Dizzyingly dreadful bio of the once-famous ``Mexican Spitfire,'' who racked up lovers like billiard balls and married Tarzan, a.k.a. Johnny Weismuller. Paste-up can't get more cockeyed than this, with Conner (Golf!, 1992, etc.—not reviewed) giving fuller sketches of Velez's endless lovers and many colleagues than of the actress herself (1908-44), who doesn't show up for pages at a time while we read potted lives of Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Charlie Chaplin, or whomever. The Chaplin pillow-talk is especially sappy: Chaplin, Conner says, kept his affair with Velez hidden and therefore nothing is known about it; meanwhile, the author offers the tidbit that Chaplin's 14-year-old mistress, Lilita Grey, was the original for Nabokov's Lolita, a piece of gratuitous information that Conner fails to support. A lifelong hellion born in Mexico during a hurricane, the tiny, ever-strife-ridden Velez said that she was born fighting. By her mid-teens, she was already an entertainer, thought herself a star, and, following stage appearances in Hollywood with Fannie Brice, entered films. Her first starring role was in The Gaucho, opposite 45-year-old Douglas Fairbanks, with whom, Conner suggests, Velez had a brief fling that depressed Mary Pickford for five years. Readers will find themselves buffeted by bios of Hollywood folk only glancingly acquainted with Velez (such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom Velez hisses as he sings at a party), and few will be able to keep a scorecard on the actress's lovers or to separate them from figures in passing whose pointless bios merely add fluff. Life with Weismuller, Conner says, left the actor bruised and so scratched that only studio makeup artists kept him filmable. Velez killed herself early on, overdosing on Seconal, her bedroom gaudily decorated for the farewell performance. A benchmark in the art of paste-pot bio—and winner of the Plan Nine from Outer Space Award as the worst movie book ever written. (Sixteen pages of photographs)
Pub Date: Nov. 12, 1993
ISBN: 0-942637-96-8
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Barricade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1993
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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