ALICE FAYE

Carefully rendered portrait of a once-popular but now largely forgotten screen siren, the archetypal “Fox blonde” who set the tone for Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe.

Grable and Monroe, writes Southern Methodist University librarian Elder, “held measures of honesty, vulnerability, and sex appeal—but never in the same captivating combination” as Alice Faye (1915–98). Born Alice Jeane Leppert in Hell’s Kitchen, the child of a New York beat cop, she was a natural talent—maybe a little chubby, her early employers thought, but a standout in the chorus line who, as Rosemary Clooney remarked, “left her mark on every song she introduced.” A contract player for Twentieth Century-Fox under the notoriously difficult Darryl Zanuck, Faye got her big break when Jean Harlow fell ill during the shooting of In Old Chicago and died shortly thereafter; though the studio had been carefully grooming Faye in Harlow’s image, Elder points out, she still had to fight to get the role that brought her stardom after the film was released in 1938. Faye’s battles with Zanuck were legendary, so bitter that she walked off a set in 1945 and to all intents never returned to the screen, though she kept a toe in Hollywood and from time to time participated in benefits and starry cavalcades. Old-timers will also recall that Faye served as a spokeswoman for the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. “Not only was she free of any hint of scandal or inappropriate behavior,” writes Elder, “but she truly believed what she said.” The author does a fine job of capturing Faye’s talent and dry wit, to say nothing of her fiery dislike for the suits, but this is pretty much a specialty item, since the prim and proper bombshell’s handful of films turn up from time to time on cable TV but rarely figure in standard movie-industry histories.

Strictly for the fans, but for them most welcome.