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MORE THAN A WOMAN

AN INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY OF BETTE DAVIS

Richly researched, smoothly dogged biography of Bette Davis that outweighs in sheer detail Barbara Leaming's strong effort Bette Davis (1991), though in a less lively voice, and that fairly well defines Davis. Spada has written serious bios of Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, Peter Lawford, and many others. Davis's two earliest shaping forces were her attorney father Harlan—a ``cold vacuum'' who thought she had little to offer, which maddened the mercurial Bette—and her mother Ruthie, who quickly divorced Harlan and guided her sometimes raging daughter toward the stage. Though they had wall-shaking rows, Ruthie bathed Bette nightly until well into her teens. Davis worked her way up through regional theaters, being directed by George Cukor in Rochester, early landed Broadway leads and a summons by Warner Brothers. Marriage to early beau Harmon Nelson, an orchestra leader, flopped as her career boomed; ``Ham'' (Harmon) talked her into two abortions. Her fury as the vile Mildred in Of Human Bondage made screen history as she became filmdom's first leading actress ever to set out to be absolutely revolting—audiences cheered when she died. Her first Oscar came a year later for the alcoholic lead in Dangerous, as did her first of many extramarital affairs—with her leading man, Franchot Tone, then engaged to Joan Crawford, with whom Bette feuded right up through their roles as sisters in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? When Ham records her bedroom noises with Howard Hughes, Spada calls the recording both a disc and a tape—and weakens the reader's faith. The rest of his dirt—more abortions, adultery, alcoholism, rage, husband Gary Merrill strangling her and beating their horse with barbed wire, the split with daughter B.D.—if not fresh, adds pungency. Familiar, and the acting gets slighted, but Davis gives fiery focus.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-553-09512-9

Page Count: 528

Publisher: Bantam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

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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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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