END TO COMEDY
By
Robert Carson is an old Hollywood hand and this novel about Hollywood has several good scenes, one grand old dotty character, and not too much else. An international movie outfit arrives in Madrid to do a low-budget quickie melodrama featuring a Doris Day virginal-type comedy actress and a Brandoesque actor. Can the surly director break through her Pasadena Rose Queen simplicity? The movie's plot is that she is a clean midwestern girl who is seduced and abused until she commits suicide, and the director's trouble is that his actress is too simple to summon up the emotions necessary for the later scenes. However a Grand Old Lady of the screen talks some sense into her; the director harries her; and the impossible is accomplished.... The issues at hand are not too gripping but the dialogue has its moments- so that Grade B movie becomes Grade B novel.