THE ULTIMATE SEDUCTION

Mundane remarks on sex, work, and success--how they're all more or less the same--by famous names. The first chapter, in which the celebrities make cameo appearances, conveys the flavor, the tenor, and the emptiness of the enterprise. ""Picasso told me that he loved working even better than making love. 'At least that is the way I remember it now,' he quickly added."" ""Arthur Rubinstein told me that musicmaking and lovemaking are really the same thing. 'Ideally, both are a combination of inspiration and magic.'"" ""Anita Loos told me, 'Passion is passion, and the people who have a passion for life put that into everything they do.'"" Chandler, who did a similar job on Groucho Marx in Hello, I Must Be Going, then visits Mae West, Federico Fellini, Henry Moore, and Henry Fonda. TV-inventor Vladimir Zworkyin talks about his patron David Sarnoff and his neighbor Albert Einstein. (Sarnoff happily bankrolled him, he and Einstein talked about the grass.) ""I asked Dr. Zworykin what was the best moment in his work, the one that was most thrilling for him. He answered, 'The moment when it works.'"" King Vidor talks about John Gilbert and Greta Garbo. (""Garbo had two drives, and they were both equally strong. She would do anything to get attention and anything to get away from it."") The one curio is a series of visits to Isabelita and Juan Peron in Madrid--which Chandler milks for the moment when Eva's body is brought in, and as embalmer Dr. Ara combs her hair, blond tufts ""kept falling to the lightly polished parquet floor."" (""'There was only one crack in her,' Isabelita informed me. 'But it was a shame about the hairpins. They rusted in her hair.'"") Mostly, it's just drab and dull.