Mount TBR #7

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst – Jeffery Toobin

In early 1974, I was a high school senior cracking wise all the time to hide my uneasiness about going to college in the fall. I was a simple kid that wanted two things: not to flunk out of State and a girlfriend.

So with these clear-cut but crucial goals alternating in my mind, I didn’t have mental space to devote to the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst on February 4, 1974. Keep in mind in those far off days of pre-cable TV and pre-24 hour news, our country felt huge. Since replaced by Florida as LaLa Land, wacky California and its dizzy denizens felt very far away. And, self-involved and self-regarding as I was, I was off to a university better known for partying than political activity.

Anyway, in this book, Toobin reminds us what a dark period the Seventies really were. Despite my two burning concerns, in the main people were nervous about gas prices and the energy crisis, disgusted over Watergate and politics, and stressed about disappearing factory jobs due to foreign competition and higher oil prices. The fact that a rich young woman could be snatched out of her apartment and then seemingly turned into a bank-robbing criminal was yet another example of things going to hell in a hurry.

This kidnapping gripped the imagination of the general public, stoked by the intense media scrutiny that lasted for eighteen months. Toobin underlines the curious fact that the first world-wide feed of live news with the minicam was the May 17, 1974 shootout between the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and the LAPD. 

The SLA members always told Patricia Hearst that they posed no danger to her but she was in fact in danger of being attacked and killed by the police in a raid. This was one of the very few points on which they were correct. The LAPD did not hold back even when they assumed that Patricia Hearst was in the house as they poured 5000 rounds into it (while receiving about 3000 in return) and set it afire as an unintended effect of using tear gas.

Lesson learned: Don’t do what the government doesn’t like, kids. A cell or the grave ain’t a good choice.

About 40 years ago there was a raft of books about the kidnapping, such as Belcher and West’s Patty/Tania. But Toobin thought since no book had been written in about 30 years, it was time for a re-evaluation. This is worth reading because Toobin provides more details that Belcher and West, as employees of Hearst’s father, were too discreet to include. Also, Patty/Tania, rushed into print as quickly as January 1975, did not cover the year in which Patricia Hearst and Harrises were on the run or their trials.

Toobin, a writer for The New Yorker, writes clear prose in a readable style. He captures but does not belabor how strategically and tactically inept the militia group was or how infantile their politics were. He has a reliable eye for the good story and spins crackerjack tales about characters such as Tom Mathews, the high school student kidnapped by the Harrises and Hearst on the day of the shooting at Mel's Sporting Goods. Young Tom got a see The New Centurions at drive-in with them and they let him go so he could be in time for a baseball game he had to play the next day.

Mount TBR #57

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Fun in a Chinese Laundry – Josef von Sternberg

This autobiography, named after an early Edison movie, is by the director of the 1930 German tragicomedy, The Blue Angel. Also hits but much less known today were six other movies, also starring Marlene Dietrich, such as Morocco and Dishonored and The Devil Is A Woman. Audiences liked these films too in spite of – or maybe because of – a beauty, irony, unease, exoticism and eroticism missing from most Classic Hollywood product,  hackneyed dreck brought about by the code of self-censorship, irony-free Tinsel Town executives, and the pressure to churn movies out like sausage.

This acerbic autobiography is well worth reading for fans into Hollywood during the Twenties and Thirties. He’s reticent about his early years, as many abused children from hard backgrounds and unstable families tend to be. In fact, the more Hollywood books one reads, the more one doubts the Good Old Days ever existed: the turn of the 19th and 20^th centuries were not easy for people who had to scramble for money.

He must have been an autodidact since he never had time to attend school, but developed his artistic sense with a popular touch by attending amusement parks, magic show, flea circuses, cock fights, etc. His descriptions of travel prove him to be a curious and intrepid traveler eager to see all the low entertainments in various Asian cultures that he experienced on the eve of WWII.

He also reports, tellingly, that when his copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations wore out, he carried around Epictetus’ Handbook for in the moment reading.  His stoic acceptance must have influenced his worldly realism to take the world as it comes and control only what was up to him. This responsible attitude was to serve him well on the chaos of a movie set. Also stoic is his sense that life is a test of self-respect and faith – in his case, the faith that good work is possible even in the crass dream factory of Hollywood. His sense of duty to do his utmost despite the odds calls mind Marcus Aurelius’ admirable albeit boy-scoutish injunctions.

Even if Von Sternberg’s work ethic dates him, his honesty is searing – he tells it the way he sees it. He worked with Emil Jannings on The Last Command (1928). Sternberg found Jannings hard to manage” “To direct a child was one thing, but when the youngster weighs close to three hundred pounds it is not easy to laugh at all his pranks.” Sternberg claims this movie made William Powell a star despite the unsympathetic role he played, but humble-brags that Powell later inserted in his contracts the stipulation that he would never be assigned to a Sternberg set again.

Von Sternberg also writes that on the set of The Devil Is A Woman Joel McCrea “managed to survive meeting me, fled in terror after his first scene with me, and I had to replace him with another 6-footer.” He does not mention that he almost killed McCrea by requiring 35 takes of him ordering a glass of water. McCrea refused to continue, even after Dietrich enlightened him that there was nothing personal about being subjected to Von’s perfectionism. “He speaks to me in German and calls me an old cow,” Dietrich said. “Ignore him.”

Clearly, like Alfred Hitchcock, von Sternberg treated thespians like cattle, also referring to Marlene Dietrich, "No puppet in the history of the world has been submitted to as much manipulation as a leading lady of mine...." Despite his cold manipulative ways and biting sarcasm, he became known as a woman’s director. And like Woody Allen, he doesn't seem to care if his movies will be remembered or not, pleased by the chance to work.

Anyway, lots of good stories - especially about the emotional breakdown of Charles Laughton during the filming of I, Claudius - in sometimes forbidding prose from the last director, a la Cecil B. DeMille’s dressing up, who wore high boots, riding britches, a shooting jacket, and, at times, a silk turban.

Mount TBR #55

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Light Your Torches and Pull Up Your Tights - Tay Garnett

Garnett (1894-1977) was a director during the golden age of Hollywood and he worked in television as movie theaters pretty much went the way of the videostore, bookstore, and department store have gone in our own day. He is especially famous for his adaptation in 1944 of The Postman Always Rings Twice with Lana Turner and John Garfield. He made his film debut in 1920 as screenwriter and gagman at Mack Sennett and Hal Roach (the producer Laurel and Hardy, among others). His seemingly versatile filmography includes, among other things, an astonishing denunciation of corruption (Okay America!, 1932), a legendary melodrama (One Way Passage, 1932), an exotic adventure film starring Marlène Dietrich (Seven Sinners, 1940), and a harsh war movie (Bataan, 1943). Having always wanted to keep a maximum of control over his films, Garnett would often clash with producers.

Unlike the reflective autobiography by King Vidor, this book is a boisterous string of anecdotes. Many of them hinge on wacky behavior brought on by large quantities of alcohol. To quote Lana Turner, during the filming of Postman, the author was a "roaring, mean, furniture-smashing drunk." A few stories are somber. Garnett was in in Berlin, for instance, when Hitler was named chancellor in early 1933. He asked a German aristocrat why so many people seemed glum. The reply was Americans would feel the same way if populist Huey Long had been elected President.

As a collection of lively stories, this had better be read in small chunks to avoid tedium and prudish sighing that intelligent creative adults with copious amounts money can’t do any better than yachts, travel, gambling, guzzling and gorging. He studiously avoids discussing at length any topic that would smack of auteurism.  He never tells the reader what year it is. But any fan of classic Hollywood will surely enjoy these memoirs of a man who obviously enjoyed his job and all the travel and discretionary time for partying that one could wish for.

Mount TBR #49

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Herman Melville: A Critical Biography– Newton Arvin

This biography of the author of the famous American novel about a whale won the National Book Award in 1950. In this pleasantly written book, Arvin nearly balances biographical information with critical views of the novels. Melville grew up in a family that was affluent until business reverses suddenly bankrupted his father in 1830. His father went into a slough of despair. After two weeks of bed-ridden agonies, he died. Arvin, without ostentation, wonders about the effect those two weeks would have had on a young boy.

Born under a wandering star, Melville took to sea in his early twenties, sailing first to England, then to Polynesia, where he found himself pursued by cannibals, becoming a mutineer, and getting it on with comely island maids. His first works were wild hits; an experimental novel failed; back to popular stuff twice;  then the novel about the whale. Post-Moby, the novels, experimental in daring and generally sad in tone, were only partly successful as art, misunderstood even by sympathetic contemporary readers, and commercial duds. Melville lived with his family in tight circumstances, working as a customs agent in New York City when federal employees were paid just about nothing.

I like these old-timey biographies, nicely written for general thinking readers unlike today’s jargon ridden biographies. Arvin places Melville in a context I needed to know, i.e., his place among writers such as Dana, Hawthorne, James, Cooper, and Henry Adams. Arvin is pretty daring when it comes to speculating on the unknowable. That is, he draws on the novels Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn and White-Jacket for biographical purposes as well as critical observations. I guess since what went on in Melville’s head in his twenties is impossible to know, one may as well proceed as if information in a novel can give insight in that unknowable terrain.

The survey of "The Whale" is the center-piece of the book. The part about Melville as poet was interesting.

Mount TBR #38

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Weakness is a Crime: The Life of Bernarr Macfadden – Robert Ernst

Bernarr Macfadden is a forgotten figure nowadays despite his great influence on our culture. In the Twenties and Thirties millions and millions of readers devoured his daily newspaper The New York Graphic  and his weekly magazines Liberty, True Detective, True Story, True Romances, Dream World, Ghost Stories, and the movie mag Photoplay. He got his start at the turn of the 20^th century with Physical Culture, a weekly that promoted health, fitness, wellness, and diet. It is arguable that as a mass market publisher, his only rival was Henry “Time-Life” Luce, who would still come in a weak second.

Macfadden was a child born weak and sickly in hard-scrabble Missouri. He was unloved and shuffled among grudging relatives as poor as church mice. By his older teenage years he was on his own. He has very little education and little taste – he changed Bernard to Benarr because it sounded like the roar of a lion. However, at the turn of the century, he had native genius enough to see that body building and physical fitness activities – along with pro sports – were the coming thing. By the 1920s he had built a fortune with his publishing ventures. He was arrested for obscenity a couple times for lewd pix in the mags but will still able to catch the ear of important people like Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Alf Landon, Eleanor Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie, and Thomas Dewey.

The rich media titan had political ambitions to be President of the United States. In the Thirties, he peddled the usual claptrap about shipping all the immigrants back to their homelands (funny how the message never ever changes: lower taxes, less government regs, anti-other, etc.). He was a narcissist and egomaniac, not caring what people said about him as long as he was talked about. He was bombastic yet inarticulate. He had an insatiable yen for sex, cheating on all his wives.

Yes, he reminds us all of Somebody Else We Know. But Macfadden didn’t hold grudges and because of his poor childhood had a feeling for people in hard times.

Macfadden is largely forgotten now because he was hard to admire and easy to ridicule. A showman of the 19^th century style, he indulged in shameless bragging that thinking people thought was obnoxious. His sensationalist publications flaunted sexuality and semi-nudity.  In scarcely literate language supported by nutsy thinking, he rejected modern medical science by advocating weird diets and strange exercise regimens. The AMA and its member doctors frequently criticized Macfadden for boosting health fads like the raw milk diet and dynamic tension calisthenics a la Charles Atlas. He was an often kooky figure in his own time though he did support practices we accept as given in our day: tolerant views about sexuality, daily moderate exercise, restrained eating with little meat and lots of fruits and vegetables, fasting, no smoking or drinking and good posture (click here to listen to his awful earnest prose).

This biographer did a great job by interviewing the surviving participants (or their progeny), digging out the primary documents, and explaining what it means to us today. His style is easy to read and he keeps his sense of humor despite Macfadden’s terrible provocations (i.e., how he treated his children is harrowing). I strongly recommend this book to readers who are interested in media history, the Twenties and Thirties, magazines in pop culture, tabloids and the social idea and value of fitness.

Mount TBR #31

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Pearl Buck in China: Journey to “The Good Earth” – Hilary Spurling

After finishing a 500-page biography, I wanted to stay in non-fiction but wanted a book less formidable in length. Most of this compact narrative of the life of Pearl Buck focusses on her life in China up to the writing of the novel she is remembered by. Published in 1931, “The Good Earth” was two years on best-seller lists and won Buck the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. She later became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

The best thing about this book is that it tells about Buck’s experience growing up in Zhenjiang (upriver from Shanghai) as the Qing dynasty’s obstructed social and economic reform in the shadow of Western trade, religion, and wars brought more and more calamities upon China. Growing up bilingual and knowing her host country better than most Chinese urban intellectuals, she witnessed social and economic trials first hand: the physical and mental abuse of women, the sale of girls into brothels and sex slavery, soldier-bandits, Yangtze floods, leper beggars, droughts, famine, typhoons, mobs, and peasant brutalization through ignorance and poverty.

The second best thing is Spurling’s re-assessment of Buck’s literary reputation. Critics in our country have disliked her use of pop fiction techniques so Buck is little read these days, except among the hardest of hard-core readers like us. Critics in China have long figured that only Chinese should write about Chinese topics. This is changing, but slowly. "She was a revolutionary," said Liu Haiping, translator of Buck’s book into Chinese and a professor of English at Nanjing University. "She was the first writer to choose rural China as her subject matter. None of the Chinese writers would have done so; intellectuals wrote about urban intellectuals. …Many of us feel we should include Buck as part of Chinese literature." 

Any reader with an interest in 20^th century China, Nationalist China, or rural China should read this book. So should any reader with an interest in women authors and the hard roads that women writers have to take for their art. Finally, as an example of how a political innocent can become the object of contempt and derision from both sides, Pearl Buck stands tall as truth-teller, brave and wise.

Mount TBR #30

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

W.C. Fields: A Biography - James Curtis

Anybody interested in the history of entertainment in the US should read this biography of the 1930s and early 1940s screen comedian. Curtis relates at interesting length that in his youth Fields played every performing venue from fair pavilions to circuses, burlesque to minstrelsy, travelling shows to early vaudeville theaters. Then he was a star in the Ziegfield Follies, stage, screen and radio. Fields made such an imprint on pop culture that his reputation experienced comebacks after his death on Christmas in 1946. For instance, when I was a college student in the 1970s, plenty of guys had his poster in their dorm room.

The reason for Fields appeal to youth and other crusty personalities was that he was a rebel. Therefore, directors and actors either loved or hated to work with him. An anti-authoritarian and agent of chaos down to his heels, he was always for the underdog. The crew always loved him because Fields was generous with money and assistance when they or their family members were in trouble.

This is a long book, mainly due to production stories that, to my mind, might have been snipped. I mean, wrangles over creative differences start to feel same-same to me, past a certain point. But that is what skimming and scanning are for.

The Fields estate granted Curtis access to Fields' papers, plus he went over unpublished manuscripts provided by employees or their families. Curtis also interviewed the ever dwindling number of Fields’ fellow actors and crew members. So readers who consider the research will be assured that Curtis has done his homework. The book also has many revealing photos, especially one of Fields as a15-year-old. Beaten at home by his drunken father, homeless at times, hassled by older toughs and chickenshit adults, he looks angry to bursting but determined to get his own back from the world.

Mount TBR #17

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Gable & Lombard – Warren Harris

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard were able to overcome the pressures on a marriage between Hollywood stars.

Their acting talents were different. While Gable did win an Oscar for his part in the comedy It Happened One Night, he was usually cast as the rugged, handsome hero as in GWTW or in guy movies like Mutiny on the Bounty and Run Silent Run Deep. He was justifiably modest about his acting abilities. Gable and Lombard worked together on No Man of Her Own (in 1932, before they were an item) and generally got on each other’s nerves. At the cast party, Gable gave Lombard a pair of oversized ballet shoes, to go with her prima donna ways. She gave him a present that she said stood for his acting abilities: a large ham with his picture on it.

With her sexy voice and athletic grace, she was a striking presence that lent a little credibility to melodramas like Man of the World and Vigil in the Night. With amazing timing, Lombard was a comic that could do both madcap (My Man Godfrey) and satire (Nothing Sacred).  As with many funny people, sources of her humor were sadness, anxiety, and more than her fair share of adversity: tight finances as a kid in a single-mom household, a disfiguring car accident, sudden deaths of friends, nervous breakdowns, and an unhappy marriage with William Powell.

Besides feeling no professional jealousy toward each other, as this biography shows, they loved each other deeply. Their personalities were such that one balanced the other. Gable was reticent, Lombard was boisterous and blunt. Gable was easy-going, Lombard was tightly-strung and competitive. He could live without going out to party and schmooze, and she loved him enough that staying home most nights was fine with her. When they did go out, he would be reserved, while she was animated and lively.

She loved jokes, and he liked laughing. Their laughter fed compatibility where it counts a great deal for a couple who are crazy about each other. On his first day on the set of GWTW, she had draped his dressing room mirror with stuffed doves to represent peace for her man, who was going through the last stages of a nasty divorce. On the dresser, he also found a hand-knitted willy-warmer and a note, “Don’t let it get cold. Bring it home hot for me.”

As a laid-back guy wary of this scheming world and its gabby extroverts myself, I can totally understand why a quiet guy was nuts about such a feisty, independent, indomitable woman. We hardcore readers will be happy to know that they were both great readers, unexpected in people who left schools without diplomas. She read widely, mainly with an eye to adapting novels into movies she could star in. She also read about topics such as numerology and eastern mysticism, not uncommon interests back then. Gable, like Spencer Tracy, liked to read mysteries.

Gable and Lombard both liked outdoor pursuits like hunting and fishing. They enjoyed their dogs and skeet shooting. They like roughing it in rustic lodgings that were typical of travel in the 1930s. Their ranch was decorated simply. They kept a hobby farm with chickens, cows and horses. Their dream was to have a child, but one of her many misfortunes was an infertility issue. We know it wasn’t on Gable since he made a baby with Loretta Young, who sent the child to an orphanage and then “adopted” her, never receiving a dime of support.

Lombard was a deeply patriotic FDR Democrat, like Rex Stout. Her comments about taxes are refreshing for us readers who've had an adulthood of hearing the no-new-taxes crowd bellyaching about their goddamn taxes:

I get 13 cents on the dollar and I know it. So I don’t figure that I’ve earned a dollar, I figure that I’ve earned 13 cents. And that is all right with me, too. We still don’t starve in the picture business after we’ve divided with the government. Taxes go to build schools, to maintain the public utilities we all use, so why not?

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, in January 1942, she wasted no time to volunteer her star power to raising money for the war effort. In Indiana, her home state, she raised over $2 million in War Bonds, when the expectation was only a quarter of that amount. Weary from putting in long hours at events, she didn’t feel up to a three-day train journey back to California.

So she decided to take a plane. Due to pilot error, it crashed into Table Rock Mountain in Nevada killing all 22 aboard, including 15 Army service men and Lombard’s own mother Bess. Joan Crawford took over Lombard’s part in They All Kissed the Bride and proved that, as talented an actress as she was, comedy was not her strong suit. But this was the least of the fallout.

Gable never got over Lombard’s death. Though 41 at the time, he joined in the Army Air Corps to honor his wife’s oft-stated wishes that he enlist. After training in OCS, Gable lead a motion picture unit attached to a B-17 bomb group in England to film aerial gunners in combat, flying five combat missions and narrowly missing being KIA once. He married twice after WWII to women who tried but failed to replace Lombard. Gable drank too much. After he died in 1960, he was buried next to Lombard in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in LA.

This book was among the bumper crop of books about classic Hollywood released during the nostalgia boom of the early 1970s.  The author later made a specialty of couples books, including Lucy & Desi and Natalie & R.J. To his credit, Harris took on riskier project, a bio of forgotten Broadway star Marilyn Miller. His research for this book seems satisfactory, since he interviewed many people who knew the couple, though many of the quotations are discreetly not attributed. His writing style, mercifully, is not snarky. In those carefree days of the Seventies he felt free enough to tell ribald stories such as the cock-sock story above. A reader can tell, too, when a writer is a fellow movie nut: he seems to have been reading about movies and stars in newspapers and fan magazines since an early age.

Mount TBR #12

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

American Singers: Twenty-seven Portraits in Song – Whitney Balliett

The author was the jazz critic for the New Yorker from 1954 to 2001. He wrote book reviews, profiles and unavoidable in the Seventies, lots of obituaries. The book was released in 1986 to wide acclaim since many of the singers were in the twilight of their careers and fans wanted to appreciate them and their work while the singers were still around. The highlights

Ray Charles

Helen Humes

Joe Turner

Alberta Hunter

Mel Torme

Julius La Rosa

George Shearing

Peggy Lee

Hugh Shannon & Blossom Dearie

Mabel Mercer

Julie Wilson

Cleo Brown

Nellie Lutcher

Carol Sloane

Betty Carter

David Frishberg

There is also a piece on Alec Wilder, a lyrical and moving songwriter and composer. In daring to assemble such a collection, one can always quibble. Like, where’s Julia Lee? And Oxford University Press, where the hell is the index? Anything published by a university press has got to have an index.

These should be read as they were published: as stand-alone pieces, separated in time by at least a week. Otherwise, Balliett’s poetical metaphor-loving style cloys a little.

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, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

From Satchmo to Miles – Leonard Feather

The author was the most respected jazz critic and chronicler after WWII. This book collects magazine profiles of jazz musicians that appeared in monthlies (between the pictorials) such as Playboy and Nugget in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Covered are the greats:

Louis Armstrong
Duke Ellington
Billie Holiday
Ella Fitzgerald
Count Basie
Lester Young
Charlie Parker
Norman Granz (impresario)
Oscar Peterson
Ray Charles
Don Ellis
Miles Davis

As they are articles written at different times, probably under various circumstances, the material is rather uneven. On one hand, before it was a cool stance to take, he rehabilitated Louis Armstrong’s output in the Forties and Fifties, making the fair point that it is rare when a performing artist profoundly influences more than two generations of succeeding artists. He also provides insights on the jazz genius of Holiday, Young, and Parker. But the stories about Ellington and Fitzgerald feel like puff pieces written for an in-flight magazine.

“These are portraits of human beings first, analyses of musicians or musical history only peripherally if at all,” says Feather in the foreword. He admits that he does not have the musical knowledge to pick up on the really daring things a jazz musicians would be experimenting with, but he balances this by telling interesting stories.

I’d give this a qualified recommendation for a reader who was interested in a general history of post-WWII jazz music.It's written for a general audience, not experts or musicians.

Mount TBR #63

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.

Brando for Breakfast - Anna Kashfi and E.P. Stein

Anna Kashfi (1934 - 2015), was an Indian-born American movie actress who was stormily married to Marlon Brando for 11 months before they separated in 1958. She and Brando then fought a 14-year custody battle for their son Christian. During one of the many hearings Brando said he married her only because she was with child, and that he intended from the get-go to divorce her within a year.

Kashfi understandably has grievances, being married to a genius actor who was an unconventional selfish human being. And so early on in this hatchet job fur flies:

Marlon’s sexual tutti-frutti comprise several shadier flavors…I had heard tales of his consorting with ducks, attending exhibitionist orgies, joining the Club Necrophilia (wherein bodies of deceased celebrities are rented out) and consulting a ‘proctolist’ (a ‘rectum-reader’ whose soothsaying derives from anal creases).

Duck f*cking and celeb corpses aside, sometimes it is constructive to get confirmation that people will believe anything, like telling the future from wrinkles of the rectum. But the compassion we readers feel for Bud and Anna is only the automatic sympathy any decent person would feel upon hearing the story of two adults that apparently couldn’t help themselves figuring, why not bring a child into our madhouse of a household? The compassion we feel does not come from the writing. The tone is too mean, the mood too livid, the incidents too sordid, the conceit too pathetic for us readers to feel much for the unhappy couple.

Which is not to say it is totally humorless. Somehow the subject’s really odd vocabulary choices got by the ghost writer. I can’t imagine any professional writer letting word choices like this escape deletion:  "He balanced a steatopygous form on squat, sturdy legs." Steato – whuh? And it is not just trouble with hard words. I’ve heard of lies both “barefaced” and “baldfaced” but I’ve never heard of a “barefoot lie.”

A more intentional upside is that she tells interesting production stories about Streetcar, One Eyed Jacks, and Mutiny on the Bounty. Chunks of the last third of this book, however, are marred by tales of lawyers, courtrooms, hearings, writs, injunctions, allegations of lying, about all of which is as interesting as hearing about somebody’s gall bladder procedure.

The upshot is, even if only half of what she says is true, working with a creative person who is chaotic in daily habits and childishly selfish in expectations from other people must be hard but living with such a creature of nature must be impossible. In a weird incident, he came home under the impression that she was had drowned in the pool. When he saw she was in fact still alive, he got a disappointed look on his face. ‘Tis a rare marriage that could survive that.

Mount TBR #60

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 Lost One: The Life of Peter Lorre – Stephan D. Youngkin

This book is a long, deeply-researched, credible, and even-handed biography of the classic Hollywood star. For me, the major revelations were two. Lorre was addicted to painkillers virtually his entire adult life whereas I had thought his addiction was the result of the stress of overwork and exhaustion in Hollywood. The addiction to tobacco and drugs took such a toll on his health that he died when he was only 59, leaving his survivors in hard financial straits.

Nor did I know of his kindness and humor both on the set and in personal life. Those of us with Hungarian, Jewish, or Hungarian-Jewish  grandparents will recognize Lorre’s mordant sense of humor and capacity for love and good feelings. He often helped young actors to hone their craft. He was very open-handed with money, much to his own financial detriment.

Youngkin builds a strong case for Lorre’s vast talents as an actor; thus, we can add Loree to the lengthy list of European actors Hollywood hired out of the yen for a little class in the stable, but had little idea of what kind of parts they should play.

The author’s plodding style at least keeps his subject front and center. The few judgments he puts up seem fair-minded. I admire that he interviewed just anybody living who knew or worked with Lorre – such as Frankie Avalon and Roger Corman. The book slows down when he describes projects that never got produced. This is balanced by some excellent production stories, especially of Beat the Devil, with quirky John Huston, star of Lillian Ross’ classic long journalism Picture.

Given length of this bio, I can recommend it to only hardcore buffs of classic movies. It appears to be one of the very few biographies of Lorre out there. I can’t imagine those books to be more heavily researched than this one.

Mount TBR #48

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.

Sex Goddesses of the Silent Screen – Norman Zierold

This biography chronicles the lives of five daring Circes of the silver and silent screen. It is a prime example of the many books about old Hollywood published in the early 1970s during a boom of nostalgia brought about by Watergate and the Vietnam War. That is, this biography is rich in readable anecdotes that mix misfortune and absurdity.

Theda Bara used her striking eyes, bold manner and skimpy outfits to seduce audiences, dazzle press agents, and enrage local censorship committees. Barbara LaMarr had that air of nursing a secret sorrow that some men find enthralling; pining in jail cell, one of her husbands called out her name as he bashed his head against a wall and later died of a blood clot. None of these actresses was emotionally or philosophically equipped to deal with Tinsel Town fame and fortune (who is, really?), but Pola Negri drew on her passionate Polish soul to protect her integrity by out-diva-ing everybody.  Mae Murray was a dancing blonde whose lip-sticked cupid lips earned her the nickname The Girl with the Bee-stung Lips.” Her story is probably the second saddest in the book, after Clara Bow’s descent into nervous breakdowns, madness and death in a sanitarium. 

Zierold spends excessive time describing the opulent life styles and habits of conspicuous consumption of the stars. He balances this by judiciously quoting knowledgeable critics and culture mavens from the 1920s. It’s interesting how little things change. Audiences at that time really were impressionable, mistaking vamping appearances  for reality, just as many people nowadays, for example, assume that Jennifer Lawrence is just as down to earth as any 25-year-old from Pendleton, New York. Also, critics back then were just as snarky and sharp as they are on the web today, but criticism never seems to make movies any better.

Mount TBR #38

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.

A Cast of Killers – Sidney D. Kirkpatrick

This book centers on the unsolved 1922 murder of silent film director William Desmond Taylor. The author was researching for a biography of movie director King Vidor. In Vidor’s study he found hidden a cache of Vidor’s research notes concerning the murder. Vidor made a conclusion as to whom was the perp, but buried his findings for fear of opening of a can of worms. The author received the permission of Vidor’s estate to go ahead with a book about the murder. He wrote the book in a novelistic way, tracing Vidor’s research, interviewing, notes, and drafts as if telling a story. He therefore “makes up” conversations. This effort, I think, is based on a sincere seeking of the truth. It provides many stories of interest to any Hollywood buff. I would recommend this book in its 20th Anniversary edition to readers who are both interested in Hollywood lore and looking for a workout in critical thinking.

Mount TBR #31

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.

For once, this blog is timely: the Met currently has on Diane Arbus: In the Beginning.

Diane Arbus: A Biography – Patricia Bosworth

Worth reading for readers interested in the influential photographer. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, Arbus gained notoriety for her pictures that seemed to reveal the psychological states of her subjects. Critics praised and certain kinds of fans were attracted by her photos of unusual people such as circus performers, transvestites, dwarves, and nudists. But she also took stark unsettling photos of the notable (Mae West, Mia Farrow, Twiggy, etc.) and more or less ordinary people like patriots and anti-war protestors, babies and children, families, and platinum blondes with beehive hairdos.  Her studies of identical twins influenced Stanly Kubrick to insert the ghostly twin sisters in The Shining.

Arbus’ wealthy parents thought that the less experience of street life a female child received, the better for her development. Arbus consequently grew up afraid of the unknown and unusual. She knew anxiety and isolation would choke anything like a life so she confronted her fear by being fearless. Protected by cameras slung around her neck, she would charm would-be subjects on the street, in parks, at the automat, or marginal venues such as nudist camps, circus sideshows, backstage at cross-dressing clubs, or group gropes.

She also got in people’s faces. Germaine Greer and Jacqueline Susann’s widower tell stories of Arbus deliberately trying to get a rise out of them to get memorable portraits. I imagine her work comes up in discussions of the ethics of creative endeavors. How far can a photographer play unfair, act unjustly, or disrespect subjects to get a great photo? When covering the cognitively disabled at a Halloween picnic, should, and if so how, the photographer obtain their or their guardians’ legally effective consent to take and release their images? Or is this needless because they are wearing masks and thus anonymous? Or needless because a person's appearance is already public? Do photographic subjects have any claim to fairness, respect, or kindness? Or is the argument – hey, you want a great shot, you wanna say something real, you gotta break some eggs?

Her photography  was driven by her desire to communicate about people that we usually overlook or think about in stereotyped ways. She challenges us to think about how it feels to be somebody else, feeling the unease about inevitable sickness and mortality, but facing a legion of differing circumstances. She said, “I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.”

The quintessential lonely artist, Arbus pursued her vision at all costs, to herself, or to her family, or to her subjects. She had a wide circle among photographers and helpful mentors, but she didn’t pursue success with parties, schmoozing, and networking. She was subject to bleak depressions which exhausted her friends and relatives. Sadness also undermined her dealing with the demands of success and fame (but shockingly little money) on her financial resources, time, energy, and thought. She did not deal with the prospect of ageing gracefully. Although she was in therapy, the sessions seemed not to help. After a couple of serious bouts with hepatitis, her depressions became all consuming, until she took her own life in 1971.

The biography is credible because Bosworth interviewed Arbus' mother and brother (the estate, run by her daughter Doon, did not cooperate), friends, colleagues, models and subjects. There are endnotes and citations that lend this popular biography some scholarly heft. She also uses Arbus’ own notes and interviews she did, for example, with Studs Terkel. This book is as intellectually satisfying as her exceptional biography of Montgomery Clift, which is also well worth reading. Bosworth is particularly informative about scenes I had no idea about such the fashion world of the 1950s and the NYC art scene of the 1960s. People interested in the milieu of Andy Warhol, Richard Avedon, and Robert Frank will get much from this book.

Mount TBR #26

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.

Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era – David Donald

This is a collection of essays by a Mississippi-born historian. Donald did undergraduate work in history, political science, and sociology. In graduate school, he focused on Lincoln, under the mentorship of famed scholar James G. Randall. Donald taught at Columbia University, Johns Hopkins and, from 1973, Harvard.  He passed away in 2009.

The interesting topics include Lincoln and the abolitionists, whom he interestingly describes a social movement; Lincoln as demi-god in folklore; the myths launched by Herndon in the first so-called psychological biography; Lincoln as a canny politician; Peace Democrats; a sympathetic treatment (for once) of Radical Republicans like Stevens and Sumner; the factors that contributed to the Lincoln cult-feeling; and a balanced view of Reconstruction.

This book was published in 1956, collecting articles published here and there. As we would expect from a book of this time, African Americans are at the margins. Back in the day, this book was often assigned in college and high schools so it is definitely accessible to the general reader. It’s not a searching analysis such as David Blight’s Race and Reunion (which I’m reading now), but I think enjoying this book would be students like us who have concluded (probably with age) that the causes of the Civil War and its effects on our country are more interesting than battles and all that.                 

Mount TBR #22

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.

Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn - David Hajdu

Billy Strayhorn is known for being a jazz composer and arranger for Duke Ellington. His most famous composition is Ellington’s signature song, Take the A-Train, which one jazzman says was the “holy grail,” telling of the whole life and culture of Harlem in the Thirties “in 32 bars.” Strayhorn is also known for Lush Life, which has been covered by artists ranging from Ella Fitzgerald to Lady Gaga. Unjustly neglected nowadays is a 1956 gem called Blue Rose by Rosemary Clooney and Ellington’s band, an effort that only Strayhorn made possible.

Sheer luck got young Strayhorn an introduction to Ellington in 1939, who was impressed with his arranging skills from the start. Strayhorn wrote the orchestra’s Satin Doll, Chelsea Bridge, Just A-Sittin’ and A-Rockin’, Daydream, Koko, Passion Flower, and A Flower is a Lovesome Thing, to name just handful. Strayhorn was so self-effacing and mild-mannered that he was nicknamed with the derisive “Swee’ Pea” by band members that didn’t know what to make of him, so silent and openly gay. But Ellington defended him from overt and covert homophobia and jealousy. The protection came with emotional and financial prices. Lena Horne says, ''[T]heir relationship was very sexual. Don't misunderstand -- it wasn't physical at all. . . . Duke treated Billy exactly like he treated women, with all that old-fashioned chauvinism. Very loving and very protective, but controlling.''

When Strayhorn joined Ellington’s organization in 1939, Duke’s career flourished professionally and musically. After WWII, when the big bands vanished or had to downsize, their partnership withered. When Strayhorn returned to the Ellington organization in 1956, Duke’s career staged a comeback.

Hajdu interviewed about 200 people for this biography. Hajdu is not a musicologist, though he was a music critic for serious magazines such as The Nation. Therefore, perhaps as a relief to non-expert readers like me, he does not give any technical insights into, for example, what distinguishes Strayhorn from Ellington in the music called Ellingtonia. He quotes musicians who ought to know. “'There's so much more sensitivity and complexity in Strayhorn's compositions than Ellington's,” says Dr. Aaron Bell, bassist for Duke Ellington from 1960 to 1962 and later an arranger. ''We could always tell Strayhorn's.''

The last quarter of the biography is hard to read due to Strayhorn’s descent into sadness and resignation. Strayhorn drank and smoked too much. After a hard fight, he died of esophageal cancer in 1967, at the age of 51. Still, I would highly recommend this book to readers who are interested in jazz and the challenges to an artist who happened to be black, gay, and influenced as much by Ravel and Debussy as the blues.

Mount TBR #18

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.

Call Me Lucky: Bing Crosby’s Own Story -  As told to Pete Martin

I was a smart-aleck college kid when Gary Crosby’s tell-all memoir of alleged abuse by his father Bing was released in 1983. Since by the early Eighties poor Bing was associated with all things square and phony, sneering and scolding Boomers snorted in derision at the contrast between Bing’s easy-going image and Gary’s portrayal of the stern personal trainer, penny-pincher and wielder of belts, straps, and canes. Perhaps because we tend to remember the last thing we heard of people, the only take on Bing Crosby for lots of us nowadays is that he was the hypocrite that smacked his sons around.

Which is a pity. Bing Crosby dominated American mass media in the 1930s and 1940s. He was the first multi-media superstar, bigger even than Mary Pickford, for the reason that he added success in television and records to stage, screen and radio.

His initial quick success was based on his mysterious, romantic voice. When he sang, Crosby's relaxed phrasing and rhythmic acuity made women melt. His sensitivity to the prosody of English – that is, conversation phrasing - made him very different from Rudy Valle and Al Jolson. Because improved microphones could capture his subtle phrasing, he could almost whisper and make his singing feel very intimate. This crooning made him very popular and naturally spawned many imitators. Very soon after Crosby’s death in 1977, a teacher wrote in Music Educators Journal, “From a music history point of view, Crosby set the direction for virtually every pop singer of the last fifty years.”

Crosby was an educated man in a time when not many people went to college. His three years at Gonzaga and instinctive love of and respect for words gave him a solid vocabulary and feeling for language. For instance, he said of Carole Lombard’s unique phraseology, “Her swearing wasn't obscene. It was good, clean, and lusty. They were gusty and eloquent. They resounded, they bounced. They had honest zing!” This is an observation that could come only from somebody who knew the tune was as important as the words.

Crosby himself was quick and witty, in the best senses. Although this is a “as told to” autobiography, Bing’s voice, the reader feels intuitively, comes through clearly. Martin, a well-respected feature writer at the time, had an ear for Bing’s voice and tone.

Although he does not talk about popular music and fickle public taste, he does say nice things about Louis Armstrong, and Jack Teagarden. His stories about violinist Joe Venuti are pretty funny. In an admirable burst of honesty, Crosby says that he talked guitarist Eddie Lang into seeking medical advice for a hoarse voice. Lang never woke up after a tonsillectomy in 1933. Bing felt guilty about urging Lang to get medical treatment.

I was more interested in the music part of his career, the motion pictures part much less so, because the comedy in the Road movies, for example, was just too – I’ll use Bing’s word - low for me. Bing addresses two hobbies, horse flesh and golfing, that he was famous for having. He also - bluntly, I think -  discusses the trouble he had with his four sons who were notorious and all of them came to sad ends.  The book ends in 1952, so to speak, with the death of 40-year-old Dixie Lee of ovarian cancer, which represented a turning point for Bing both personally and professionally.

This autobiography was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post in 1953 at the peak of a career that spanned from the mid-Twenties to the late Seventies. Then the story was bundled and released in both hardcover and paperback, to be become massive bestsellers.

I recommend this book to people into entertainment history, pop culture, and Hollywood production stories. I also urge interested readers to watch the PBS documentary Bing Crosby Rediscovered.