Die-hard camp followers will clap furiously; everyone else will be squirming in their seats. (16 pp. b&w photos)
Staggs follows up All About All About Eve (2000) with a similar, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production history of Eve’s frequent companion on revival-house double bills: Sunset Boulevard.
The sink would probably have been in there too if we’d ever caught a glimpse of a kitchen in Billy Wilder’s famously mordant portrait of Old Hollywood meeting and murdering New. Staggs retains his annoying habit of including vast swaths of dubiously relevant material, from three paragraphs on why opera has no true divas anymore (inspired by a list of the Broadway divas who played Norma Desmond in the musical version) to three pages on My Fair Lady (Sunset Boulevard ingénue Nancy Olson was married to lyricist Alan Jay Lerner). Presumably enough movie trivia nuts enjoyed this approach the first time around for Staggs to get a new contract and publish a second title with no attempt made to rein in his excesses. The author’s catty tone is amusing, and he gets in all the famous stories about this poisoned love letter to the movies, from Wilder’s instruction to the art director, “Just make it an everyday funeral for the average Hollywood monkey,” to enraged mogul Louis B. Mayer telling the director after the screening, “You should be kicked out of this country, tarred and feathered.” The author displays proper respect for Gloria Swanson’s ferocious incarnation of silent screen queen Norma Desmond and William Holden’s subtle one of cynical but not heartless screenwriter Joe Gillis; he conveys the virtues of Wilder’s script with longtime collaborator Charles Brackett; he give a sense of the shock the movie gave 1950 audiences, separated from silent films and their stars by only as many years as today’s public is from The Godfather. But it’s all so excessive and obsessive—which is probably the point.
Die-hard camp followers will clap furiously; everyone else will be squirming in their seats. (16 pp. b&w photos)Pub Date: May 3, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-27453-X
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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