What are you reading?

[charliechaplinfan]

I read My Life with Chaplin by Lita Grey Chaplin whilst I was on holiday.

Where do I start? It was obviously written after Lady Chatterly's Lover got published for general consumption, she wasn't backward at coming forward about their lovelife. I expected her to do a hatchet job on him but I have read worse from Chaplin's detractors. Taking it as one side of the story and trying to read between the lines, he seduced her when she was underage and then had to be talked into marrying her when she became pregnant. Two years and two children later the marriage was in tatters.

I had more sympathy for Lita than I thought I would have, at times in her book Chaplin come across as cruel, cold and manipulative but also as shy and afraid of getting hurt. Only the bedroom bound them together and was the only place they were compatible. He hurt her and was unfaithful to her and she was too immature to deal with such a complex man.

One thing I was very glad to know was that when she filmed the Kid with Chaplin there was no sense of relationship or anything innappropriate about their working relationship, he thought her a beautiful child and treated her as such and in the same way he treated all the children at the studio. She talks of how during the filming of The Kid he would take a break everyday to chase the kids all over the set and play hide and seek with them, he could easily reach their level and they adored him. All the adults called him Mr Chaplin the kids called him Charlie.

The book didn't dent my opinion of Charlie because I've always been aware of this story. Her last words about him were very kind words. This book was written in the 1960's. She wrote another book at the end of the nineties were she revised some of what she said and was kinder to Chaplin.

Funnily enough Chaplin in his autobiography would not talk about her, he had two sons by her and didn't want to bad mouth their mother.

[CharlieT]

Finished Wheels and am currently about a quarter of the way through Space by James A. Michener.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

I've been reading Peter Ackroyd's Shakespeare. What is so interesting is that he combines all the information about the church, the merchants, family heritage, factors that might have influenced what Shakespeare wrote, and information from other sources that vividly recreate the times in which WS lived as well as the entire Elizabethan political cogs that make the wheels of justice and wealth churn for that era.

[charliechaplinfan]

I've just finished reading Fred Guiles book on Marion Davies. He obviously had the ear of her closest remaining family. Marion is someone who often pops up in the biographies of other stars famed for her affair with WR Hearst and their many homes and parties.

The Marion that emerged was the life and soul of the party. A woman who had actively looked for a rich, older lover after receiving that advice from her mother. All the sisters (4) looked for older protectors. Marion was by far the most successful in this field but Hearst was not her first protector although he was the most persuasive and paid the way clear for himself. There is no evidence to suggest for the first year of the relationship that the realtionship was deep felt by Marion but then things changed. She grew very fond of Hearst and then learned to love him.

Thorughout the years Hearst put up with her affairs as Marion just having fun until she had an affair with Chaplin who could rival him for power and wealth. Hearst needn't have been worried he was never seriously challenged in Marion's eyes. He was far more intolerant of her drinking.

In the late 30's after a very successful film career Marion was able to give Hearst many of her riches to help him out of a financial crisis.

She gave 35 years of her life to him, the last years she helped devotedly to look after him. Yet after hours of being on death watch the doctor decided that Marion needed a shot to get some much needed sleep, whilst asleep Hearst died, his sons spirited him out of the house. Marion never got chance to say goodbye to her companion.

Marion outlived Hearst by ten years and married very soon after his death. She was a wealthy woman in her own right and had built a childrens hospital.

She left the earth with the knowledge that many people weren't able to remember her heyday and she would live on in posterity as Susan Alexander from Citizen Kane. As we rediscover her films we discover that nothing could be further than the truth, she was a supremely talented comedienne and actress and Hearst's millions may have helped her on her way but she kept herself in the spotlight.

[CharlieT]

Finished Space by Michener and started The Bancroft Strategy by Robert Ludlum.

[jdb1]

I've just finished two novels by Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt and The Blunderer. W.W. Norton has recently re-issued Highsmith's works, and they are certainly worth exploring.

The Price of Salt was published in 1953 under a psuedonym, Clare Morgan, because it deals with an affair between two women. I liked the book a lot - it's not prurient by any means; it's merely a modern love story that happens to occur between women. What is especially interesting about this book is that it has a happy ending -- probably very unusual for an almost-mainstream book of this nature in those days. I've read that the book sold over a million copies. I'll bet a lot of readers, thinking they were getting pornography, were disappointed to find that this book is a valid and excellent piece of serious fiction.

The Blunderer has a plot somewhat similar to Highsmith's Strangers on a Train, which was published first. The main character is a blunderer because he has a lack of understanding of human nature, and misreads just about everything that is said and done around him, with fatal consequences.

Highsmith is fast becoming my favorite American novelist. Even though her prevalent themes: amorality, responsibility and guilt are reworked over and over again in all her books, there's always something fresh and interesting in the characterizations and descriptive work. There's a lot more to her than simply the talented Mr. Ripley.

[charliechaplinfan]

I've just started reading The Star Machine by Jeanine Basinger, I'm only a couple of chapters in, she goes into details about the studio system but illustrates them by using examples. Some I've known about, most I haven't. I just wish I had more time to devote to it.

[MikeBSG]

I read "The Star machine" last month. I enjoyed it, but I felt that the book had been edited down from a larger manuscript. At times, the author seemed to zoom past key points in an actor's career.

Most notably, Basinger said that Errol Flynn's westerns tend to be underrated, suggesting that she was going to talk about them, and then the book moved on to another topic. This happened at several other points, especially in her discussion of Mickey Rooney.

[jdb1]

We spoke about Star Machine a few months ago -- I had expressed surprise that an academic, the chairman of a college film department, could write such a gushing, starry-eyed, "this is my favorite," "I just love him" kind of book. Could be that Mike is right - maybe the publisher took out the serious, valid material to make it more lightweight, like something fans of People magazine would read.

This is the only Basinger book I've read. Are her others more scholarly, or are they equally frivolous?

[ChiO]

Her Anthony Mann is certainly scholarly and a great read, although it probably helps if one is a Mann fan.

[Dewey1960]

Judith wrote: I've just finished two novels by Patricia Highsmith...

After Jim Thompson, Patricia Highsmith is my favorite writer of suspense fiction. Although she is most famously known for her Ripley novels, none of them quite measure up to her non-Ripley titles. If you enjoyed THE BLUNDERER, may I recommend CRY OF THE OWL (my personal favorite of hers), DEEP WATER, THE GLASS CELL, THIS SWEET SICKNESS and THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY. All of these are excruciatingly tense, beautifully written explorations of the darker side of human psychology.

Although entirely coincidental I'm sure, Highsmith and Jim Thompson hail from the same part of the country; she from Texas, he from Oklahoma.

[MikeBSG]

Basinger's earlier books have heft to them. "The World War II Combat Film" is terrific because she advances a theory of how genres change over time that is applicable to more than just combat movies.

"Silent Stars" has more depth because it covers a limited era, basically 10 years, where "Star Machine" covers about 30 in depth (1930-60) and then the last ten years. (Indeed, Basinger's comments on Angelina Jolie, while interesting, were hardly detached.)

"A Woman's View," her look at 'women's pictures' of the classic studio era, is also good, although I don't find myself going back to it as often as "World War II Combat Film."

[moira finnie]

We spoke about Star Machine a few months ago -- I had expressed surprise that an academic, the chairman of a college film department, could write such a gushing, starry-eyed, "this is my favorite," "I just love him" kind of book. Could be that Mike is right - maybe the publisher took out the serious, valid material to make it more lightweight, like something fans of People magazine would read.

This is the only Basinger book I've read. Are her others more scholarly, or are they equally frivolous?

I haven't read all the reviews of Jeanine Basinger's book, but I came across 4 negative reviews of The Star Machine when it was released, including ones from the NY Times & Scott Eyman. This didn't stop me from being interested in reading it anyway, since the structure of movie studios' always interests me. The slapdash quality of the book, which might be okay for someone who's just discovered classic movies, really surprised me.

Ms. Basinger's dvd commentaries, (such as the one she did for the kitschy but fun "Three Coins in the Fountain"), do have a starry-eyed quality at times, but her previous books, such as A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960, seem to have some validity as a scholarly and a readable work, (though not as rigorous perhaps as Molly Haskell's very well done From Reverence to Rape).

One of Basinger's other books, Silent Stars, touched on the usual suspects (Gish, Bow, Swanson, etc.,), but, written in a breezy but sometimes insightful way, included affectionate nods toward Tom Mix & Rin Tin Tin, which I enjoyed, though none of it was really news to me. I'd probably recommend the latter book to anyone who might be intimidated by Kevin Brownlow's The Parade's Gone By, (though why that would happen, I don't know). I wonder if the publishers of The Star Machine took Prof. Basinger's manuscript, edited out the scholarly bits, and juiced it up with the conversational asides, thinking cynically "Oh, the public is so dumb, they'll eat this up"?

I think the better descriptions of the studio system that produced the stars and the movies might be found in books like Ethan Mordden's The Hollywood Studios: House Style in the Golden Age of the Movies & John Kobal's People Will Talk & John Robert Parrish's older books, such as Hollywood Players: The Forties and Hollywood Players: The Thirties . Each of them gave me more fun and info in the glimpses of the backgrounds of the movies and the actors in them--though I think several of them seem to be out of print. As a new way of marketing classic movies to people, The Star Machine does seem to be pretty clever and might make a few converts (I hope).

[jdb1]

I share your hope, Moira. There's not really anything wrong with a lightweight Hollywood book - I read them all the time for fun. What is unfortunate is that a professor of film was tapped to write one (her title, I suppose, intended to impress). However, I guess it's not that surprising, given the current trend in advertising films and TV of mentioning every award (valid or meaningless) the stars and/or writers/directors were ever even nominated for.

Well, if Eleanor Roosevelt can do a margarine commercial, and Maya Angelou can be touted as America's greatest poet, I guess anything goes.

[MikeBSG]

I've started reading Simon Louvish's biography of Cecil B. DeMille.

So far, it is rather odd. DeMille comes across as a very shadowy figure, and the book is far more of a career overview than a biography. (For example, Louvish supposes that the death of DeMille's father when Cecil was 12 and the fact that Cecil had to attend a girls' school run by his mother to save money had some affect on the teenage Cecil, but he says this in about as many words as I did just now.)

Still, I guess the book will be useful, because it shows that DeMille was more than the "Biblical spectacular" director. However, so far (and I have gotten up to "Carmen" in 1915) it is far less satisfactory than Louvish's work on W. C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, and Laurel and Hardy.