GETTING GARBO

How far will a fan go in pursuit of her idol?

Reva Hess has been a charter member of the Secret Six, a group of dedicated autograph hounds, since she was growing up in Brooklyn, trying to forget her father’s death and her mother’s alcoholism. Her favorite “get” is Roy Darnell, the man of a thousand voices, ever since she heard him on the kids’ radio show Let’s Pretend. As his career and love life ripen with a Warner Bros. TV series about tough guy Jack Havoc and his marriage to Addie, an actress turned decorator, Reva follows him to Hollywood, waiting for him outside Romanoff’s and Grauman’s Chinese, even snitching cigarette butts from his parked car to create an altar to him in her room. But Roy and Addie split acrimoniously, and Roy, stung by Addie’s success in getting his Havoc residuals, their house, and the shirt off his back, decides to buck the Warner Bros. contract. Soon he’s a pariah bent on revenge, egged on by his stand-in, Killer, and his emotionally disintegrating alter ego, the invincible Jack Havoc. When murder follows, Reva tries to clean up after him, putting her on a collision course with Havoc.

Memorably offbeat, with fabulous snippets of the bygone Hollywood studio/contract players era, superbly etched cameos for Bogie, Burt Lancaster, and the all-powerful colonel, Jack L. Warner, and a dour insider’s view of the emotional ruffians the business attracts.