PETE MARTIN CALLS ON...

by Pete Martin ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Pete Martin had run through the journalistic preliminaries of freelance fiction, sports stories, and features on war heroes before he began the fine art of Calling On motion picture celebrities for the Saturday Evening Post. In the face of knowing that ""for the most part the making of pictures is a grim and humorless business"", it has been his task to seek out, sift, and spin the kind of Hollywood yarns that make up what Martin describes as the Post's ""deep people-appeal"". From his notes, tapes, memory, and the articles that have appeared in print, he has re-created surprisingly diversified interviews with or about a widely representative selection of movieland and other greats he has known: Francis X. Bushman, Maurice Chevalier, his friend Nunnally Johnson (whose mother stopped talking about his salary once it zoomed above $4,000 a week), Hitchcock, Jack Lemmon with some surprising comments about Marilyn Monroe, MM herself, Danny Kaye, Groucho Marx on TV rating systems, Zsa Zsa Gabor and George Sanders together and separately, Grace Kelly, Shelley Winters (""a girl can't be sexy all by herself. She's got to aim it at somebody""), Brando, Brynner, Cooper, Gable, Wayne, Stewart, Lancaster, Holden, Crosby, a minute-by-minute rundown of a day in the life of Dean Martin, Helen Hayes, Mary Martin, Lerner & Loewe (""the harder they work, the luckier they get""). Typical of the melange is his recollection that ""interviewing the brothers King (independent producers) was like interviewing an Automat. I dropped in questions and my interview popped out, seasoned with uninhibited details, garnished with verbal parsley."" None of the stories is of very recent vintage, but there are plenty of nostalgic moments for the long-time movie fan.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962

Categories: NONFICTION