Did they or didn’t they? Lively (if largely warmed-over) scandal that should find an appreciative audience among fans of...
A tell-all account of the glamorous stars of 1930s and ’40s Hollywood who practiced lesbian love.
McLellan (Ear on Washington, not reviewed) has honed her skill at political gossip to a fine art in Washington, writing a popular newspaper column called “The Ear.” Few of the names she outs will surprise even modest fans of film history: silent screen actress Alla Nazimova, Louise Brooks, Talullah Bankhead, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo—to say nothing of Natasha Rambova, the ubiquitous Mercedes de Acosta, and screenwriter Salka Viertel. The juice is in the details. For instance, we learn that for decades Dietrich and Garbo denied they had ever met, even though they were rising stars in Europe at about the same time, came to Hollywood within a few years of each other, and shared friends among Hollywood’s European community. The author thinks she knows why: she has discovered an early German film featuring Garbo in which Dietrich played a minor role. An affair was likely, McLellan speculates, but Garbo kept the lid on by threatening (through Viertel) to expose Dietrich’s connection to Communist spy Otto Katz (allegedly Dietrich’s first husband). The soup of personal and political intrigue thickens as the girls trade lovers and Bankhead and Dietrich keep the phones to FBI director “Jack” Hoover buzzing. There’s even a thin thread that connects Nancy Reagan’s mother to the network. But Dietrich is by far the most interesting character in the mélange, virtually flaunting her sexual escapades with both men and women. She nevertheless earned a medal from the US government for her work in WWII, while Garbo scurried for cover.
Did they or didn’t they? Lively (if largely warmed-over) scandal that should find an appreciative audience among fans of these early film stars and their coteries.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-24647-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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