hollywood Magazine, representing classic ladies over 50 and appeared in local commercials and music videos. Patty served as a judge for American kids and Miss Oklahoma pageants.
