Vamp, or light shining from a dead star

The most poignant line from Eve Golden's biography of Theda Bara, titled Vamp, is about a fan magazine popularity contest that Bara placed highly in. The magazine called it "The Contest to End All Contests". Golden notes the view of the results that history provides, with notables such as Charlie Chaplin faring poorly while others, today, "are nothing more than obscure names in a faded fan magazine." I think that's the real story of Theda Bara.

Golden had a formidable challenge in writing this biography. Her subject had been dead for decades. She had no children, nor did the sibling to whom she was closest. Bara's spouse had also been long on the other side of the veil when the book came out in the mid-90s. This would be bad enough, but the bulk of Bara's films, including most of her best work, was lost to vault fires long ago. To top it all off, much of what was originally published about Bara in fan magazines...well, it had me re-thinking my stance that PR work is not a creative profession.

She does an admirable job, despite the fact that reliable source material about film's first sex symbol is exceedingly thin on the ground. Unfortunately, though, Golden was left with a skeleton. Much of the book is devoted to recounting the plots of films that have long since burned to a crisp (including big-budget epics "Cleopatra" and "Salome": according to Golden, anyone who could recover a copy of either of those films would never have to work again), and explaining how they were received. How Bara felt about those films, we are clueless. What her experiences were in the dawn of a medium that came to dominate everyday life, we get only sketchy information. (I can surmise it for you: one worked a great deal, did their own hair and makeup, and had their life stories scripted by people who make JK Rowling look unimaginative). Golden tries to build around the concept of the "vamp," but didn't really do it forecfully enough.

This book didn't really give me a lot, but I enjoyed it anyway, despite the fact that I prefer scandalous and tragic Hollywood tales to ones about people who work a lot, then get married and retire from pictures. There's something forlorn about Theda Bara from our perspective. Ninety years ago, she had it all. She was on top of the world, making tons of money, renowned by everyone. Today, her pictures are gone and all that's left of her is the shadowy concept of the "vamp", some remarkable still photos (this book is worth a checkout for the pictures from her epics alone), and the Teddy Bara character in Disney's Country Bear Jamboree.

An early victim of Hollywood

I've mentioned before that I enjoy Hollywood stories with a heavy dose of tragedy and ruin. I also enjoy ones, from time to time, that teach something about how the industry used to be, or some inner working of it that normally doesn't get much attention (no one died of a drug overdose in The Devil's Candy, but it was terrific to learn so much about how films are made). Clara Bow: Runnin' Wild by David Stenn does both. It's not only a portrait of a very tragic Hollywood heroine, but gives some clues as to what it was like in the early days of the film industry.

I got the idea to look for this book by watching the TCM documentary "Moguls and Movie Stars," which chronicles the first 60 or so years of the industry. Clara Bow was briefly mentioned in one of the chapters, how her wild reputation caught up to her and she was forced into retirement well before her 30th birthday. It got me wanting to know more, so when I saw this book at my library, I was all over it.

David Stenn did meticulous research on it, and one feels, did it just in the nick of time. The book came out in the late 1980s. An epilogue tells what became of all the players. In 2010, one can probably say pretty safely that the short answer is "they all died." He was able to conduct a few interviews, access fragile primary sources like fan magazines before they disintegrated, and it's a good thing he did. It's a fascinating story, and one that shouldn't be lost.

Clara Bow came from about the most awful background imaginable. Alcoholic and abusive father, volatile, weak, mentally ill mother who only gave birth to her as a sort of suicide attempt, grinding poverty in a bad part of Brooklyn -- that was Clara's background. In an incident that not only could have been the plot of a film, but I think actually was the plot of several, she won a contest at the age of 16 sponsored by a film magazine, with the first prize being a role in a movie. That was her big break.

Stenn shows her as exploited by nearly everyone around her. The film studios realized almost immediately that she was a huge draw and that she was uneducated, naive and easily taken adavantage of. So they did, working her as hard as they could for as little money as possible. Her father spent the rest of his life both controlling her and sponging off her. Many of the men she was romantically linked with were more interested in headlines than in a relationship.

He also plays up what a big star she was, in a way very different from the megastardom our own fragmented culture has to offer. Most of the country went to the movies every single week during the 1920s. And it was proven over and over that people would go see any piece of shit starring Clara Bow. Stenn says that she was caught in a very odd conundrum: being such a strong draw through her personality, the studios were unwilling to squander a strong script on her, since audiences would turn up to watch her wash dishes for the length of a film. Hers didn't need a good leading actor, a strong plot or anything else, just her. As a result, most of her movies were rather crappy and few survive.

An inside view of the calamity that talkies caused is also a high point of this biography of Bow. Stenn relates how the only man in Paramount Studios who understood sound recording suddenly had his salary increased tenfold and became the most feared and respected man on the lot until Paramount wisely took away his power by getting more people trained. The early technology was cumbersome and overly sensitive and actors had to learn their craft all over again.

Clara suffered from persistent "mike fright" that would tie her tongue even on simple lines. On the set of one of her final films, she breaks down over her inability to read a line after repeated tries, grabs the boom mike and punches it until crew members pry her off, at which point she flees to her trailer and collapses. The line she was trying to say? "You can't do this to us."

There was a great deal of scandal about Clara, too, at a time when that was not tolerated at all. The scandal, her mike fright, and the fact that the studio had pushed her too hard for too many years combined. She did indeed leave film at a young age. She married Rex Bell and had two sons with him, but it turned out that her problems were more serious than overwork and a high-pressure environment. She was diagnosed as a schizophrenic at an inpatient facility. She lived apart from her family with a nurse after that, and died in the 1960s of a heart attack.

I mention this because I thought the denouement was just as interesting as the rest of her story. I'm glad that Stenn went into the amount of detail that he did (there are over 40 pages of notes). It's a lively story, and will join the ranks of the autobiographies of Lana Turner and Lillian Gish for well-told Hollywood tales.

On The Lighter Side: The Return of Lizzie Miller

After finishing two "projects" back-to-back, I wanted something a little lighter. And I had just the thing: The First Assistant, by Clare Naylor and Mimi Hare. I read the original right around this time last year. In re-reading that post, I was a little surprised at all I had to say about chick lit in general. I still think I'm right, I'm just a little surprised that that book was my case study, because I liked it more than I let on.

Lizzie is a little more settled in at her job as First Assistant now. Her former immediate boss has left The Agency to marry their real boss and have his child. Lizzie's still not all that wonderful at her job (the book opens with her admission that she just burned six months worth of filing because she wanted to play Sudoko instead. Oy!), but she enjoys it, for the most part. Things are rocky with her boyfriend Luke (still an asshole), as he's gone more often than he's in town. Lizzie's decided now that she wants to work her own way up the Hollywood ladder and produce. Her friend from the coffee shop screwed her out of a production credit when his movie got signed, but panicked after a bad screening. In one of the funnier scenes in the book, they both visit his agent, completely hammered, and get her reinstated as producer (this is important to the rest of the book).

The best part of the book comes when Lizzie winds up getting "traded" to a hot teen star for an on-location shoot in Thailand. Lizzie's vehemently opposed to going (her boss is getting a rare sports car in exchange) until her current boyfriend appears on the cover of People magazine with who she thought was his ex-girlfriend, in a story about the rekindling of their romance. I was going to say first that Emerald Everhart was obviously supposed to be Britney Spears...then Lindsay Lohan, but depressingly, she could represent any number of young, allegedly "wholesome" teen stars.

Lizzie's first task is to get a drunken, half-naked Emerald to stop stripping on the bar in the first-class airport lounge at 10AM, and it's pretty much all downhill from there. Emerald's an intriguing character. Her sex life and drug use would put the members of Motley Crue to shame, but she also clearly needs boundaries and a genuine friend in her life. She's extremely confused, gets good advice from no one, and needs someone to trust. Lizzie rises admirably to the occasion during her month with Emerald, and it's the part of the book that has the most heart (as well as being the funniest).

The book had a similar bizarre, deus-ex-machina ending as the first one. The Fates set Lizzie up once again for the same kind of hollow success. She gets the surface of everything she wants -- the job and the guy -- but not the reality. It has a seeminly happy ending, but does it really? Will her new job as part of Hollywood's Power Elite make her happier than she was at The Agency? Is she even prepared to take on such a task, given the roundabout way that it came to her? And will her relationship be any better on the second try? I guess we'll have to wait and see if the authors choose to continue Lizzie's saga.

The Suckiest Bunch of Sucks that ever Sucked

I try not to do too much stuff just because someone on Craigslist says to. But someone on Craigslist recommended the book The Devil's Candy by Julie Salamon. I went for it, and ended a very pleasureable week with it last night.

As I read the book, I wondered, what makes a work of nonfiction interesting? On the same library trip, I checked out a biography of Sir Thomas Mallory, author of Le Morte D'Arthur. I read the book in college and enjoyed it greatly, and was interested to know more about the author's life. I figured that since I'd been very interested in Arthurian legend, and liked European history, I'd like the book. Hated it. Abandoned after about 40 pages. This book, on the other hand, is about the making of a movie I didn't see and only dimly remember, based on a book I haven't read. And it held my attention all the way through. I was actually sorry when it ended.

The book is about the making of the 1990 movie "The Bonfire of the Vanities," starring Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith and Bruce Willis and directed by Brian De Palma. Unlike the movie, however, hundreds of other people have major roles in the book. Ann Roth, the wardrobe designer. Eric Schwab, the second unit director, responsible for the scenes in the movie that establish mood. Lucy Fisher, Rob Friedman, and other execs at Warner Brothers. Aimee Morris and the other production assistants. Salamon thoughtfully provides a list of players before her tale even opens, which I found myself referring back to frequently.

Salamon keeps the book interesting by putting real characters into it. As she follows Eric Schwab out onto the airport runway in pursuit of the most spectacular plane landing scene he could film, she also follows the thoughts in his head: his burning ambition, his desire for recognition, his dreams of doing his own picture, so that you see why it matters. You get invested in everyone's petty triumphs and setbacks in the course of making the film. You're happy for Aimee Morris, who earns a promotion from production assistant to Brian De Palma's personal assistant. You cheer for Schwab when he gets his shot and wins a $100 bet with De Palma that he could never film a plane landing innovative enough to make the final cut of the movie. You feel De Palma's frustration at not being able to find the courtroom he needs for the movie's pivotal scene. And you're pissed at the studio for shutting down the New York production and moving it to Los Angeles where they had more control. Yet, when you hear the decision from their angle, it makes sense too.
This book is a good look at how movies are actually made. If you've ever wondered just what a grip does, or what exactly is the responsibility of the production designer, this book will explain it better than any of those "Who Does What in the Movies" types of books. It explores the millions of decisions that have to be made on every single shot (day or night? how many people in the background? what kind of weather? what will the hair look like? makeup? clothing? how about on the background people?). You can see where $40 million dollars could go. You may even be amazed that it's not a whole lot more.

Bonfire flopped. I'm not ruining the ending by telling you that, even if you don't remember on your own. The title of the last chapter is "You've gotta be a genius to make a movie this bad", and you can feel the book building towards a less-than-satisfactory finished product. The book made me want to see for myself, so I rented the movie the other night. I fell asleep before the end, but I didn't like it much. I thought Tom Hanks was a total nonentity in his role. He was supposed to be a shallow, venal bond trader and philanderer. He came off like a stick of vanilla. The movie was slow-moving, but funny at parts. And yet, I could see its potential. Eric Schwab's opening skyline shot from the Chrysler Building was breathtaking, as was his sunset Concorde landing. I liked the way the trading room floor was shot, with the distortion around the edges, and the deal scene shot from overhead ("from the perspective of a true Master of the Universe.") It was a good bad movie.

It was hard to tell the true moral of this story. The problems with the film didn't seem to be easy to lay at the feet of any one individual. It was more like a stacking effect. And maybe also bad timing: the book was supposed to be the definitive 80s satire, and yet the movie came out as that era was ending. It was too early to be a period piece, too late to feel contemporary. Salamon alluded to problems with adaptation, as well: how the book had an edginess that would be difficult to translate to the big screen. Tom Wolfe had minimal involvement in the film project, and once it was released, stayed diplomatic. Maybe involving the author more would've saved it.

Or maybe not. This movie should've been a winner, packed with big-name actors, based on a best-selling novel, with an excellent director. They tested it several times and re-edited based on the results, and it still flopped, grossing only 15.4 million over 45 days. I came to appreciate what a tricky business it is to forecast what people will like. Even with all of Hollywood's research methods, they still get it wrong -- frequently. Not true for Salamon. She wrote an excellent book about moviemaking, and I recommend it. I don't know how much of it still holds true, but I'd love to see her write another similar book if she hasn't already, now that it's been nearly 20 years.

One from the archives

Well, I've mentioned before my love for Motley Crue's autobiography, The Dirt. It's time to finally post about it!

I am not a big fan of The Gilmore Girls, but I have watched it from time to time. Lorelei had a fine explanation of this book: "It's like, just when you think you've read the most disgusting thing, they come up with something else." That's a pretty fair explanation. If they were to film this book as written, it'd get an NC-17 for sure, for large amounts of sex scenes, heavy drug use, snorting of ants, drug-fueled violence, depiction of a telephone inserted into a girl's vagina while another girl talked on it, depictions of urination in a bar, multiple drug overdoses, and other things I won't mention since I don't want this blog to be NC-17.

The book is told in all four of their voices. Each of the bandmates (Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, Nikki Sixx, and Vince Neil) take turns narrating their tale from their own perspective. Sometimes, other guys (like their producer, their manager, and the guy they hired to replace Vince Neil when he quit) get to talk. But mostly, it's the band. The bones of it are the traditional Hollywood story: the early years, when they all share a shithole apartment and play every gig that comes their way; the big success where they get record deals, women, private jets and everything; the personal descent into drugs and alcohol; hitting bottom; then clawing their way back.
Motley Crue is a little different in that they've done this cycle a couple of times.

One thing about this book, and probably the reason I like it so much, is that it's honest. They say, straight up: "The reason we drank and drugged so much is that we thought it was fun." They don't try too much to rationalize their mistakes. They talk about cheating on their wives and girlfriends, fighting with each other, destroying property at hotels, the whole nine yards. They're also honest about other, harder things. Mick Mars has suffered from a rare degenerative disease called ankylosing spondylitis since he was in his twenties. The disease limits his motion and has condemned him to live in crippling pain. He never revealed it until this book. Vince Neil talked about two deaths that hit him hard: that of a friend of his in the 1980s, which he himself caused by driving drunk; and the cancer death of his three-year old daughter. Tommy Lee described his version of what happened between him and Pamela Anderson that caused him to go to jail for spousal abuse. And Nikki Sixx opened up about his painful upbringing and its influence on the rest of his life.

I don't want you to think that these guys wind up looking good. With the exception of Mick Mars, they really don't, and I would say Mick Mars looks more like a tragic figure than "good". But with the heavy population of drug dealers, strippers, groupies, mud wrestlers (yes, Vince Neil's ex-wife), drug addicts, sleazy record business types, cops, judges, rehab counselors, and loudmouthed fellow musicians in this book, and with the four larger-than-life narrators, it's a good time. Motley Crue, as they themselves would admit, have always been about fun, cheap entertainment. I don't think they're doing too much of that with their music anymore, but the book provides quite a bit of that.

From vaudeville to late-night video

For some reason, I've always loved Hollywood tales, true or not. I've read several biographies of Marilyn Monroe, each with their own theory about how she died, from murder to a mishap involving enemas, sleeping pills, lack of fluids and overwork. I read Lillian Gish's account of the dawn of the moving picture, back when the concept of close-ups and feature-length films were new. I enjoyed Lana Turner's autobiography, as well as seamier stuff like that of Tatum O'Neal and Danny Bonaduce. In fact, I still have a booklet I received in my Easter basket as a child, published by one of the tabloid magazines and called "Hollywood Mysteries," where I first learned the stories of the Black Dahlia, the unsolved murder of Thelma Todd, the mysterious death of the first Superman (whose real name I don't remember), etc.

So when I saw Niagara Falls All Over Again, a novel by Elizabeth McCracken, I decided to check it out. This novel follows the careers of the fictional comedy team Carter and Sharp, told from the perspective of straight man Mose (or Mike, as he's known professionally) Sharp, from vaudeville to movies, radio and television.

The story makes the typical arc of any show-biz tale. There are the early years, full of struggle and optimism. The future icons have nothing but dreams and hopes. They work hard, travel a lot, sacrifice all material comfort in pursuit of their ambition. Then, the big break comes. They ride high, they get all the material comforts they want and then some. This period cannot last, though, and then there's the long fall from grace, often fueled by drugs and alcohol. If it's an autobiography, it usually ends with the main character getting clean and vowing (if not actually succeeding in) a comeback. If it's a biography, that usually means that the subject didn't survive, and died of an OD, often in a run-down hotel room, or the beat-up Chevy in which they were forced to live.

The end of Carter and Sharp's tale is free from that particular melodrama. Rather, it ends with the more mundane issues that dissolve the partnerships, careers and attachments of an average person. One person changed while the other one didn't. Committments to home and family take over committments to friends. One person starts to feel taken advantage of, which makes the other one defensive. There's alcohol and infidelity involved, but it plays a secondary role.

There aren't really a lot of novels on male relationships. I guess there's something in our culture that makes it almost impossible for straight men to admit they love one another, although women are free to declare their love for their female friends without having their sexuality questioned in the least. That was one thing I enjoyed about this book. Despite the fact that their partnership doesn't end on the best note, Mose isn't shy about proclaiming his love for his larger-than-life partner, who he still misses well into his eighties.

Vaudeville is fading from our collective memory. There aren't many performers left who got their start that way. Those that did, like Gracie Allen and George Burns, or Laurel and Hardy, belong to a whole other generation, existing in the collective subconscious (as Mose points out Carter and Sharp did) only as answers to crossword puzzles, or names on DVDs in Wal-Mart's dollar bin. The early chapters of the book introduce it to the generations like my own, whose grandparents didn't even get to see vaudeville live. You get to experience the surreal quality to the acts (like the one-legged contortionist), the sweat and hard work, the impermanence of it all (Mose goes from replacing a straight man who left the industry, to stepping in for anyone who was sick, and gets his big break stepping in for a straight man who was too drunk that night to go on -- virtually none of it under his own name).

That's always been one of my favorite things about fiction: the way it can preserve the past like nothing else can. Museums can save the material pieces of the past. Documentarians can describe what the past was like. But a good novel, like Niagara Falls all over again, can actually take you there.

Hollywood Gold

A while back, I recommended The Dirt by Motley Crue as the ultimate rock n' roll autobiography. I would like to make a similar recommendation for Lana Turner's autobiography for anyone who is interested in a slice of life during the Golden Age of Hollywood. I finished it today -- as you can imagine, it's not a terribly time-consuming read -- and enjoyed it a great deal, yes, even before I got to the murder.

Everybody shows up for roll call: Bob Hope, Betty Grable, Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, Tyrone Power, Artie Shaw, Louis Mayer, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford -- I mean, everybody. Lana takes the reader on the whole journey: How she got discovered (not quite how the legend went, but similar); how she rose to stardom; the inside story of each of her seven marriages and her numerous love affairs.

And above all else, the sacrifices she made to stay at the top, and the realities of life under the studio system. One of the most heartbreaking moments of the book was when she discovered she was pregnant with Tyrone Power's child. She desperately wanted the child, and in her account, Power seemed pleased when she told him. Power was not yet divorced from his wife, although the marriage had been effectively over for some time. Having the child would've risked both of their careers. As she put it, "I'd be publicly branded a whore, and I'd never work again." So she had the abortion. Her relationship with Power ended shortly after that.

The thing that made her book enjoyable to read was that it was very clear who was writing it. Although she undoubtedly had assistance in writing it (the book is copyrighted to Eltee Productions Inc. and Hollis Alpert), her personality comes shining through in anecdotes about how her hip mannequin was the smallest at the studio ("Greer Garson's was the largest, but she is a tall woman.") and how she always insisted on wearing real jewels in her movies.

Her personality (like most of us, I suppose) is confusing and contradictory at times. She describes in terrifying detail how Johnny Stompanato threatened her life and her family's life, how he stalked her relentlessly, even finagaling his way into a vacation to Acapulco she'd planned for herself. She couldn't break away from him or call for help. Yet, she had no qualms about drawing the line in her professional life. She was originally supposed to appear opposite Jimmy Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder but wanted control over her wardrobe. The director of the film called her up and cursed her out, so she called the studio and said she wouldn't stand for that and was quitting the film. She mentioned that she was concerned over the publicity, but even she acknowleged that wasn't the whole reason and there was something else that allowed her to keep getting duped and caught up in abusive relationships that were based on deceit (Johnny Stompanato hadn't even given her his real name; she found out Artie Shaw had been married twice before after she'd been with him for nearly two months already; her last husband asked for a loan, then disappeared with the money).

Clearly, this one won't go on the shelf between Great Expectations and Crime and Punishment. But if any of you are plannign vacations soon (either the mental kind or the kind where your whole self gets to go), Lana: The Lady, The Legend, The Truth would be a good one to have along.

The Sad Tale of Tatum

Well, I finished the first of my library books last night. The pitifully titled A Paper Life, by Tatum O'Neal, was an engrossing, fast read. I remembered her primarily as the woman on "Sex in the City" who wouldn't reimburse Carrie for the Manolos that got stolen at her baby-welcome party, so it was interesting to me to learn about her early career, and how she was the youngest Academy Award winner ever.

Her private life, however, was devastating. Both her father, Ryan O'Neal, and her husband, tennis player John McEnroe, were controlling, tempermental, abusive, jealous men. Since she was very young when she got married, she basically went from one to the other. It's become a truism that childhood stardom ruins the child for life. People cite Danny Bonaduce and Gary Coleman as prime examples. But in Tatum's case, her movie work was actually a positive influence: it got her away from her family, put her in contact with more sympathetic adults, and gave her some sense of self-worth. You can, however, feel her own sense of failed potential, as her childhood success didn't carry over to her adult years.

Tatum's book ends on a positive note. She says that she has worked hard to come to some sort of peace with her father, her ex-husband and her children, and that she is now clean and sober. IMDB shows her hard at work, too, mostly in television shows.

But the thing about celebrity autobiographies is that the final chapter hasn't yet been written. Danny Bonaduce's book ended much the same way, yet I recently saw a promo for a reality series that has him coming to terms -- yet again -- with his substance abuse problems. The Motley Crue book ends with three of the four original band members in stable relationships (all except Tommy). I don't know what happened to Nikki Sixx, but I did see that Mick Mars' girlfriend from the end of that book is suing him, and the girl with Vince on "Remaking Vince Neil" was definitely not the same woman he married towards the end of the book.

Yet after reading all this, I'm rooting for Tatum. I hope she goes on to some kind of success. Only time will tell, I guess.