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• “Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollywood Memoir” (Pantheon), by Victoria Riskin

Part biography, part Hollywood history, part love story, Victoria Riskin’s memoir about her parents is captivating and poignant.

Her mother, actress Fay Wray, became an ageless icon as the beauty held by the beast atop the Empire State Building in 1933’s “King Kong.” Her father, Robert Riskin, wrote his way to acclaim with scripts for “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” and other Depression-era films. Their lives roll out in Victoria Riskin’s pages like the plots of the feel-good movies they made.

Riskin (1897-1955) was born in New York to Jewish immigrants from Russia; his only connection to his father’s work as a tailor was a love for stylish suits. He quit school at 13, taught himself how to type and pursued an interest in show business. At 17, the handsome, quick-witted kid from Brooklyn who liked to tell stories began producing comedy shorts, later writing and producing plays for Broadway. He eventually ended up in Hollywood, his work with director Frank Capra one of the screen’s most productive.

Wray (1907-2004), born in Alberta, Canada, got to Hollywood first and by wholly different means. Her Mormon parents moved the family to Arizona and later to Salt Lake City, their children then numbering six and seldom well-fed.

Two years after Wray’s father left town for work and never came back, Wray’s mother allowed another daughter’s young boyfriend, a photographer, to take Fay with him to Los Angeles to find work in the movies for the pretty, dark-haired teenager. Luck was with her. Minor roles in comedy shorts led to a contract with Hal Roach Studios at 15 and later Universal Studios.

For nearly two decades Wray hardly stopped working and, along the way, she found love –î or so she thought. Her first husband, a successful screenwriter, was an alcoholic who eventually left her and their daughter all but broke.

Riskin had a different set of romantic problems — if squiring Loretta Young to nightclubs and turning down Carole Lombard’s marriage proposal could be called problems. Other romances also ended when he couldn’t bring himself to tie the knot — until he and Wray fell for each other and married in 1942. She happily gave up her career to raise three children.

Their love story wasn’t destined for a Hollywood ending. Riskin suffered a stroke in 1950, at 53, that left him partially paralyzed. He died after nearly five years as an invalid.

Wray is the heroine of her daughter’s memoir. To provide for her husband and young children, the actress went back to work and managed to maintain the bright, optimistic personality that had carried her from poverty once before, from love to loss to love again.