Mary Pickford: America's Sweetheart

Mary Pickford: America's Sweetheart - Scott Eyman

ISBN 1556111479

This readable biography is an informative and appreciative examination of the silent film actress who was the first multi-media star. Although she is nearly forgotten today, Pickford was first mega-celebrity. Eyman gives us a good sense of how her fame grew and what she did to maintain it. This can also be read as the story of a woman who was not going to depend on others to keep her family together or her career going. The toughest Hollywood moguls grudgingly admired Pickfor for her  business sense and negotiating style. This well worth reading for people into the history of film, the sociology of celebrity and women's issues.

Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly

Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly - Jennifer Fleischner (faculty profile)

ISBN 0767902599

In the eyes of some historians and ACW buffs, Mary Lincoln has the image of a shopaholic so unstable that her son Robert had to commit her to an insane asylum.  Her modiste and confidant Elizabeth Keckly is known dimly as the author of the controversial memoir Behind the Scenes, which gives us a fascinating look into the Lincoln White House.

Jennifer Fleischner (Department of English, Adelphi University) writes a sympathetic if unsparing portrait of Mary Lincoln.  Mary did have an excitable and immoderate temperament. Plus, she was loosely educated, like many Southern women of the day, to play the piano and ride in carriages. Her compulsive shopping – she bought hundreds of pairs of gloves in one shopping trip - had roots in her sorrow and feelings of emptiness.

Her southern family cut off ties with her after the ACW began. She had two of her beloved children die. Lincoln did not love her and when he wasn’t aloof and distant, he acted with bemused and weary tolerance at her vagaries. Her husband was shot in the head with her right next to him. She later lost a third son when he was just a teenager. Her own health was fragile: she suffered migraines and anxiety and she may have been suffering from untreated diabetes (she died of a stroke). This lonely and anguished woman had plenty of trials that would dog anybody, even those better educated and more philosophically equipped than she was.

Mrs. Keckly, on the other hand, Fleischner portrays as a strong figure. Born in slavery, she was raped for four years by a white man. She was impregnated by him and bore his son.  She lost this son, who passed as white to join the US Army, when he was killed in his first battle of the ACW. Determined and talented with her needle, she worked as a seamstress (custom dressmaking was required before mass production of clothes). She was able to buy her and her son’s freedom.  She built her professional reputation to the point where extremely influential women, such as Varina Davis wife of Jefferson, recommended her to others. That was how Mary Lincoln came to hire her and dominate virtually all her time.

Theirs was a complicated relationship that Fleischner describes clearly and plausibly. Mary Lincoln grew up assuming people would do things for her and make things right when the going got rough. Keckly took on that role, out of true liking, pity, and gratitude because Mary’s husband was the Moses of her people. When Lincoln was assassinated, Mary sent for Mrs. Keckly, though that terrible night Mrs. Keckly was unable to get past the jumpy guards.

Mrs. Keckly was a remarkable woman. She learned to read, write and figure. She owned her own dressmaking business and employed seamstresses.  She founded the Contraband Relief Association in August 1862. Mrs. Keckly said that the CRA was formed “for the purpose, not only of relieving he wants of those destitute people, but also to sympathize with, and advise them.”  After the ACW, she maintained her relationship with Mary Lincoln and tried to help her with her money problems.  Mrs. Keckly wrote Behind the Scenes to defend Mary Lincoln, but due to criticism rooted in racism, sexism, and classism, the book was controversial and disappeared soon after it was published. The book is well worth reading before this one.

Fleischner, mercifully, writes for the general lay reader and avoids the grating jargon of Theory. Her writing style is pleasant to read. I highly recommend this book.

Warren G. Harding

The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times - Francis Russell
ISBN 0070543380

Almost 700 pages on one of the worst Presidents in history. Pull my other leg, says the wary reader, ever mindful of time and effort.  

In fact, readers who enjoy popular biographies would enjoy this clearly written book. It is strongest on Harding and of his closest personal relationships and clear about how a genial non-entity with the gift of gab survived and prospered in the snake pit of state and national politics.

Russell has a sure touch with the most suitable anecdote and his digressions are many and varied. For instance, he runs off on fascinating tangents such as the ceremonies related to burial of the Unknown Soldier, Harding's suspected Negro ancestry, his inauguration, and his funeral.

He handles at length deeper subjects such as the labyrinth of Ohio politics, the Dark Convention of 1920, and the Teapot Dome Scandal, in which he cuts Fall and Sinclair more slack than one would expect. Even Harry Daugherty comes off better than his unsavory reputation would lead us to believe.

I’m not an expert but even I know that Washington Arms Conference was more important than Russell evaluates it, so I daresay genuine historians have other and more serious problems with this pop bio. But readers who like popular histories would enjoy it, while more jaded readers will wearily observe that empty suits and unqualified buffoons as Presidents are nothing new.

W.C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes

W.C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes - Robert Lewis Taylor

ISBN 0312034504 

This 1949 biography of great comedian remains a wonderful and informative read. Taylor takes Whitey Dukinfield from an abused runaway to national fame as W.C. Fields, showman of the stage, screen, and radio. Fields’ early adversity made him into a wary, suspicious skinflint as if being a comic genius isn’t trial enough to any human being (see Bert Lahr, Lenny Bruce, John Belushi, Jackie Gleason, etc.). This was written before the “tell all” biographies of the 1970s but Taylor does not flinch from stories that make his subject look disagreeable. Any reader who is interested in comedy, vaudeville, and classic Hollywood should do herself a favor and read this very funny -- and sad – book.

Mount TBR #8

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2016. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film – Ruth Barton

Ruth Barton recounts the life, inventions, passions, and troubles of Hedy Lamarr. Barton is a lecturer in film studies at Trinity College in Dublin and has already published several books on cinema history. But here she focuses on Lamarr, considered by many fans and critics alike the most beautiful woman in classic Hollywood.

In our age of social media snark, I was thankful that Barton brings to this project insight and patience towards her subject. Lamarr was a contradictory and distressed person. She wondered if people were drawn by her looks or her self. This insecurity made her act in contradictory, difficult, and strange ways. What can we make of stories like this?

A few years later, when Zsa Zsa Gabor and George Sanders were married, Hedy called on them. Their daughter Francesca, who was three, was on her way to bed. Hedy volunteered to say good-night to her, since it was the nanny’s night off. Then as an afterthought, she asked, “Does Francesca know the facts of life yet?” Perturbed, Gabor shook her head. “The next morning Francesca came downstairs with a balloon stuck inside the front of her dress and informed me that she was pregnant. Hedy Lamarr had told my three-year-old daughter the facts of life. I was livid.”

Who wouldn’t be irate? But we feel a bewildered compassion too – what kind of broken person would think it appropriate treat a child and anger parents in such a way?

Hedy’s personal life was an ongoing turmoil.  She married six times and had children and failed to have a satisfactory relationship with any of them. She and her adopted son were estranged when Hedy, in a fit of displeasure, just broke off relations.  Near the end of her life, Hedy was a shoplifter, notorious in department stores but Barton doesn’t ask any shrinks as to the origins of this behavior.

So, with such a hard to subject to like, the story that Barton tells is not a simple "star bio" because Hedy was not an actress though she may have become a fine comedienne if Hollywood, notorious waster of talent, had been smarter in judging what she could do persuasively. Because she sure couldn’t act, never was able to overcome a wooden, remote, icy quality that was more overpowering than likable. Unfortunately, her first appearance in film created preconceptions. Hedy stripped naked on camera for the very first time in the history of mainstream film (a European – of course – movie called Ecstasy in 1933). Like Paris Hilton found out after the sex tape, success came with both benefits and hazards.

Barton did not interview any art critics to give us readers a sense of how skillful an abstract painter Hedy was. Barton does describe a little bit of Hedy’s technological achievements. With composer George Antheil she patented an innovative modulation system for encoding information to be transmitted on radio frequencies. Its discovery had repercussions in technology, such as with the encryption systems used for mobile phones. Another upside is that Barton provides the insight that Hedy was an émigré – she had to leave Austria because of her Jewish background (which she never talked about). Forced out of her native country, Hedy never felt as if she were home in California, New York City, or Florida. It must be a grim feeling to never feel at home.

Barton's book persuades us that Lamarr's life  was a tangle of unique adventures, appetites, escapes and episodes more or less bleak. On the other hand, it is the same old story, told yet again, of a person who can’t tolerate great gifts. Like, the Donald was born to wealth and power; he couldn’t tolerate so much money, authority, and fame so he turned into an ogre. Hedy was born beautiful beyond belief, gifted with intelligence. And she acted like a person, mercifully rare, who feels most alive when fussin' and fightin', embroiled in constant arguments, suits, and feuds.

Mount TBR #2

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2016. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini – Ruth Brandon

“Harry” implies approachable, down to earth. But “Houdini” sounds other-worldly and - to use that overused and abused word - awesome.   So even his name vibrates and contradicts and attracts readers – like me - who are not necessarily interested in magic or escape artists, but rather the history of popular entertainment in general and vaudeville’s heyday of 1880 to 1930 in particular.

While the biographies of Houdini by Christopher and Gresham are well worth reading, Brandon too provides information about topics -- mother fixation, death obsession, unwilling skepticism, ruthless competitor, loyalty demanding - that make this biography a substantial, insightful read. Even the digressions give interest. For example, she delivers background information about medicine shows, which Houdini had to work early in his career.  Starting in the Elizabethan era in Europe, such shows were traveling horse and wagon teams which peddled patent medicines and other products between various entertainment acts. The quack medications gradually took a backseat to the entertainment acts.

She also makes fascinating points related to cultural history. She asserts that Houdini became popular  because the Indomitable Little Guy was a popular character in the early 20^th century. Think of Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp or Buster Keaton’s Stone Face. The little guy was always having to wrestle with and escape from bonds, from oppression. This resonated with immigrants and working people in North America, but people in police states like Germany and Russia really went nuts over Houdini escaping from handcuffs, cells, and black marias.

Brandon also turns to personality psychology to explain Houdini. The Freudian interpretations of Houdini’s dreams may or may not appeal to readers. More plausible are her interpretations of the marriage between Harry and Bess. For instance, for all his protestations of love and devotion, the narcissist Houdini was very controlling. It speaks volumes that by the time he died, she was drinking a lot. So few families of geniuses and artists are happy families, so much time and emotion are sacrificed to the creation of art and entertainment.

Brandon, a British biographer, novelist and historian, writes clear prose that’s a pleasure to read. Readers into the history of popular entertainment would probably like this biography.

Bio of the Stars

Tracy and Hepburn was written by their friend Garson Kanin, a writer, actor, and director. He captures how great they were together, how they inspired each other.

Notes on Cowardly Lion is a biography of Bert Lahr by his son John Lahr. Not a tell-all like Christina Crawford's book, but he does not pull any punches about his distant and brooding (how like a comedian) but loving father.

Hollywood columnist Joe Hyams' biography of Bogart Bogie is worth reading, since Hyams knew Bogie and Bacall personally.

Robert Lewis Taylor's bio W.C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes is a old-timey bio: lots of funny stories, no dirt or scandal or judgments, alcoholism of subject handled as the ordeal that it was for Fields. But worth reading for the funny stories, anyway.

Probably the best bio of a star I've ever read is Patricia Bosworth's Montgomery Clift: A Biography. She writes very objectively. Clift's relationship with his mother was...well, really something. Her biography of Marlon Brando is very good too, though very short.

Cecil B. DeMille: A Life in Art by Simon Louvish is well worth reading. A review is here.

Mailer's biography of Marilyn Monroe is worth a look to get the take of a great writer on a great celebrity. A review is here.