A witty and meticulously researched treat for devotees of old Hollywood.
An Oklahoma teenager arrives in Hollywood and enters a glamorous world thanks to her famous cousin in this historical novel set in the 1930s and based on a true story.
Helen Nichols is a pretty, intelligent high school student in Oklahoma. Her early life is marked by tragedy. At 10 months old, Helen and her mother and sister, Jean, are injured in a gas explosion that kills her father. Helen is also run over by a truck as a child. The Nichols sisters and their cousin Ginger Rogers live with their grandparents while Helen’s mother and Aunt Lela establish themselves in careers and remarry. Lela, the first female Marine sergeant, has written and produced military training films but devotes her energy to promoting the career of her only child, Ginger. In her early 20s, Ginger is a rising star, navigating the studio contract system with the help of her indefatigable “momager.” Lela and Ginger are convinced that Helen has the looks to land an RKO contract. With a new name, Phyllis Fraser, and financial support from her aunt and cousin, she moves to Hollywood. Although she lacks Ginger’s exceptional talent, Phyllis is offered a bit part and enjoys limited success in various films. Living with Ginger and Lela, Phyllis meets notable neighbors, including Harpo Marx and Clara Bow. When Phyllis and her relatives attend a play starring newcomer Humphrey Bogart, Lela comments: “Terrible name. He should change it.” There are many intriguing historical facts in Porter’s well-researched book. Author Ayn Rand was a wardrobe assistant for many mediocre films. When Ginger Rogers read that Adele Astaire was moving to Ireland and leaving her brother without his dance partner, she cried: “What on earth will Fred do without her?” The entertaining novel details a succession of trysts and marriages among the young actresses. Ultimately disheartened, Phyllis decides to devote herself to writing, which brings her to New York and into the orbit of New Yorker editor Harold Ross and his close friend Random House editor Bennett Cerf. She soon marries Cerf, who is twice her age. More compelling than the litany of stars, wannabes, and their mostly forgettable films is the section devoted to Phyllis’ life in New York, her work on Madison Avenue, and her unusual “hot desk” arrangement there with Ted Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss.
A witty and meticulously researched treat for devotees of old Hollywood.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9907420-1-2
Page Count: 391
Publisher: Gallica Press
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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