Hollywood Hagiography
Westerbeck, Colin L. Jr.
tailors make bullet-proof vests explanations of its defects. The recoil is la madre (An Altar for the Mother) . In Parents go to school so strong, the social...
...is why the lives of both saints and stars have a certain sameness to them...
...Here he is: from childhood to triumphant papacy-as I I McGraw-Hill Book Company'Dept...
...If emotion occasions clear-minded, 1972, is his own history (situated mostly by petal, closing stylized expression, poetry should have in remembered factories and mills for the night, no need to boast its sincerity, its feeling- around Detroit and, later, in the red the question still ness...
...Oagination here and book is supposed to be about, the central well...
...Christina tells us about Joan's alcoholism who got her start at Modern Screen The same with Tierney...
...There are Atheneum, $4.95, 66 pp...
...Her approach is relentless, suicide and the other didn't, it's hard to tions is to give up autobiographies al- exhausting, excruciating...
...evidence of their I D Hardcover edition in white leatherlike cover stamped in competence, their interest in and their knowledge about gold with the Papal Coat of Arms...
...more important than other few scant pages to the experience of mak- way to hold my trembling head still was mere movie stars...
...Sound made movies us not that Crawford wasn't a star, but and fall, the doughty, matronly wife more realistic and made the characters in only that stardom was different from whom Linet congratulates for the dignity them, though still larger than life, more what we imagined it to be...
...himself...
...Inside Thomas were being squashed between the yin Christina's book is like a mouse-trap play we sense, lurking still, someone like Be- and yang of his destiny-as if he were in a revenge tragedy...
...Tierney therefore devotes only a third or fourth take, I realized that one leading men...
...behind Ladd's stardom...
...on by the poet's hand...
...minor value...
...readers to not only know John Paul II better, but also...
...History is nQplodding continuity of character, is often a void...
...She Bacall's...
...But surround- proven more enjoyable, memorable and events but an instantaneous presence, ing this non-presence, ringing the outer durable than the blockbuster A's...
...The novel is also a tribute to ety are simply determined not to recogpeasant culture and a meditation on deMontale found another motive for nize its positive features...
...when his rigor of feeling which reprints a small-press chapbook weakens, the poems sink into an almost THE FREE-VERSE conventions of con- published in 1971, persuades us again pietistic- complacency...
...In the silent era the roles She actually ventures onto a sound stage deftly eased Ladd's first wife out of the stars played were romantic, remote, at times...
...CO 10 I BOOK COMPANY of Bacall's book is devoted to the trembl- authoress...
...It rebounds upon its verly Linet...
...remained extraordinai9ly sane in the face Christina herself should want celebrity Next she fastens the other end around the of the sudden succLsS and lingering enough to write such a book in order to loose tooth of our emotions...
...Rather it is a valid novel which seven wonders of the world not solely The interdisciplinary philosopher conveys attitudes and feelings rather than because of the architecture but because it loves to wallow in the filthiest con- remain at the level of facts or ideas...
...He has always other characters into whose lives and tings often been more original and au- been a poet of rage, but now, in his midpesonalities we do get a real, if brief, thentic than the lives of the principals...
...14.95...
...For instance, a skepticism about the contemporary soci- ath...
...Stars succeed (as ing Laura with Otto Preminger, but ex- to keep it down, chin low, almost to my saints do) by a paradoxical kind of humil- pends at least a chapter.on her ultimately chest, and eyes up at Bogart...
...The role Colin L. Wosterb.ck, Jr...
...May this volume help I D Paperback edition, oversized 8'/2" x 10'/4" $7.95...
...JOHN PAUL II...
...Well, it is a, sanity of a sort, get it undermines her own evidence the last sentence of the paragraph, she the sort that helps you pass one of those against it...
...some puny Greek sailor trying to find Commonweal: 566 safe passage between Scylla and It has always been the great flaw of terials he has drawn an occasionally stem Charybdis in matching furs...
...It was a natural transition, like Ladd at some public function seated bescreen performances...
...Then with tragedies...
...of a chair he despises...
...A Pictorial Biography by Peter-I-Iehblet.hwaite and Ludwig Kaufmann S.J...
...He still points his anger at stiff-necked disapproval of his stars' the Hollywood press corps in general was anything that mocks or diminishes life, adultery, his relationship with his own people who didn't care very much about as in the cruel poetry of the factory in wife Slim, and the desire he had before going to movies, or who went only as a "The Life Ahead...
...written for the same audience...
...Give as far as I can see, the biographies and au- every/man and woman, the trees/ good as she got, no capitulation, no tobiographies of the stars are now being floating in the cold haze/of January...
...Unfortunately, the balance Commonweal: 564 Abook as beautif ul as the man of God x. it portrays...
...With their equally round, beaming Crawford wrote her own autobiog- material for something new...
...Tierney descended into madness could get even, after mommie's death, biographies under review here...
...Di Piero new books by Philip Levine, one of poems...
...The pictures in these bioglife both on the screen and off was really for Associated Press, Los Angeles, for raphies are often as eloquent as the the same life, and with its demand that a years before he began doing books about words, and none more than a picture of star's private affairs be as public as her stars...
...9.95, 286 pp...
...A poem's nature is self-contained dustblown landscape of the San Joaquin unanswered, that question and organic...
...10020 behind the office, the extraordinary personality who travelled to Mexico and Poland, proving himself the most char- Please send me -_ - - copy(ies) of John Paul II...
...Italian...
...If not comismatic personality of today...
...Linet, ing rather than the "Look...
...The only way out of this tries to kick the door shut...
...and turned out to be the beginning of best works...
...But morass of family squabbles, conflicting peats this procedure in every, single outside of the fact that one attempted recriminations and self-serving decep- paragraph...
...I Address A l~' 174 pictures of The Pope I City State Zip MCGRAW-HILL 25 in full color D Check or money order enclosed...
...Thus and Levine's language seeks to accomoedges of his or her story, are all sorts of have character roles and historical set- date this intense pressure...
...To get anything out of books like bungled...
...that Jack Kennedy played in Gene Tierney's life, for instance, is the one that autobiographies are inevitably disap- the roles that made her famous in The Big Adlai Stevenson played in Lauren pointing, at least if you're interested in Sleep and To Have and Have Not...
...This Arbor House, $10.95, 294 pp...
...This is where stardom conversion...
...comment on contemporary events...
...Some stars aped their a pretext to follow her there-such as the he made it big, a wife who invested her screen appearances in real life by walk- climax to the long-standing Crawford- husband's earnings and turned them into ing pet leopards on a string or riding Bette Davis feud, which came when they a fortune, a mother who at first hid even around in cars the size of yachts...
...ASHES the poem may still be charming in away, But Levine is not always as demanding Philip Levine but mere charm is, or ought to be, a very of himself as he ought to be...
...the tongues are free, without her dialect, she knew only a few words of And many who recoil from Italian socibrakes...
...And she retests in The Ladies Home Journal...
...Now although modern Rome is is it a head-on grappling with social probture: ugly, the city center is still one of the lems...
...In its (relative) neutrality it one character in Alan Ladd's life ' who almost too incidental a part of her life and not only makes us see Crawford's mad- totally eludes Linet herself, Sue Carol her stardom to be worth going into now...
...Beneath the faces and their identical ensembles, the raphy in the early seventies...
...It is for this reason that theirBacall, similarly, has little to say about The Look...
...The true spell a poem casts poems in both books ("Here and Now" 7 TEAas FROM sokLwnLaE issues from the often mysterous integrity and "Milkweed in 7 Years, for examPhilip Levine of the poem's nature, not from coy, self- ple, and "Everything" and Atheneum, $4.95, 70 pp...
...the Holy Father and the Holy See...
...to the beat of the 300-word "item" in a fright notwithstanding, both women got By far the most entertaining and informa- pulp magazine...
...Like a saint, a movie star has to have met rigid standards to be canonized, and her life LADD SELF-PORTRAIT story has to demonstrate her conformity Beverly Unet Gene Tierney to these universal norms of conduct...
...Maybe the reason Sue's role in tion, identify with rather than merely Stardom itself is left unimpaired by this her husband's life is such a blind spot for dream about...
...Thus have B-movies usually now...
...Unfortu- from the world, sometimes an embittered Only a boy, still alone, nately, and for reasons I don't yet under- withdrawal, sometimes a brutal cutting still solemn, turning stand, the surfaces of much poetry these off by outside forces, a course redeemed in the darkness days seem as artificial and contrived as in rare moments by desperate joinings toward manhood, turning those of Augustan poetry...
...His anger feeds on he ever met Bacall to create a leading sort of ancillary activity to the reading of yearning, his wish to discover and speak lady who could "play a scene with a the magazines and gossip columns...
...This kind of wish may strike some readers as overextended, gross, Romantic, but I think its intensity is redeemed by the A poet of rage purity of its origins in the felt life, in situation, character and event...
...This is a lived-in patrician-plebeian mix with sumer rubbish is probably the most valuable function of palaces and craftsmen's shops side by Worst of all, he does it with su- imaginative writers even though the side...
...And when his temporary poetry allow and perhaps that if poetry comes as naturally as leaves passion goes undisciplined, the poems' encourage poets to fabricate the look of to a tree-as Keats said it must-it will sentiments seem little more than an oblisincerity and deep feeling much as the be singular and exciting and new, how- gation to contemporary conventions or to rhyming couplet allowed eighteenth cen- ever wintry its theme...
...From these ma- The melancholy tone here strains at 12 October 1979: 567...
...pletely satisfied I may return this book within 10 days for "Certainly provides answers to many of the questions I full refund...
...The difference and communings...
...I suspect that the real, hard- peace, an end/to promises, perhaps/an Howard Hawks-his anti-Semitism, his core audience for the fan magazines and end to us...
...But for at last worked together on Whatever the existence of her stepson from public the most part stardom consisted of trying, Happened to Baby Jane?- in the process view and then saw him become head of like gangsters, to hide from public view of doing so Thomas at least gives us a Twentieth-Century Fox, Sue Carol was the vulgarity and dissipation of one's pri- glimpse of the actual production of a clearly the mastermind, and backbone, vate life...
...ness clearer than Christina ever could, it Ladd...
...and although Thomas may need picture and married Ladd herself just as mythological...
...This is the modern going from manufacturing to recycling, tween his wife and Linet herself, both of form of stardom, which Joan Crawford making the non-degradable litter from whom happen to be wearing the same invented...
...The book is a kind nence grise, a mystery lady eclipsed by when sound came in did art and life move of devil's advocacy aimed at convincing the public spectacle of Ladd's decline closer together...
...The recoil is la madre (An Altar for the Mother) . In Parents go to school so strong, the social events so impelling brief episodes, Camon builds a portrait of their children do without it that some feel they must comment on his mother, a sturdy, fearless, religious Our civilization is at its flood tide events directly...
...it cannot be something laid Valley) as it overlays and collides with never to be asked again...
...It worked ity...
...CP, 29th Floor warm, human pictures and a sensitive text reveal the man 1221 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y...
...Please add applicable sales taxes...
...few years ago a book appeared in which It is not one of the intimate, still-life ety in the breakdown of standards among one Italian writer after another decried interiors Arbasino criticized but neither academics who concentrate on pop cul- Rome...
...self exclusively to his career, a lover who Joan Crawford...
...Stardom had and violent, sadistic rages is the simple around the time Thomas joined A.P., is almost opposite effects on the two fact that her daughter would feel she the worst-written, most irritating of the women...
...tury writers to produce poems with the theme is the tragic detachment of self These are the closing lines of "Asking" look of dandified intelligence...
...does remember that in beginning the latfrom the start, but just goes to show that Stars assume that the last thing any- ter she invented her celebrated, much the star in question had roles to play on a body wants to read about is the making of imitated "Look": "By the end of the larger stage than Hollywood, and with movies...
...Bantam, $2.95, 307 pp...
...but accord- modulated tones of the professional biog- two women could be twins...
...They despise as unworthy their own non-existent romance with Kennedy...
...So from "the place within me/where I am masculine approach-insolent...
...His former ing to the memoir of her childhood writ- rapher we can still hear the old razzma- agent on one side and his future biogten by Joan's adopted daughter Christ- tazz of the reporter who gets all his rapher on the other, Ladd looks as if he ina, mommie got a few things wrong...
...When it is laid on, modern Spanish history...
...Each relationship was doomed movies rather than movie stars per se...
...Morrow...
...But his best novel is the win- political terms, a danger that Italian intelsociety even though they give contrasting ner of the 1978 Strega prize Un altare per lectuals constantly run...
...That ties a string of words to the doorknob...
...An agent who picked up Ladd Movie stardom of the sort practiced in also gives at least some attention to when he was unknown and devoted herthese autobiographies was invented by Crawford's talents before the camera...
...The book with which she used to speak for Ladd on credible caricatures than before, people simply redefines the requisite qualities those increasingly frequent occasions whose loves and losses the audience for a star as the opposite of what the fan when he couldn't even mouth the words could, by a slight stretch of the imagina- magazines always told us they were...
...one product, now obsolete, into the raw outfit...
...autobiographies of movie stars are...
...There are still attractive aspects in preme gratification Moro affair aftermath has shown they Italian life and society which some Italand obviously from the eminence can bring valuable insights to immediate ian writers refuse to acknowledge...
...dle age, much of it is directed toward the glimpse...
...respond faithfully to his words...
...First she and attempted suicide, whereas Bacall by writing a pathetic book like this...
...helplessness...
...that are asked...
...from the Foreword...
...scoops from press agents...
...Ladd makes only one the jitters over every experience except tive of the books under review is Bob thing clear: the need to understand the making movies, which each considers Thomas's...
...Only the spell of stardom...
...His subject, as in all as the years turned is that our own poetry pretends to the felt his books since They Feed They Lion in imperceptibly, petal life...
...That's what the Knopf, $10.95, 377 pp...
...The ultimate pose of twenties movie or two...
...More damaging than anything The book on Alan Ladd by Ms...
...13IOIR H L 0 He is everybody's Pope-the first non-Italian Pope in four A magnificent book-the ideal gift for every Catholic centuries-a mah of the people who has captured thee hearts household...
...But in A shipwreck victim, unable to Content is not the sole criterion for a the rush for immediacy, it tends to be swim, novel's relevance or worth, as is shown overlooked that novelists can also rehas never been delirious with joy by Ferdinando Canon's work...
...peasant whose extreme poverty was culnow that muzzles have broken tural as well as material (in addition to But this is not true of all Italian writers...
...Thomas is an alumnus of the Linet is that it was too much like Linet's came in with its implication that the star's Hollywood press corps, having written own role...
...Wyden Books, $10.95, 264 pp...
...conscious delivery...
...Available at bookstores, or write: of each nation, a man of God who has already reached out Tear out here to bring The Wgfd to the world...
...An entire book tell their lives apart...
...Books: HOLLYWOOD HAGIOGRAPHY IMAGINE what hagiography would be IT MTSELF l" DIM DEAUST JOAN CRAIIFORD like if the saints were supposed to Lauren Bacall Christina Crawford Bob Thomas write their own lives...
...Bacall's initial stage together and turn to biographies instead...
...The Red men-and he knows it...
...Hollywood that what it put its mind to, it and moving elegiac poetry...
...John Cardinal Name I Krol, Archbishop of Philadelphia...
...stardom came in the thirties when Garbo Yet even Thomas's book is still under But in the book she remains an emideclared, "I vant to be alone...
...Montjuich" in Ashes) which lack the The simultaneous publication of two clear intellectual focus of his better W.S...
...Canon, a spond to the Red Brigades by providing a as his ship flounders literary critic and poet, has written a convincing image of man which is not but there's no danger for balloon novel about terrorists in his native Ven- confined to the political sphere...
...In the biographies and, even more, tally, as background for a scene whose and family, places, historical events-as in the autobiographies, the person the emphasis lay elsewhere, turned out really they compel his...
...The authors have given...
...Levine's high his own sense of charming endings...
...The best passages of Bacall's It's not surprising that the same should weariness of words, "as though the book are her ketches of some of Bogie's now prove true of Hollywood's earth/were tired of our talk/and wanted friends like the Mark Hellingers, or of memoirs...
...eto region which was made into a televi- Brigades, in fact, reduce life to purely Many Italian writers recoil from their sion serial...
...Only projects undertaken Levine's best poems are those in these, you have to keep your eye upon the absent-mindedly and without caring too which he finely calibrates the brooding doughnut, brother, and not upon the much, only material developed inciden- presence of past configurations-friends hole...
Vol. 106 • October 1979 • No. 18
