THE CARPETBAGGERS

by Harold Robbins ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 5, 1961

A big, bulging blockbuster of a book glistens with as much explicit illicit sex as you are likely to find sold between the covers-- of a book. It is the second in the series dealing with the film industry (The Dream Merchants) and since it also includes a good deal of plain talk about the finer practices of 77 Park Avenue, it is something of a double feature. In the footage, which is really yardage (circa 800 pages), five of the more personal histories run to full length and three are ""easy to recognize personalities"". With, or without same tapes-- they are (a) Jonas Cord, son of a rich man determined to get out from under his shadow, a truly imaginative industrialist who makes money in plastics, planes (which he files) and pictures; (b) Rina Marlowe, the girl he had wanted to marry but his father took away from him, Rina who drifts from men to women, who fortuitously becomes a star, and finally -- halfway through here- gives in to the ""dream of death"" which has haunted her since childhood; (c) Nevada Smith, who had buried his past- murder and armed robbery, who wetnursed Jonas Cord as a boy, and, when Jonas' father died, went to Hollywood for a brief moment in the sun as a Western star in the old silents; (d) David Woolf, who worked his way up from the lower East Side in his uncle's motion picture business, finally to throw his hand in with Jonas Cord; and (e) Jennie Deaton, who sidestepped rape as a girl to become a nurse, fell in love with an abortionist, was coached by a dying magnate so that she became the most expensive hooker in Hollywood, and was discovered by Jonas Cord who wanted her as a successor to Rina Marlowe and for his wife... A sinnerama is filled with most of the ills- at any rate indulgences- the flesh is heir to, but some virtuous hokum as well (Jonas returns to the wife of his young years; Jennie takes the veil) and if it is easy to deprecate, it is not to be minimized. Robbins' earlier books have sold no less than 40,000 copies each and there is every reason to think that this could do better- merchandise-wise.

Pub Date: June 5, 1961

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1961

Categories: FICTION