A STAR'S PROGRESS

by Katherine Everard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 15, 1949

Designed for rentals, this story of the rise and fall of a Hollywood star. And yet, somehow, the matter-of-fact, slow motion style robs even the melodramatic aspects of the story of the values that readers might expect. At the start, Graziella Serrano, ten year old Mexican child, with a passion for dancing, is demanding a chance for a stage career- a chance that comes to her when the family moves to New Orleans, and at fourteen, she gets a job at a night club, without benefit of parental permission. Strip tease dancing and its concomitants in sexual experience ends abruptly when her brother discovers what she is doing, but an older man, Jason Carter, who has fallen in love with her, marries her and they have five years of relative content (glibly bypassed by the author) before Hollywood claims her and she asks for divorce. A brief and unsatisfactory affair with her leading man culminates in her discovery that his interests lie with his own sex. Success on the screen comes too easily -- and satisfies her for a time. Then, in Paris, toast of the screen-mad world, she meets a Crown Prince of a Balkan kingdom, has a brief interlude with him on the Riviera, and -- her career smashed by scandal- loses him to his kingdom- and a world on the brink of war. The story ends with ""Grace Carter"" a sodden drinker, taking an overdose of sleeping pills in her hotel room back in New Orleans:.. A first novel that holds little promise of a future.

Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1949

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1949

Categories: FICTION