WHO TELLS ME TRUE

Very good reading, this autobiography of a woman who was born to be a social butterfly and who is best known today as poet, playwright, actress, and former wife of John Barrymore. The story falls quite naturally into three parts: a girlhood, tempestuous, erratic, glamorous, against a background of Newport, New York and Vienna. ""Michael Strange"" was Blanche Oelrichs, her circle was that of the Goelets, the Vanderbilts, the Havemeyers. The second part of her story is her second marriage, to John Barrymore, fascinating and temperamental and violently jealous. And the last part deals with her own career, the development of her poetic gifts, and the emergence of her independent career of stage and lecture platform. Probably the Barrymore episode will be the best sales slant. I liked the first part best but the whole is very entertaining.