Tag Archives: Hollywood

Bang, You’re It: Scandal in Babylon

28 Monday Feb 2022

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Review: Scandal in Babylon, by Barbara Hambly
Severn, 2021. 233 pp. $27

Camille de la Rose, screen name of Kitty Flint, is the Hollywood “It” girl (a term just come into vogue) of 1924. She couldn’t act her way out of a wet paper bag, or so thinks her sister-in-law and personal assistant, Emma Blackstone. But that hardly matters. Wherever Kitty goes, whatever she does, her style’s inimitable, and she’s good box office, of course, both on and off the screen.

The 1927 Paramount film that made the phrase “It girl” popular, derived from an Elinor Glyn novel (courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

A single glance can render the sexiest men in Hollywood putty in her hands. Burning the candle at both ends, she arrives on set made up to kill, after four hours’ sleep and much alcohol — who cares about Prohibition, anyway? Trouble is, she doesn’t know when to stop, even after snagging the studio head as her lover and a half-dozen other fellows, more than one of whom might suffer from jealousy.

However, Kitty does get down to work, shooting Empress of Babylon, a cast-of-thousands extravaganza, an improbable drama, yet a fine vehicle for her skills. Unfortunately, a man who married her when she was fifteen is found shot dead in her dressing room, carrying a note from her in his pocket.

Emma — remember the sister-in-law? — believes Kitty, who swears she hasn’t seen her ex in years, though it’s just possible he’s technically not her ex, since the divorce may not have been filed. (That lapse might cause problems, considering that Kitty married someone else afterward, though he’s long gone by now.) Nevertheless, Kitty has no convincing explanation for her whereabouts at the time the murder took place, and though it’s ridiculous to accuse her on the face of it, just what she was up to provides yet another mystery.

The police, gossip columnists, and evangelicals looking to sanitize Hollywood seldom agree on anything, but they’d all love to see a star brought low, whether to nurse their resentment or advance their careers. Kitty looks trapped. Even so, a circumstance sticks out. Since the killing appears a clumsy job, almost amateurish — surely, the accusation against her couldn’t stand up in court —Emma suspects that the criminal wishes above all to embarrass Kitty, and that the amateurishness serves a purpose. But what goal could it have? And who would go to all that trouble, and why?

Scandal in Babylon makes a delightful, well-plotted mystery, with enough unexpected edges to keep you turning the pages. Chief among these is sleuth Emma, a widow because of the Great War and an intellectual among the studio Philistines. English to the teeth — several male characters call her “Duchess” — she read classics at Oxford, has a Latin quote for every occasion, and loved participating in digs with her late father, an archaeologist.

When she’s not tending Kitty’s three Pekinese or cleaning up after the star’s messes (physical or diplomatic), she’s charming thugs who might have information about the murder, rewriting scenes a day ahead of filming, and bemoaning the anachronisms the studio inflicts on history. No, she sighs to herself, imperial Roman statuary could not have appeared in ancient Babylon.

This is all great fun, as is the portrayal of the California version of Babylon, with its gangsters, private detectives, studio fixers determined to keep their employer’s reputation clean at any cost, extras, seducers and seductresses, and, at its pinnacle, the star. Here’s Kitty on the movie set, dealing with a brazen invasion by gossip columnist Thelma Turnbit:

As the journalist extended an arm to catch Dirk Silver [Kitty’s costar] by the elbow, Kitty rose with the fluid grace of a dancer and intercepted her, purring, ‘Thelma, darling!’ Her natural baby-coo transmuted seamlessly to the smoky purr of a man-eater who had, over the past four years, devoured the hearts of two dozen cinematic fools for breakfast. She slipped an arm through that of Mrs. Turnbit, and turned her radiant smile upon the approaching guard and the prop man’s assistant.… Her gesture of thanks towards the director was a miniature miracle of gratitude and stubbornness…

I’d have liked to know more about Madge, the leather-lunged director of this celluloid epic. It’s clear she’s got a story, as a woman in what was then a man’s job. I also find Zal, wizard cameraman and Emma’s love interest, too good to be true. Unlike just about every other male in Hollywood, he’s warm, open, kind, sensitive, and not even a blood corpuscle’s worth jealous or territorial. But the other characters work well enough, and the novel rests chiefly on the atmosphere, often hilarious, and the well-tuned story, in which Hambly keeps raising the stakes.

Scandal in Babylon is a hoot and a well-crafted mystery, and I enjoyed it.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

A Way of Seeing: The Electric Hotel

12 Monday Apr 2021

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Review: The Electric Hotel, by Dominic Smith
FSG, 2019. 352 pp. $18

In 1962, Claude Ballard lives in a once-fashionable Los Angeles residential hotel, among old film containers and equipment and memories of a difficult, yet stimulating, past. A long-forgotten (fictional) film director whose magnum opus was The Electric Hotel, shown only once, in 1910, Claude lives out his days taking neighborhood walks with camera in hand and keeping a benevolent eye on a neighbor, a former silent film star whose memory and understanding of her surroundings often desert her.

Into Claude’s quiet, measured existence wanders Martin Embry, an academic field historian writing his dissertation, who takes one look at the director’s apartment and wants to know if the celluloid in those canisters has been developed and preserved. Actually, he takes one whiff and realizes they haven’t, for the decomposing film gives off a strong odor, like vinegar, which Claude has never noticed. That shocks him and makes him more receptive when Martin tries to persuade him to loan him the films that can still be salvaged in the laboratory. Just as important, he coaxes the hermit to recount his life story; it’s as though Claude suddenly realizes that he’s been gathering dust and doesn’t have to.

And what a story, from a lonely youth in Alsace — Claude’s French, by birth — in which his mother died of smallpox when he was quite young. Claude nearly succumbs himself, and afterward, when his vision falters — “the edges of objects began to slowly quake and fringe” — the village doctor sends him to a specialist:

… Claude emerged with a wire frame prescription wrapped behind his ears and it was suddenly as if he’d swum to the surface of a very deep lake. The world rushed back in as the coppered edge of an October leaf, the crinoline hem of his teacher’s skirt, the yellow-white flange of a chanterelle mushroom on his father’s foraging table… He was a diver emerging from the murky, myopic depths into a bell jar of crystalline edges and forms.

That’s exactly the same impression Claude has when, years later in Paris, he watches the first moving pictures of his life. The Lumière brothers, pioneers known today mostly to ardent cinephiles, create minute-long films of everyday life — a bus traveling down the street, people in a crowd. From that moment, Claude knows his life mission. Not only does he want to learn about and make films, he wants to see and record life the way the Lumières do. A shy, withdrawn person who expects no one to notice him, for him, this is true adventure.

Marcellin Auzolle’s 1896 publicity poster for a Lumière brothers comic film, L’Arroseur arrosé (The Waterer Watered), showing the astonished, enthralled audience (courtesy moah.org/exhibits/archives/movies/movie _theatres_p.html; public domain in the United States)

The Electric Hotel requires a reader’s patience, for the narrative takes a while to get places, portraying Claude’s career, associates, and obsessive love for Sabine Montrose, a French actress who stars in his films. But every time I asked myself if I really wanted to continue reading, once I started, I got lost in the story. It’s not just the writing, which often leaps off the page. Nor is it the fascinating detail about making movies back in the old days–and Smith means old, before any of the silent-film stars commonly discussed today got their start (Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, or Mary Pickford, to name a few).

The tale of how Claude and his friends film The Electric Hotel, which occupies the bulk of the novel, involves a Siberian tiger, a dirigible, an impossible leading lady, and a cameo appearance by a grasping, self-involved Thomas Edison. Equally important, the novel portrays a forgotten time and place. As always, people crave novelty, wish to be entertained, even to be shocked. But after they see Claude’s films, they may resent them afterward, because their attraction to the images tells them something about themselves they’d have preferred not to know.

So too with Claude, who tries to hide behind the camera, even into old age, to avoid facing his past. But the past never leaves — it’s all there, whether on celluloid or in meaning—and he’s a casualty.

Most of the characters come through fully, at least the important ones; other than Claude and Sabine, I particularly like Chip Spalding, the Australian stunt man who covers himself with grease and sets himself on fire. However, several lesser figures remain faceless, and I wish the narrative had paid more attention to them, rather than include certain sequences that contribute very little. I especially wonder about a long First World War segment in Belgium, which, though well told, seems utterly superfluous (and bears little resemblance to any historical facts I know, or even possibilities).

Nevertheless, The Electric Hotel may beguile you as a tale of a bygone era, evoking passionate excitement over a way of seeing that hadn’t existed before—and which we now take for granted.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Two Shot: The Girls in the Picture

20 Monday Jan 2020

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Review: The Girls in the Picture, by Melanie Benjamin
Delacorte, 2018. 415 pp. $28

When would-be artist Frances Marion flees San Francisco for Los Angeles in 1914, the last thing she anticipates is falling in with the crowd of hopefuls knocking on the doors of those who produce “flickers,” as movies are popularly called. But Frances catches the bug too, and in a great stroke of luck, gains an introduction to Mary Pickford, the most beloved actress in America, who also has artistic control over her films. Luckier still, Mary and Frances take to one another on sight, and a famous partnership begins. With Marion as her screenwriter, Pickford will go on to even more dazzling heights, playing young girls in her famous blond curls and rosebud lips.

Director Marshall Neilan (far left), star Mary Pickford, screenwriter Frances Marion, September 1917, photographer unknown (courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Frances’s first look at Hollywood may be idealized, but it sets the stage for what follows:

Far from being a barren cow town, the place seemed drenched in color, crimson and gold and purple and white flowers spilling out of every window box, embracing every streetlamp. I couldn’t stop gazing at the tall pepper trees, with their languid, lacy green leaves dripping with clusters of red berries, providing much-needed shade from a sun that rarely found a cloud behind which to hide — something this native San Franciscan thought she would never find tiresome. Orange groves dominated the mountainous landscape that sloped to the beckoning sea, the air so perfumed that I immediately craved the sweet, tangy fruit that I’d never really cared for before.

Naturally, La-La Land can’t remain milk and honey forever, with such large egos, salaries, and audiences in which to bask. And that is by no means the whole picture. As women at the peaks of their respective professions, Pickford and Marion become easy targets for jealousy and slander, with others waiting — hoping — for their fall, men in particular. The two friends often talk about such conniving men and vow they’ll never let a man come between them. Famous last words.

However, it’s not just the man-child Douglas Fairbanks who splits the friendship when he marries Mary, and whose powers of jealous manipulation know no limit. Within a few years, the advent of talkies overturns the silent screen, casting out those performers who can’t cope in the new medium (or are perceived incapable of it). Further, as producers consolidate their power—and the industry—they retain artistic control and subjugate their hired talent, women especially.

This history both enlivens The Girls in the Picture and undoes it. I like the behind-the-scenes action that describes how movies are made, for both the silent and sound eras. I’m also glad to learn how the studio system today got its start, and the how its rampant sexism has very old roots. But these events and themes, significant though they are, fail here to make a novel.

The narrative, though talky enough, rests on simplistic characterizations that bounce between two poles instead of bumping up against edges. In almost any scene, the reader may ask, will Mary be the girl who never had a proper childhood, and who grasps at her popularity to prop her up? Or will the generous, sensitive adult shine through for her friend Frances, with whom she shares an artistic outlook and ardent feminist sensibilities? As facts and viewpoints repeat themselves, the conflict plays out from A to B and back.

The story also seems too simple. Love happens at first sight, and so does hatred. Conflict lasts a few paragraphs, and just when you think, Now, we’re getting somewhere, the rift resolves somehow. Benjamin offers the “no,” but not the “furthermore,” maybe because the story must move on to the next script, the next year. Round about page 260, the threat that Fairbanks poses to the women’s friendship emerges, and for a while, the trouble percolates and deepens. But for some reason, Frances, who’s capable of holding her own with just about anybody, can never manage with Mary. Benjamin, who says that she has made up all the dialogue, seems unable to let her stars go.

Some of these problems may have to do with biographical fiction and its constraints, but there are other, more successful approaches to Hollywood, as with The Chaperone, about Louise Brooks, a lesser silent film star. The Girls in the Picture aspires to a more panoramic view, which is fine; in a different framework, that might work. But despite a large cast, this novel stays a two shot, Pickford and Marion, which poses limits, and their long internal monologues feel predictable and repetitive, especially Pickford’s. As for color, the cameos the jacket promises are similarly flat, except for that of the entirely self-absorbed lech, Louis B. Mayer.

The Girls in the Picture has whetted my interest in reading about early Hollywood history, so I’ll say that. If that’s what you’re looking for, maybe this book is for you; but I can’t recommend it as a novel.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Resurrecting Oz: Finding Dorothy

30 Monday Sep 2019

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Review: Finding Dorothy, by Elizabeth Letts
Ballantine, 2019. 351 pp. $28

In October 1938, Maud Baum has a mission to undertake in Hollywood, and since she’s seventy-eight, she presents an odd picture to security guards and receptionists. But those who underestimate Maud do so at their peril, for not only has she learned a thing or two in her long life about effecting change, her mother was a charismatic activist for feminist causes, especially suffrage. More important to the reason Maud lays siege to M-G-M, she’s L. Frank Baum’s widow — he, who penned the book whose film version is in production, The Wizard of Oz.

And as she begins her quest, this is what she sees:

It was a city within a city, a textile mill to weave the gossamer of fantasy on looping looms of celluloid. From the flashing needles of the tailors in the costume shop to the zoo where the animals were trained, from the matzo ball soup in the commissary to the blinding-white offices in the brand-new Thalberg executive building, an army of people — composers and musicians, technicians and tinsmiths, directors and actors — spun thread into gold. Once upon a time, dreams were made by hand, but now they were mass-produced. These forty-four acres were their assembly line.

Maud wants to be sure that this factory won’t destroy the work into which her late husband put his heart and soul — and, as the reader eventually learns, constituted his only professional success in a lifetime filled with disappointments. And what should Maud find when she visits the M-G-M soundstage, but a girl too old to play Dorothy singing a song about a rainbow? This not only does damage to her beloved husband’s opus, it will, Maud believes, betray the millions of children who love the original.

From this ingenious premise comes an intriguing, occasionally uneven but ultimately satisfying novel, written with wisdom and a sure hand. Letts splits her narrative in two, one half for the movie in production, and the other, for Maud’s childhood and subsequent marriage to Frank. Throughout, the author delivers a strong feminist message, which comes to the fore when she crashes the studio. Those scenes focus on Judy Garland, still only fifteen when the filming starts, and oppressed from all sides. She’s got a horrible mother who treats her like a dollar sign; an assistant producer who molests her; a commissary that, on studio orders, won’t let her eat anything but cottage cheese and lettuce, for fear she will grow and then really look too old for the part; and diet pills she must take, which give her insomnia, for which she takes another set of pills.

Publicity photo of Judy Garland for the 1939 film (as a publicity photo, with no recognized photographer and originally intended for wide distribution, such images are widely considered public domain; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

But Judy also has Maud, though she doesn’t realize it yet, because that kind old lady knows a victim when she sees one and can’t walk away. Maud’s license to be a gadfly lacks the necessary signatures, and the executives running this horror show periodically try to shut her out. Why, then, does she continue, and how does she manage to?

The key lies in Maud’s past, invariably bound up with the original models for Dorothy, Auntie Em, the Emerald City, the Wizard, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and, yes, Toto too. To Maud, these autobiographical bits mean much more than a past life, representing intense emotional experiences. Though I prefer the studio narrative, with credible portrayals of Yip Harburg, the lyricist, and Louis B. Mayer, the second m in M-G-M, Letts does well to show why Maud looks after Judy and refuses to take no for an answer. Also, though not an Oz aficionado, and as someone who likes the book better than the movie, I still appreciate the revelations about Baum’s sources for his characters, especially because Letts resists the temptation to overplay them. What could have been a wink-wink-nudge-nudge routine feels more natural and earned.

I wish Letts had shown more and told less, and that the prose rose more often to the level quoted above. Also, I don’t quite believe certain plot points, especially how easily Maud penetrates the studio, though I accept Letts’s assertion that she has stuck strictly to the historical record, which is pretty remarkable in itself, since history doesn’t always make good fiction. (One nit about the afterword: I wish she’d mentioned Yip Harburg’s most famous other songs, like “April in Paris,” “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” or “Paper Moon,” not just his other musical, about Amelia Bloomer.) Even so, I salute Finding Dorothy, which tells an unusual, worthwhile story.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Costume Drama: Design for Dying

16 Monday May 2016

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Review: Design for Dying, by Renee Patrick
Forge, 2016. 317 pp. $25

A young woman lies shot dead in an alley. You’ve heard that one before. But this time, it’s Hollywood, 1937, and the victim, “who’d rather live high for a few weeks than low for a lifetime,” was wearing a gown and jewelry filched from the Paramount Pictures wardrobe.

Sunseet Boulevard, Hollywood, 1937 (Courtesy losangelespast.com via oac.cdlib.org)

Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, 1937 (Courtesy losangelespast.com via oac.cdlib.org)

In case you’re not a walking encyclopedia of the silver screen, let me inform you that the wardrobe mistress at Paramount back then was little-known Edith Head, later to become the most famous name in film costume. But now, she’s on the verge of being fired, and if the studio were looking for evidence against her, the scandal attached to this murder could be Exhibit A.

However, Miss Head isn’t alone. Lillian Frost, a star-struck New Yorker who came West for a screen test and has settled for a job as a department store clerk, was the dead woman’s roommate for awhile. Not that she liked Ruby Carroll much–many people didn’t–but Lillian found her fascinating, and still does. Moreover, she’s missing a brooch, given her by her late mother, and suspects that Ruby stole it. So when the police pull Lillian in for questioning, causing a stir at the women’s millinery counter, she does her best to persuade Detective Morrow to let her see the jewelry her former roommate died wearing. The brooch isn’t there, but she recognizes the dress from The Return of Sophie Lang, a movie she’s seen. That leads to Paramount Pictures, and–you guessed it–Lillian convinces the good detective to let her come along for the ride.

Right away, Edith Head impresses her as a professional woman who knows exactly who she is and what she was meant for:

She wore a shirtwaist dress the color of fresh buttermilk, a pattern of pale green leaves scattered across the fabric. Her petite frame should have been overwhelmed by the print but something about her bearing balanced it perfectly. . . . Her dark hair was cut into a bob, sharp bangs in a ruler-straight line above eyes that moved past lively to ferocious. . . . As her gaze swept over me I had the sense of my measure being taken, both ruthlessly and accurately. I straightened my spine, and could have sworn the woman nodded in approval.

It’s a wonderful partnership, and Lillian revels in it, not least for the free fashion advice. But I do have two objections to this clever novel, and I’ll get them over with now. There’s no way on earth, not even the movies, that Lillian would have ready access to the apartment she once shared with Ruby after the murder. The police would have gone through the place, sealed it, and, if necessary, posted a guard. All the evidence would have been swept up, and there would have been nothing more for Lillian to do. Likewise, the police wouldn’t have tolerated her presence (never mind her interference) while investigating the case.

Nevertheless, if you can overlook these flaws, and the occasional melodrama, you’re in for a treat. To begin with, Renee Patrick (a pseudonym for a husband-and-wife team) has Hollywood down pat–the preening, the cut-throat competition thinly veiled behind toothy smiles and air kisses, the jockeying for position, the narcissistic obsession with who might be watching and whether they’ll applaud. Is a friend really a friend, or someone looking for an advantage? That’s the question Lillian must constantly ask herself. It’s part of the mystery, which, outside of the implausible procedure, is very well done, sometimes in parody of the Hollywood genre.

The capsule descriptions can be very funny: “His slicked-back hair and thin mustache aimed for sophistication but only emphasized he had the flat, pie-plate eyes of a carnival huckster.” The dialogue offers plenty of thrust and riposte, with a chuckle on many a page. The Hollywood cameo appearances include Preston Sturges, Bob Hope, and, most memorably, Barbara Stanwyck.

But Edith Head outshines them all, perceptive to nuance and conscious of detail, just as a designer would be. Besides, she makes a terrific mentor for Lillian, who’s plainly too smart to remain a store clerk forever. And even if you don’t know anything about fashion, it’s fun to watch Miss Head at work.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Rumors of His Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated: Sundance

18 Thursday Jun 2015

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Review: Sundance: A Novel, by David Fuller
Riverhead, 2014. 338 pp. $28

In this suspenseful, thoroughly enjoyable tale, Harry Longbaugh, aka the Sundance Kid, didn’t really die in Bolivia in 1908. How could he have? He was serving twelve years in a Wyoming prison for armed robbery, dreaming of a reunion with his beloved wife, Etta, from whom he hasn’t heard in two years. So when he’s finally released in 1913, he sets out to find her, unsure whether she even loves him still.

The Sundance Kid and his wife, Etta Place, in 1901 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

The Sundance Kid and his wife, Etta Place, in 1901 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Trouble is, he’s a free man barely an hour when a seventeen-year-old kid provokes him into a duel. Naturally, Longbaugh’s quicker on the draw. Naturally, the boy’s death brings the local law after Harry. And just as naturally, when Harry traces Etta to New York City, a detective much smarter than the local Wyoming law follows him.

Shortly after Harry reaches New York, he gathers that Etta’s also on the run, but not from the law. Actually, it’s worse: Her political activities have made powerful enemies, including the Black Hand, a mafioso ring operating in Little Italy. Harry doesn’t know what to make of his wife’s social conscience and the new life she’s led during the past two years.

But that’s not all that’s changed:

 

He had heard of motorcars while inside, but seeing one in person made him keenly aware of the things he had missed. He was entering the world anew. He thought he heard the jingle of harness and clop of horseshoes as the motorcar passed, clearly his imagination, then was surprised when a horse and wagon came around behind him. Surprised, but also relieved. The old world was not quite banished, but it had certainly eroded.

 

Harry has seen electric lights before, but not the profusion that illumines New York. Trolleys, elevated trains, subway tunnels, and skyscrapers earn his admiration; I loved the scene in which he travels to the top of a skyscraper under construction. There are billboards and stores devoted entirely to men’s clothes, if you can believe that–the notion takes him aback–but certain things never change. Ever the honorable outlaw, he foils a pickpocket ring in the act and returns the bag of missing wallets and jewelry to their astonished, grateful owners. (Right afterward, Harry reappears at the scene, dressed in his new city duds, but nobody recognizes him, because he’s no longer a cowboy–a clever touch.)

I like that scene, which is more than just a bravura performance by our hero. Fuller means to show how Harry represents the decline of the Old West (and our romantic notions of it), while being self-consciously aware that he and his kind have ridden off into the sunset. But that’s where Sundance confuses me, because everything about it is romantic, so much so that the subtitle, A Novel, is misleading. It’s more like a typical Hollywood movie in which the characters are all one way or all another, so the conflict isn’t between complex people. Rather, it’s an opposition of single traits or ideas–evil versus good, justice versus exploitation, treachery versus integrity. And yet, Fuller has much to say about the Progressive Era that feels like politicking–labor conditions, women’s rights, disarmament, radical movements–which seems out of place in this context.

Harry’s an extraordinary guy. He can charm just about anyone, slip into and out of a building like a ghost, give expert marital advice, and is a remarkably quick study for things he doesn’t have a clue about. He’s even a dab hand at modern art. You’d never know he’d spent twelve years in prison–his psyche seems remarkably sound, without a drop of bitterness–and he’s a thoroughly honorable man. He’s a character to root for, and you keep reading just to see what amazing feat he’ll perform next. But he’s not a real person.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed reading Sundance (and couldn’t get the movie theme song out of my head). Fuller tells a tense story. He writes well, beautifully at times. He does shoehorn historical references into the narrative, especially toward the (not quite believable) end. I also wish he didn’t alternate stretches of dialogue in which you can’t tell who’s speaking with others in which he explains the characters’ motives, as if they weren’t already clear. But despite its charms, Sundance would have been much better had Fuller decided either to tell a tall tale or a realistic novel, and go at that whole hog.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

This Side of Purgatory: West of Sunset

11 Monday May 2015

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Review: West of Sunset, by Stewart O’Nan
Penguin, 2015. 289 pp. $28.
I’ve never been able to read about addictions. I have thin tolerance for masochism, an issue that cuts to the bone with me, without having to find it in the bottle, the racetrack, or various crystalline powders. I have zero tolerance for addicts who beat up their spouses, friends, or anyone else, let alone themselves, so presenting them as sympathetic fictional characters is a tough sell. Recently, I put aside The Temporary Gentleman (nominated for the Sir Walter Scott Prize), by the splendid writer Sebastian Barry, because I couldn’t imagine how anyone would waste time on the protagonist, a violent, irresponsible drunk.

Arthur Bryant's sketch of F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1921 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the United States).

Arthur Bryant’s sketch of F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1921 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the United States).

However, West of Sunset calls my bluff. It’s about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last years, spent in Hollywood, where he tries to pay back his debts, stay ahead of his crippling expenses, and restore his self-respect. Even if you don’t know the story, you can guess that Hollywood is the last place to find redemption, especially for a writer who considers himself an artist. Double that if said writer destroys himself with pills washed down with alcohol.

A familiar story this is. Yet I can’t resist Fitzgerald, whom I put above any American writer of his generation. For depth, for psychological acuity, for prose–which, at its effortless best, feels like breathing–I think he has no equal from that prolific era in American letters. But it’s not that West of Sunset is a fan letter; anything but. True, O’Nan has captured Scott’s perceptions, ways of thought, and voice, and at times you can sense Amory Blaine or Nick Carraway or Dick Diver lurking just beyond the pages. But the literary frisson is only an overlay to the pain beneath, of a man who had talent to burn and, sadly, did just that with it. Where Scott once thought himself on top of the world, destined for immortality, “so much of his life now was making arrangements, and he’d never been any good at it.” Hollywood, though he doesn’t know it, is his last, valiant try:

 

. . . the dream L.A. sold, like any Shangri-La, was one not of surpassing achievement but unlimited ease, a state attainable by only the very rich and the dead. Half beach, half desert, the place was never meant to be habitable. . . .On the streets there was a weariness that seemed even more pronounced at night, visible through the yellow windows of burger joints and drugstores about to close, leaving their few customers nowhere to go. Inconceivably, he was one of that rootless tribe now, doomed to wander the boulevards, and again he marveled at his own fall, and at his capacity for appreciating it.

Fitzgerald’s contradictions are all in this novel. He’s a frat-boy libertine and Puritan; selfish and open-handed; roils with anger, yet tries to make peace (while sober, anyway); yearns for acceptance while believing it’s his right; and wants desperately to do the right thing, even as he surrenders to his worst nature. But West of Sunset is hardly a one-man show. O’Nan gives full life to Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, Scottie, their teenage daughter, and to Sheilah Graham, the gossip columnist with whom Fitzgerald falls in love. Through them, as well as Scott, the narrative holds astonishing tension, despite the cycle of gin and repentance, and the inevitable end.

Another pleasure is the Hollywood scene. Bogart gets a good bit of ink, and Marlene Dietrich, Ernest Hemingway, and Joan Crawford, among others, make noteworthy appearances. The gossipy studio repartee is delicious, as when Dorothy Parker remarks, of Crawford, “She’s slept with everyone at Metro except Lassie.” Charles MacArthur, in town with his actress wife, Helen Hayes, “was over at Universal adapting his last play, a task Scott imagined was like slowly poisoning your own child.”

West of Sunset is a tragic, powerful tale about a man who said yes to all the wrong things because he had trouble saying no.

Disclaimer: I obtained this book for review from the public library.