Wednesday, May 17, 2017

20 Favorite Books About Hollywood



20 Favorite Books About Hollywood
By Julie Sara Porter Bookworm





The critically acclaimed and highly rated miniseries, Feud:Bette and Joan has reinvigorated public interest in the film stars of yesteryear. Of course, there is always the allure and sophisticated glamor that recalls the days of Old Hollywood when the likes of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford walked around the Hills and appeared on the screen. I have compiled a list of 20 of the best books about the film industry and the people who inhabit it.

For this list, I have separated fiction and non-fiction in two distinct categories.  I have tried to get as many perspectives as possible from actors, actresses, directots, producers, screenwriters, special effects designers, and production designers to get a picture of the many people who contribute to the making of motion pictures.
As always, if you like this list or know of any books that I missed please let me know in the comments below or on Facebook. Also, there may be spoilers. Now as they say in Hollywood and....Action! Fade in.

Fiction




10. Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins (1983)- Hollywood Wives is like Hollywood itself, or rather the public perception of it: loud, flashy, glamorous, shallow, escapist, tacky, and entertaining. It is clearly patterned after the night time soaps of it's day, filled with rich people who play musical beds while wearing designer clothes.

The titular wives are the current or former wives of Hollywood's elite like Elaine Conti who spends most of the time trying to rebuild her husband's career. Ross Conti is a former heartthrob actor who had a way with the ladies but is now feeling his age (think Robert Redford by way of Warren Beatty). but is now trying to regain his lost youth with Karen Lancaster, the daughter of a noted film actor....and Elaine's best friend. In true soap opera fashion, Elaine seeks her own affair with her personal trainer.

Then there's Maralee Gray, the former wife of British director, Neil Gray who now has the role of Cougar, having many younger male lovers at her beck and call. However Maralee can find the opportunity to play the loving wronged wife when the occasion calls for it such as when her former husband suffers a heart attack ( during a moment of pleasure naturally) and there are cameras nearby. Another player is Sadie La Salle, agent to the Stars, who harbors a secret grudge against Ross Conti  which takes most of the book to reveal (but is pretty easy to guess if you've seen any show ever) Of course let's not forget about Gina Germaine, a big breasted comic actress with all the depth of a damp napkin.

The two most interesting characters are Montana Gray and Buddy Hudson. Montana, is the current wife of the aforementioned British director, Neil. She is the smartest female, perhaps the smartest character in the bunch. Instead of engaging in one affair after another, Montana is more interested in breaking through the Hollywood Boy's Club, by writing and directing her first major picture.
Buddy is the sole interesting male character as compared to the other flat cardboard men in the book. A former street hustler and drug addict, Buddy is trying to rebuild his life with his sweet naive wife Angel and trying to jump start a career as an actor. Somewhat conceited and confident of his sexual bravado, Buddy isn't quite prepared that playing the Hollywood Shuffle isn't all that different from his former career.

A thriller subplot is introduced and overshadows the final third to provide the narrative with some action and reveal hidden secrets. Hollywood Wives isn't a bad book. If you're looking for edifying literature, look elsewhere but if you're looking for something fun and entertaining then this is it just like, well, a Hollywood Summer Blockbuster.




9. All The Stars in Heaven by Adriana Trigiani (2015)- It was rumored for many years that actors, Loretta Young and Clark Gable had an affair on the set of their movie, Call of the Wild which resulted in Young's pregnancy and birth of a daughter, Judith, whom Young later claimed was her adopted daughter. This rumor was later confirmed when Judith, as an adult, confronted her mother with the story. This bit of Hollywood gossip is the starting point for Adriana Trigiani's novel which focuses on not only the power plays in the Golden Age of Hollywood but between men and women.

Trigiani does a great job of humanizing Old Hollywood's notables. Young is written as a sweet Catholic girl with a close loving family who just happens to have a glamorous job. She is bound with a sharp wit (when a date quotes one of her earlier remarks, she replies:"How refreshing! A man who pays attention") but is also an incurable romantic. When she embarks on her affair with Gable, she does even though she knows it's unwise because he's married, she just can't help herself and throughput wants to believe that somehow she, Gable, and Judith will be a happy family.
Gable is also treated with care and depth. It would be tempting to make him a womanizing cad who seduces his leading ladies, Trigiani does not do this. Instead he is a sympathetic character in an unhappy marriage who is simply looking for some form of happiness and love never really finding it.
Other Hollywood characters are portrayed just as winningly as the two leads. Spencer Tracy has an early chaste affair with Young but is seen as a rugged outdoorsman and sensitive friend to both Young and Gable. David Niven is at the time a young up and coming supporting player but is written as a charming lady's man and staunch friend to Young.

Original characters are also given excellent treatment by Trigiani's writing. Much of the book is told from the point of view of Alda Ducci, a former novitiate turned secretary / Personal Assistant to Young. Alda is enchanted by the glamorous side of Hollywood as any newcomer would but is able to emerge as a true friend to Young and stand by her during the affair and pregnancy. She helps arrange for Young's seclusion and delivery at her former order and looks after her during a vacation to Alda's former home of Padua, Italy. Understanding the pain and consequence of a love affair gone wrong, Alda does not judge Young instead providing a sounding board and sisterly bond with Young that lasts through their older years. In contrast to Young and Gable's rocky relationship, Alda has an understated romance with production designer, Luca Cetta which evolves into a loving stable marriage.

If the book has a flaw, it is that the final two chapters are extremely rushed. Almost forty years are crammed into pages that highlight Judy's childhood in which rumors fly about her parentage ( and Young puts her through a painful surgery to have her ears pulled back so no one would recognize the famous Gable big ears), Gable's marriage to Carole Lombard and her death, Young's unhappy marriage to Tom Lewis and television career, and Gable's death shortly after filming The Misfits. The book starts out promising with deep characterization and a troubled and intense love affair and then becomes a catalog of the career highlights of its two lead characters. However that shouldn't take away that this is an excellent book that truly humanizes the stars of the Silver Screen.



8."The Meadow"/"Tyrannosaurus Rex" by Ray Bradbury (1947;1962)-Most people associate Ray Bradbury with his science fiction works such as The Martian Chronicles or Fahrenheit 451. However, he was also known for his character-driven slice-of-life stories set in places like Mexico, Ireland, and also in Hollywood.

Of his Hollywood short stories, "The Meadow" and " Tyrannosaurus Rex" based on Bradbury's experience when he worked as a screenwriter accurately portray the conflict between producers who care about money and the behind-the-scenes workers who care for the work.

"The Meadow"  is more whimsical capturing the child-like innocence  going to the movies and visualizing the world on the screen. Smith, a nightwatchman  for a movie studio, constantly puts back sets that keep getting torn down for business reasons. He gets a meeting with Douglas,  the producer. Smith takes Douglas on a tour through his "world", the beautiful intricate sets that display different landscapes.  Using his gift of gab and the sets themselves, Smith shows Douglas a world where if "some guy gets shot in New York he falls over dead in Istanbul." Where a Medieval Norman Tower on one side could have a small town  Illinois bank on the other. Seeing this world through the eyes of an amazed child or an enchanted movie goer, Douglas decides to keep the sets going.

If "The Meadow" captures the whimsy of Hollywood movies,  then Tyrannosaurus Rex is the spirit of its biting humor and competitiveness. Terwilliger,  a stop motion animator (inspired by Bradbury's friend,  Ray Harryhausen)  is hired by Clarence,  baby faced tyrannical producer to create dinosaurs for his latest monster movie.  However, Terwilliger discovers no greater horror than working for Clarence.  The producer keeps pushing for more changes to make the monster scary: " Scare the pants off of Aunt Jane. " Incensed,  Terwilliger puts his anger into his monster until at a private screening both Terwilliger and Clarence both notice that the dinosaur resembles Clarence. Terwilliger hilariously and bitterly accepts his dismissal (Clarence: I took you to lunch! Terwilliger: Once, I picked up the tab. )  until Glass, Clarence's attorney tells his boss that Terwilliger meant the resemblance as a tribute so the average moviegoer would recognize Clarence for his work.  Flattered,  Clarence lets Terwilliger keeps his job provided he keep the monster.




7. Swing Sisters by Jeane Westin (1991)- Swing Sisters is a brilliant ensemble novel about an all- woman swing band that like all good historic novels features many details from the era it is set, in this case the late 1930's-early 1940's-The Great Depression, The Dust Bowl, soapbox preachers, racism, homosexuality, gangsters, Pearl Harbor, and of course the lure and glamour of Old Hollywood.

The Swing Sisters consist of five women each with her own back story and her reasons for joining the band. Rita Ramone, a former Follies girl and Burlesque dancer forms the band so she can be on top again. Roz Payne, the drummer and former Vaudeville kiddie star harbors a crush on her bandmate, pianist Sara Sandler. Sara herself is suffering from a painful divorce and looking for true love. Tonia La Roubideaux, a fiery trumpeter is in love with an African-American musician who gets her addicted to heroin. Above all is Lovey Anderson, the romantic ballad singer who runs away from her abusive preacher husband and the death of her young son.

While all of the women have great moments and are fully established both alone and together, it is Lovey who gets the most attention and whose path takes her to Hollywood. Lovey begins the book a wide-eyed naive young girl uncertain of her talent and suffering from flashbacks of her son's death. With the help of her band mates (except the scornful Rita) and their manager, Ted Dunham, Lovey learns to embrace her gift for singing and to put her pain into her music. She also becomes the lover of Lucky Ross, a dangerous gangster who after she breaks up with him becomes obsessed with ruining Lovey's life.

To get away from Ross, promote the Swing Sisters, and to provide enough money to divorce her preacher husband, Lovey agrees to star in a short music film. When Lucky Ross and Rita Ramone engineer a breakup in the band, Lovey remains in Hollywood with Ted (soon to be her boyfriend.) while Roz, Tonia, and Sara find their own musical careers and subplots.
With Ted, a cynical son of a Hollywood producer, as her guide, Lovey navigates her way through Culver City starring in a couple of romantic musicals and gaining a following and rabid fans. Ted finds very little to like in this world where names get changed, stories are altered, amd actors' legal troubles are removed by publicity teams. Lovey however is star struck and swept up in the fame. She finds friendship with Lansing Noble, a hammy older actor who decides to mentor Lovey's acting career and more ( which Lovey rebuffs). But she also finds danger and duplicity particularly after she is framed for murder. During Lovey's trial, she sees what happens when fans defend her one minute and turn against her the next.
While the book has some corny bits of dialogue ("Their first love making was as sharply as real to her as G above High C."), Swing Sisters is like a good Old Hollywood film: glamorous, exciting, sometimes unrealistic, romantic and when all is done the Reader is guaranteed a happy ending.




6. Stardust by Joseph Kanon (2009)- The Hollywood Communist Hearings were a time of deceit, accusations, and some fervant loyalty to one's principles. Joseph Kanon captures that milieau in this exciting book  where people had to watch their mouths and political leanings provided they don't get hauled before a committee and wave goodbye to their careers.

Ben Collier, a military filmmaker arrives in Hollywood to be a technical advisor on war pictures for the fictional Continental Pictures. He is also there to discover what happened to his brother, Daniel, who may have fallen, jumped, or was pushed from his  apartment that he may have used for private assasignations or for spying on Hollywood types for suspicions of Communism.

The novel is thick with the paranoia from that era. It is a time when if an actor attended one Socialist's meeting years ago or played a friendly Russian character in a film during WWII (when Russia and the U.S. were allies) those are causes for suspicion. Where Congressman hire servants, press agents, and other actors to become informers and take notes of behaviors during cocktail parties. Where a noted author and Resistance hero who smuggled Jews out of Europe during the Holocaust can have a ruined reputation courtesy of the accusations of others.

Besides the paranoia, there is a constant motif of deception running throughout the book of characters pretending to be one thing or another. Some of it is innocuous such as Liesel Ostermann, Daniel's widow and Ben's girlfriend who gets a starring role in a movie and afterwards changes her name to Linda Eastman and takes voice lessons to thin out her accent "so she can sound American but not too American." Some of the deception is more career threatening such as that of Bunny Jenkins, former child star turned studio executive (and one of the most interesting characters in the book) who hides a disfigured male lover that he is nursing from the public eye.(  "Sharing isn't done unless you're a set dresser and I'm not.") Then there's Daniel and his mysterious death. Was he really working as an informer for Un-American Activities or was he a double agent delivering false information? There are so many leads and contradictions  given about Daniel's motives that even by the end the Reader still doesn't know.

There is so much deception and double cross carried through this suspenseful page turner that the one truly honest moment when Continental studio mogul, Sol Lasner calls the Committee to task for their bullying, scare tactics, and infringement on Constitutional Rights is tempered by Kanon's Afterword which stated that no studio head ever countered the House of Un-American Activities. In fact most willingly cooperated.







5. Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion (1970)- Joan Didion's disturbing and thought provoking novel shows a woman descending into a nervous breakdown. Unfortunately, the woman is a well-known Hollywood actress and her descent is observed by family, friends, agents, film personnel, and the general public.

Maria Wyeth (pronounced Mar-eye-ah) is 31, considered a critical age for youth obsessed film makers and goers, so her career is going down. She is separated from her director husband, Carter and fights to have visits with her daughter, Katie. Her past wasn't any better. Her father committed suicide after a disastrous move to a Nevada ghost town and a failed effort to turn it into a casino town/tourist stop. Her mother is a distant alcoholic who gave up on life. Her family's meager remaining  assets are under the care of her father's former business partner whom Maria blames for her father's decline.

Her troubled past and difficult present result in some compulsive behavior from our protagonist. She drives aimlessly from one end of Southern California to another, sometimes to Nevada and back. She isn't driving anywhere in particular.
 She is almost running away perhaps from herself.

 She indulges in drugs like cocaine and affairs with various men some unknown like noted actors and Vegas drifters. A brief reconciliation with Carter results in an unwanted pregnancy. In the eeriest passage, she has an illegal abortion and is afterward consumed by the memory and pain of the procedure.

Maria feels nothing but emptiness until she engages in an affair with her friend's husband. The affair confuses her because it alternately repulses her and makes her happy. Sometimes she hopes her lover will rescue her from her numbness but knows he won't. She also becomes involved in he marital troubles between her friends including witnessing one friend's suicide. It is this suicide that is the final push that leads to Maria's break from sanity and eventual institutionalization.













4. The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (1939)- Many books portray Hollywood as some sort of threshold into Hell, but none take it as literally as Nathanael West's satire of Glitter Gulch.

The book is filled with eccentric characters, starting with it's main protagonist, Tod Hackett, a production designer and artist. Tod is forever working on his masterpiece, "The Burning of Los Angeles" using many of his friends, rivals, and associates as models.

Tod is romantically involved with Faye Greener, a shallow bit player who has the looks, but lacks the talent to be a starlet. Tod however has competition for Faye's affections. His rivals are Earl Shoop, a Wannabe cowboy who couldn't be farther from and Homer Simpson (not that one), a milquetoast accountant who moved to California for his health but catches the Hollywood bug. Even minor characters have their quirks such as the Gingos, a family of Native Alaskans who arrived to appear in a documentary but liked Hollywood so much they decided to stay and Faye's father, a former vaudeville clown who is reduced to selling supplies door to door.

The characters converge, argue, make love, and scheme against one another in a city that seems to thrive on such sinister negative energy. Until one night, during a movie premiere when a riot breaks out in the city. No reason is given for the riot's cause except the narration which refers to large masses of people who work in dull lives, longing for excitement, and try their luck in Hollywood only to fall into further despair: "Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they've been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspaper and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can't titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and slaved for nothing." The riot brings Tod's " Burning of Los Angeles" mural to life and pulls him into madness.







3. The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy(1987)-Of all of the unsolved mysteries none is probably more haunting than the murder of Elizabeth "Betty" Short AKA The Black Dahlia (1924-1947).  Short was an aspiring actress and model who was found in a vacant lot ,murdered, stabbed, and practically cut open. Because of her raven black hair and her tendency to wear all black, the press dubbed her "The Black Dahlia" in reference to The Blue Dahlia,  a movie starring Marlene Dietrich. Many suspects were questioned,  but to this day the case has never been solved.

In his dark thrilling novel, James Ellroy takes a stab at solving the murder by providing her with a troubled background and giving the Reader two even more troubled detectives to solve it. Detectives Lee Blanchard and Dwight "Bucky" Bleichart AKA "Fire and Ice" meet as competitors in a police boxing match. Their partnership is cemented while trying to curb  the Zoot Suit Riots,  a series of riots between Naval sailors and young men,  mostly Latino. The duo share everything,  even the love of Kay Lake, a bank robber's former girlfriend and Blanchard's current girlfriend.  The detectives have a fairly good reputation. Then they get the call to investigate a certain body in a vacant lot.

As the duo become more involved solving the murder, they become obsessed with the case and Short herself.  Blanchard suffers from nightmares and flashbacks of his younger sister's disappearance and eventually disappears in Tijuana,  never to be seen again.
Bleichart gets the obsession worse.  Hearing that Short frequented lesbian clubs, he visits them until he meets Madeleine Sprague, an heiress who bears a strong resemblance to the Dahlia. The two become further involved leading to an affair.

Bleichart's obsession with the Dahlia case not to mention his affair with Madeleine jeopardizes his career and his relationship with Kay (whom Bleichart married after Blanchard's disappearance. ) Kay leaves saying that "(Madeleine) looks like that dead girl."

By far the most interesting beguiling character is the Dahlia herself which Ellroy's book tries to answer always leaving more questions than solutions. Was Elizabeth Short a nymphomaniac who had male and female lovers or was she an innocent victim of the casting couch who tried to make her presence known and stand out from the many young actresses who tried to find fame and failed? Did she have a lover who was killed overseas or several of them? What about Madeleine-was Betty really in love with her, was Betty the seducer, or the seduced? By the end, the Reader becomes as fascinated with the Dahlia as Bleichart.





2. The Biograph Girl:A Novel of Hollywood Then and  Now by William J Mann(2000)- Many Readers may not know Florence Lawrence(1893-1938), but they will certainly be aware of her legacy every time they walk into a movie theater, or open a celebrity magazine, or order a movie of a favorite actor or actress on Netflix. That's because Lawrence was considered​ the first movie star. Lawrence began in  vaudeville as  "Baby Flo, The Child Wonder Whistler" before she got hired by Biograph Pictures to play ingenue roles. Also known as the "Biograph Girl", Lawrence was among the first film actresses to be known by name and receive fan mail. A public appearance in St. Louis, Mo. caused a riot in 1910. She blamed the end of her career on a studio fire that left her scarred in 1915. Forgotten and reduced to scrambling for bit parts Lawrence, committed suicide in 1938 by swallowing ant paste.

William J. Mann's imaginative and brilliant novel gives us an alternate possibility: What if the First Movie Star faked her death and reemerged in the 21st century? Florence is rediscovered by Richard and Ben Sheehan, a pair of competitive opportunistic twin brothers. They meet Flo Bridgewood, a chain smoking witty tough 106-year-old woman in a nursing home. After some research and evasive answers, Flo tells them that she was indeed the Biograph Girl.

The novel folds neatly into two stories. The first is of course Florence's early years and the days of the begining of motion pictures, back when they were made in New York. Florence is pushed by her domineering mother, who later envies her daughter's success. Florence falls in love with another aspiring actress, Linda and is crushed when Linda marries D.W. Griffith. She has three marriages, one wonderful and two not-so-wonderful but all get sacrificed to the spotlight.

 The most moving sections describe Florence's relationship in the late '30s with depressed aspiring actress, Molly Butz whom Florence constantly builds up and tears down. In one heartbreaking passage, Florence jealously believes that Molly slept with Clark Gable for a part. Florence drunkenly reminds Molly of Peg Entwhistle, an actress who committed suicide by jumping off the 13th letter of the Hollywood sign.

Besides the story of Florence's past, the story of her present is just as well-written. Once news of her reappearance spreads,  Florence becomes a media darling. She appears on Oprah and Rosie O'Donnell (on the latter she demonstrates her whistling talents by whistling Spice Girls' "Wannabe"). She gets a small part in a John Waters film. While her success is climbing, so are the Sheehans' opportunities and antagonisms  towards each other. As Richard plans to write a screenplay of Florence's life and Ben aspires to direct a documentary of people over 100. Both plan to use Florence for their career motivations and to get even with each other.

Florence's return takes a dark turn when questions of her disappearance (not to mention the identity of the person buried in her place,) arise. Florence separates herself into two people the strong-willed tough, private Flo Bridgewood who can talk her way out of any crisis and the flighty passive public Florence Lawrence who needs to be cared for and rescued. When the publicity and the questioning about her presumed death become their strongest, the two sides to Florence's personality seem to battle to face the public or retreat from it until they come to one inevitable conclusion.

This book definitely shows that the dark side of Hollywood and celebrity began from Day (or rather Star) One


1. What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg (1941)- There are certain literary characters where even if you have never read the work, there is instant identification. An overtly optimistic person is called a " Pollyanna" even by those who have never read Eleanor H. Porter's novel. Butlers are often referred to as "Jeeves" even by those unfamiliar with P.G. Wodehouse's writings. ( and are unfamiliar with the fact that in those works, Jeeves was a valet not a butler.) Another one of those identifiable characters is " Sammy Glick" eponymous anti-hero of Budd Schulberg's brilliant character study novel. The name "Sammy Glick" conjures up images of a sleazy Hollywood backstabber/ con artist who schemes his way to the top. While all that is certainly true of Sammy, like many characters whose names become shorthand for a personality type or concept,  Sammy is a much more fascinating and multifaceted character in the original context.

Sammy first enters the life of the book's narrator, Al Manheim as a 16-year-old copyboy at the newspaper where Al works as a drama critic. Noticing Sammy running from one station to another never stopping causes Al to ponder the book's title,  "What Makes Sammy Run?" ( Running is a constant theme as Sammy runs from place to place job to job to reach success.) Al watches appalled and fascinated as Sammy rewrites one of Al's columns, gets his own radio column next to Al's, then steals a screenplay from Julian Blumberg, a naive screenwriter. Sammy passes the work off as his own earning a Hollywood career as a screenwriter and later producer and abandoning a sweet doting girlfriend in the process.

While Al acquires his own screenwriting career and becomes romantically involved with fellow writer, Kit Sargent, he still observes Sammy'meteoric rise to fame.  Al chronicles Sammy's story with bemusement, contempt, derision, and maybe a touch of awe and protectiveness over the man who wouldn't hesitate to screw someone over but thinks of Al as his best most honest friend. Sammy continues to use Julian as a ghostwriter passing off Julian's work as his own ( and paying Julian a pittance under the table for his efforts) and when he displays his first major Hollywood play with much success, only Al notices that it's a blatant rip-off of the Broadway play, the Front Page. Sammy also schemes to conquer the Screenwriter's Guild and conspires with film and business executives to have elderly studio mogul, Sidney Feinman removed and Sammy promoted in his place. It becomes almost a running gag throughout the book that everywhere Al goes throughout Hollywood he either hears Sammy's name or runs into "the little ferret himself."

If the book had just been about his schemes to get ahead, Sammy would just be a contemptible little worm of a cardboard character. Luckily Schulberg took as much care in writing Sammy as he did in his victims. This is shown best in the chapters when Al returns to New York and visits Sammy's impoverished Lower East Side childhood home. Visiting with Sammy's widowed mother, resentful brother, and former bullying classmates gives Al insight to not only Sammy's upbringing but the upbringing of other Sammy Glicks out there, young poor hungry people wanting desperately and doing whatever they can to get a better life. While it doesn't make Sammy sympathetic or even likeable Al and the Reader both begin to understand him more and realize why he chooses to act as he does. Sammy is still a contemptible little worm, but an understable contemptible little worm.

Another scene that makes Sammy a believable character is the final chapter when Sammy thinks that he has everything he could possibly want and in one final confrontation with his sophisticated newly wedded wife realizes that he, the player, had been played. He is filled with the hollow realization that his successful life is only temporary and that there is always someone younger, hungrier, more ambitious, another Sammy Glick ready to take his place.

Non-fiction



10. Two For The Show: Great Comedy Teams by Lonnie Burr (1979)- If one person can't get a laugh why not two (or three or four in the cases of the Marx Brothers and Three Stooges.)? Lonnie Burr's hilarious memorable book describes the rise and fall ( and sometimes just rise) of some of the great comedy teams from Laurel and Hardy to Cheech and Chong.

Burr's book details each team thoroughly by writing about their beginnings, their decisions to team up, and their projects including quoting their best materials. Some of the best bits are shown word for word, many of them comic staples like Abbot and Costello "Who's On First" and Cheech and Chong's "Dave's Not Here." Even an old fashioned vaudeville  routine like Smith and Dale's "Dr. Kronkhite" manages to elicit a few laughs from a modern Reader. (Doctor (after his patient told him he doesn't have life insurance): If you should kick the bucket, what will your wife bury you with? Patient: With pleasure)
Revealing the sketches allow the Reader not only a chance to laugh but recognize these lines for their greatness and why they inspired so many comics to follow.

The beginnings of the comedy teams are fascinating to read particularly those who got their start in vaudeville, traveling entertainment troupes that consist of singers, comedians, animal acts, and just about any performance you could think of. Vaudeville is long gone and barely remembered by none but the very few. The Reader learns many interesting tid-bits about these by-gone entertainment venues such as Gracie Allen and Chico Marx got their start as dialect comedians playing stock Irish and Italian characters respectively or that before he became famous, George Burns was a song and dance man using a variety of names such as Williams, Glide, Fry, and Billy Lorraine. The Reader also learns terms that began in vaudeville and continue today like "straight man/comic" ( the serious one asking questions or setting up the situation and the funny one getting the punchline) and "top billing" (The listing on the bill was important. If you were first, you were considered lousy. Before or after the seal act was highly important and if you were last on the bill, you were considered a success.) This gives a glimpse into a world that not many remember but its impact is hard to forget.

Burr also discusses the secrets of some team's success and why they appealed to large audiences and why some didn't last only appealing to small groups. Some like The Marx Brothers took chances with their material such as going from free-for-all plotless comedy like Coconuts to a political satire like Duck Soup. Some evolved their acts such as George Burns who realized that his wife/partner, Gracie Allen,  was getting more laughs as a straight woman( or "talking woman") so he reversed their roles so she would be the comic and later changed their routine from boyfriend/girlfriend to husband/wife evolving their characters as their real life evolved. By comparison, Abbott and Costello often did the same routines over and over becoming dated and the Three Stooges' humor never rose beyond slapstick. While both teams have their fans even still, their humor never rose to the depths of their peers appealing to wide audiences.

Burr also dips into scandal such as the acrimonious split between Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, largely because of Lewis' desire to control all aspects of a production and Martin's envy that Lewis was getting more attention and credit for their films. The book also discusses the controversial radio program, Amos and Andy which featured two white men playing stereotypical African-American men (obviously not a favorite for the NAACP). Also the censorship battles between Dick and Tommy Smothers and CBS, the network that carried their controversial variety show is documented as well as the ease Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In went through without being censored. (While Smothers Brothers revealed their anti-war stance and mocked only Conservatives, Laugh-In mocked both sides of the debate. Plus, Laugh-In's format of quick cuts and joke after joke with little set-up allowed audiences and censors little time to be offended before the next joke appeared.)

The most interesting section "The Hidden Comedians" concerns teams from the '60's and '70's who at the time received little coverage because they mostly played comedy clubs or released albums. Burr considered them Hidden because they weren't teams very long before they went on their own. Teams like Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks who had made hits with their "2,000 Year Old Man" albums before Reiner created The Dick Van Dyke Show and Brooks went onto movie comedy fame with such classics as The Producers and Young Frankenstein. There are also Mike Nichols and Elaine May who released a few intellectually based comedy albums before Nichols directed such films as The Graduate and May would write films like the Heartbreak Kid and have notorious legal troubles with her movies like Mikey and Nicky, a troubled production which lawsuits made May reluctant to direct another film for almost a decade. (The two would later reunite for the 1996 Nichols-directed and May-scripted film, The Birdcage starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane.)

Another reason these comedians are considered hidden is they were considered actors first and comedians second, so they could easily create a character and work a scene around it rather than being reduced to playing the same type over and over often giving more depth and realism to the characters they played. Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber had a routine where they played a bigoted businessman and a wily Jewish cab driver respectively. Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara (parents of Ben Stiller) played a young couple who encounter religious differences on their first date but decide to work things out anyway. Injecting topical issues like prejudice and religion allowed these so-called hidden comedy teams to inject some drama into the comedy and make their characters believable.

Because Two For The Show is copyrighted in 1979, and has not been updated that I am aware, it would be interesting to see what modern comedy teams would be included (Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie? Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders? Tina Fey and Amy Poehler? Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele? Steve Harvey and Cedric The Entertainer?  Harold and Kumar?) and how they would have stacked against their predecessors



9. West of Eden: An American Place by Jean Stein (2016)- Just as she did with her critically acclaimed bestseller, Edie: An American Biography about model/ Andy Warhol protegee, Edie Sedgwick, Jean Stein takes multiple viewpoints and multiple characters to make another character. Only this time the main character is Hollywood itself from it's beginnings to its current reputation as a Mecca for film, television, and music as well as the inflated egos that come with living in such an environment.

Five families are featured prominently in the book. The first family is that of Edward Doheny, an oil Baron who was the inspiration for the film, There Will Be Blood ( which his great-grandson, Ned insists is completely apocryphal: "All those people-Upton Sinclair with Oil and later the movie people-had a vested interest in furthering their own agendas, and it's ludicrous to confuse those agendas with history.") However, Doheny was involved in exposing the Teapot Dome Scandal which tarnished the Warren G. Harding administration and his son, Ned benefited from. The fallout resulted in the mysterious deaths of Ned Doheny and his business partner, Hugh Plunkett.

The troubles between parents and their children is an ongoing theme throughout the book . For example, the chapter involving Jack Warner not only focused on the struggles and rivalries between the Brothers, particularly when the Red Scare revealed various political motivations and fear of being exposed, but it also focused on  Jack Warner's Jr.'s dismissal at the hands of his father, instigated by Jack Jr.'s stepmother, Anne.  (Warner says of his father and stepmother: "She hated the idea of two Jack Warners in the world. I would say that my father deserved better, but that's not true. He was a tremendous failure where it counts. Human relationship: zero. He wanted to be loved, and yet he did so much that was unlovable.")

The worst parent-children relationships are revealed  in the chapters involving Jane Garland and Jennifer Jones. Jane Garland was the daughter of Grace Garland, a beautiful, but self-centered aspiring actress. She would put her daughter into the care of friends, nannies, and cooks. Jane was often ridiculed for her weight gain and appearance by others including some of the chapter's narrators. Many of the Narrators describe periods of Jane's emotional outbursts, and inappropriate behavior especially towards her mother whom she threatened to kill. Many Narrator's tell of Jane's instability and bouts with Schizophrenia until her frequent hospitalization. The saddest part to Jane Garfield's story is that her final narrator, Ed Moses writes that he last saw of her was seeing her walking in Santa Monica, possibly still mentally ill, and that he hadn't heard from her since.

Jennifer Jones' story is equally filled with sadness. Jones won the Academy Award in 1944 for the film, Song of Bernadette and had several marriages, particularly producer David O. Selznick. She seemed to have a perfect life, but she had depression and attempted suicide by drowning in 1967. She  also had deeply troubled relationships with her children,  particularly her daughter, Mary Jennifer. Mary Jennifer Selznick gained her mother's anger when she felt that her husband, David paid more attention to their daughter than her. Some Narrators spoke of scratches on Mary Jennifer's face and back from her mother. Mary Jennifer also may have been bipolar and was suicidal, finally falling 22 floors to her death in 1976.

Even the author Jean Stein's family is not free of big egos and complex relationships, particularly with her father, Jules Stein bandleader and founder of the Music Corporation of America. While many spoke of Stein's involvement with various musicians, a few things stand out in the narrative. One is the desperate attempts that Jean Stein went through to please her parents such as to marry wealth, so she married Willam Vanden Heuvel a man she would later divorce. Another is the blatant favoritism that Stein exhibited even on his deathbed towards his granddaughter, Katrina Vanden Heuvel saying "(she'll) do wonderful things," but not his other granddaughter, Wendy, leaving Wendy in tears as she kisses her grandfather good-bye for the last time.

Update: It's hard to read this book understanding the troubled familial relationships, and the dirt underneath the glitz and glamor of Hollywood without thinking of Julie Stein's suicide in April, 2017. West of Eden almost becomes a suicide note to the world that Stein knew that she loved for the opportunities that it gave to people and hated for the arrogance and instability of the people within it.





8. Chaplin: His Life and Art by David Robinson(1985)- Of the silent film stars, the one that is probably best known is Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin (1889-1977). Almost 90 years since silent films gave way to sound and people still recognize Chaplin and his character The Little Tramp , a funny little man with baggy clothes, a small mustache, and a silly walk, a vagabond character who is both mischievous and large hearted. Chaplin is still recognized for his comic and artistic genius and David Robinson's exhaustive and comprehensive book takes a cultural and psychological approach to Chaplin's life and work.

Many of the themes that resonate throughout Chaplin's life and work can be traced through his difficult childhood and upbringing, Robinson writes. Chaplin's impoverished background with a father who abandoned him and a mother who was often mentally ill gave Chaplin a lot of sympathy for those in the lower class who were often at the mercy of authority figures. This theme carried over into Chaplin's films like The Kid, Modern Times, and City Lights. The book also recounts Chaplin's early comic training on the music halls, and under mentors like acting troupe leader, Fred Karno, and Keystone movie studio head, Mack Sennet. The book particularly focuses on Chaplin's somewhat strained relationship with Sennett based on his not getting along with Sennett's girlfriend, Mabel Normand, his desires for more money and creative control and above all Sennett and Chaplin's different comic approaches. Sennett preferred the fast approach with quick editing chops and chase scenes. While Chaplin preferred a slower approach, one that concentrated on storytelling and creating character resulting in Chaplin striking out on his own as a director and producer of his own films, something rarely done in 1915.

Little details are sprinkled throughout the book to give us a picture of Chaplin's life such as his birth announcement, playbills of shows he appeared, and copies of letters and notes. Most telling of all are Chaplin's shooting schedules which feature excess retakes. The famous scene from The Gold Rush where The Little Tramps dances with dinner rolls took 8 retakes. These telling details show Chaplin as a perfectionist who recognized his comedic talents and wanted to hone them until they were right.

Chaplin also is given to stubborn convictions such as his insistence during the beginning of sound that The Tramp not speak resulting in him only using music for the final two little Tramp films, City Lights and Modern Times (though the latter does feature the Tramp singing a song.) It wasn't until 1940 that Chaplin made his first talking picture with The Great Dictator which while featured a similar character did not have The Little Tramp.
Chaplin's political convictions also are dissected such as his refusal to become a U.S. citizen or his seemingly subversive portrayals of authority figures such as oafish immigration officials and snobbish capitalists leading to accusations of Communism and Chaplin's eventual exile from the U.S. in 1952. Robinson's writing shows a man willing to stick by his convictions even at a great cost.

Robinson also portrays the people in Chaplin's life as well-rounded people in their own right. There was Sydney, Chaplin's older brother who became Chaplin's de facto parent at a young age and continued to take care of his younger brother even into adulthood and fame. Chaplin's frequent co-star, Edna Purviance who tried to become a dramatic actress with A Woman of Paris, only to fail miserably but Chaplin kept on his payroll for the rest of her life.
Mildred Harris and Lita Gray, Chaplin's first two wives who were 17 and 16 respectively at the time of their marriages and while hardly naive innocents were caught in the machinations of opportunistic relatives. Paulette Goddard, Chaplin's third wife who achieved fame on her own after her divorce from Chaplin starring in such films as The Women and Northwest Mounted Police but remained friends with Chaplin for the rest of their lives. Finally, there's Oona O'Neil, Chaplin's final wife, who was 18 at the time of their marriage but remained a loyal supportive spouse even to the point of renouncing her U.S. citizenship after her husband's exile.

Using all of these details of Chaplin's personal and professional life gives us a full of picture of the man and helps to understand the genius behind his art.




The Disney Films by Leonard Maltin(1973; 3rd Ed. 1995)-Film critic and historian, Leonard Maltin is known to be quite the conossieur of the works of Walt Disney (1901-1967) .He often provides commentary for the collections of shorts starring the likes of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck as well as collections for Silly Symphonies, True- Life Adventures, and other themes. Beginning in 1973 , Maltin has written this book which stands as the definitive tribute to the works of Walt Disney and the Disney Company.

The book begins by describing Disney's early years as an animator of early projects as Newman's Laugh-O-Grams and  the Alice Comedies (the latter of which was known for some then sophisticated techniques such as a live-action girl in an animated setting.) The book also discusses Disney's first star, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit who met with immediate successes but was just as immediately caught up in a rights issue which resulted in Disney's loss of the  character to Universal Studios. ( a situation that was only rectified in 2006 when Disney finally regained the rights for Oswald. They celebrated this event by releasing the Oswald cartoons on DVD and making Oswald a feature character in the Epic Mickey video game franchise.)

Besides his early start, Maltin discusses Disney's early career as an innovator in creating Mickey Mouse and making the first synchronized sound cartoon, " Steamboat Willie" and the first color cartoon with Silly Symphony's " Flowers and Trees." He also writes of Disney's willingness to evolve his characters such as creating the short-tempered Donald Duck and clumsy Goofy ( to carry the rough mischievous edges that Mickey was no longer able to convey in his transformation from a troublemaker to a sweet-tempered Everyman er Mouse), giving the female characters, Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck more well-rounded personalities and chances to star in their own cartoons, getting the characters involved in WWIi and later moving them to the suburbs mirroring the audience's move to middle-class post-war suburbia. (Goofy in particular benefited from this change acquiring a wife and son. In subsequent years, the wife disappeared but the son, later known as Max, remained.)

Each Feature Film made from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs made in 1937 to The Happiest Millionaire released in 1967 shortly after Disney's death is greatly detailed, analyzed, and reviewed, a tremendous undertaking considering that is almost thirty years of work. Of course there are the usual predicted favorites such as Snow White ("The sequences lead one to another with perfect precision and harmony, seeming to flow as as if this were the way the story had always been told."), Pinocchio ("a film of amazing detail and brilliant conception"), and Mary Poppins ("There really is only one word to describe Mary Poppins, and that is supercalufragilisticexpialidocious. To attempt a more complete assessment would exhaust a library full of adjectives.") But Maltin expresses fondness for some unknown Disney films such as the Revolutionary War drama, Johnny Tremain  ("A vivid fictionalization of the events leading up to the revolutionary war. It is good because it doesn't attempt to boil down to simple blacks and whites." ), and the Irish fantasy, Darby O'Gill and the Little People (which despite the beauty of the landscape and the performances including a pre-James Bond Sean Connery achieved a disappointed box office take leaving Maltin to wonder " It is certainly a sad comment on mass taste to note that a beautiful film like this should fail to attract half the audience that rushed to see The Shaggy Dog.")

Of course being a fan of one's work does not stop one from being a critic and Maltin is not above making criticisms about films he didn't like such as the aforementioned, The Shaggy Dog ("The final thing that the Disney people learned from the film was that repetition and the obvious were the sure-fire laugh getters of them all."), and Alice in Wonderland ( which Maltin describes as "flashy but lacks warmth.") He also points out critical and box office failures alongside successes. He reminds us for every Mary Poppins, a beloved classic and winner of five Academy Awards; there's a Monkeys Go Home, a formulaic comedy and box office dud.

The two final chapters update the Company's projects to the '90's. One chapter " Without Walt" deals with the company's decision, after lackluster live action films and animated movies which used recycled cels, to appeal to older audiences by creating PG rated films under the Disney label and Touchstone Pictures, which specialized in adult films PG and above. ( While the decision was met with criticism, Maltin's writing suggests that they realized that they  either had to adapt to their maturing audience or die.)
The final chapter goes into great detail about the Disney Renaissance which began with critical and commercial hits like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid which used groundbreaking computer animation and innovative storytelling to attract a new audience. Since this edition ends in 1995, it only glosses over Disney's union with Pixar by mentioning the release of Toy Story leaving room for other editions and other projects to come.






6. The Girl Who Walked Home Alone Bette Davis: A Personal Biography By Charlotte Chandler (2006)- The tombstone for Bette Davis (1908-1989) reads "She Did It The Hard Way". It is an apt description of the two-time Oscar winning actress who was known for playing tough, argumentative characters with commanding presences on screen. It is clear from this book, that reads like an autobiography since it was based on a series of interviews between Davis and author, Charlotte Chandler, that those characters were easy for her to play because that's who she was in real life, tough, argumentative, and commanding.
" I have been called fearless," Davis said in the introduction already speaking of her legendary self-reliance. "Well I am pretty much. I like to think of myself as a lioness, a lioness who couldn't find a lion as it turned out. I was doomed to live without a real mate in my empty den, though I was always protective of my cubs."

Davis' self-reliance began at an early instilled in her because of her parent's divorce. She described her father, Harlow as icy and indifferent to his daughter. ("I was never able to gain Daddy's full attention but I never gave up trying until he died-not even then.") Her mother, Ruthie who worked mostly as a photographer before her daughter's fame was loving and domineering towards her talented daughter. ("I've always preferred the company of men, but Ruthie was my best friend. I could talk with her about anything. Well almost anything. We pretended sex didn't exist.") Besides her parents Davis describes her younger sister, Bobby with the same wry detachment mixed with hidden vulnerability and honesty particularly Bobby's frequent emotional and mental problems resulting in her institutionalization. ("None of us found out where Bobby belonged- especially Bobby.")

Davis' early career often played in small roles that did very little to display her talents. (An apocryphal  tale stated that when the creators for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? wanted to use clips from Davis'  earliest films to show how terrible an actress her character, Baby Jane Hudson was supposed to be, Davis generously said they could use any of them which they used Parachute Jumper and Ex-Lady both from 1933.) Davis also learned a great deal about the power plays between studio heads and performers during the studio star system. "It was feudal serfdom. If we didn't behave ourselves, we get lashed tongue-lashed that is, but lashed nonetheless, and if we slaves revolted, we could have our contracts canceled. The only thing worse than having a studio contract was not having one."

This hatred of the studio system caused Davis to "revolt" particularly at Warner Brothers where she worked from 1932-1949. She challenged the Brothers particularly Jack for better films and roles but was often refused. She was suspended and taken to court twice resulting in a reputation for being difficult and losing out on roles such as the lead role in Mildred Pierce (which went to her rival, Joan Crawford.) Davis responded about her reputation in the book, "They've called me difficult. Well they were correct. But what it meant was I absolutely cared about getting it right not wrong."

Davis also recounted her most memorable roles: Mildred in Of Human Bondage ("at the time I was playing Mildred, there was a lot of anger inside of me that I drew upon like a proper Method actor")  Julie in Jezebel which she won her second Oscar ("I have played quite as many calm heroine-type women as I have a Jezebel type person. But the Jezebels are always remembered  more, because people are fascinated  by a woman like that more  than the heroine.") and Charlotte in Now Voyager (Which she didn't agree with the character compromising herself to be in a relationship with Paul Henried',s character, instead she visualized Charlotte being an independent woman: 'She takes courses in psychology.....She has a brilliant career. Do you like that?")

 She spent a great deal of time reminiscing about her definitive role, that of Margo Channing in All About Eve which she considered a career saver in 1950 and was forever grateful to director/writer, Joseph Mankiewicz for offering the role after original choice Claudette Colbert injured her back. Referring to the previous five year slump in which Davis was offered lackluster roles, Davis told Mankiewicz, "You resurrected me from the dead." (The role of Margot continued to resonate throughout Davis's life as she fell in love with and married her Eve co-star, Gary Merrill who played Margo's lover, Bill Sampson and when they adopted a daughter, they named her Margot)
 As for her role as Baby Jane Hudson and her infamous feud with Joan Crawford, the normally candid Davis was surprisingly mum.  She only said that she told director, Robert Aldrich that she didn't want him favoring Crawford with more close-ups and that while Crawford wanted to look beautiful, Davis wanted to look ugly "Miss Crawford was the glamourpuss and I was the actress," Davis said.

While she is written in the book as normally caustic and sardonic, Davis' words also carried a great deal of vulnerability in discussing the men in her life particularly director, Wim Wyler ("the perfect man for me except one.....He didn't want to marry me. Certainly not enough, because he married someone else") and her four marriages particularly to Eve co-star, Gary Merrill. ("The trouble was he thought he was marrying Margot Channing and I thought I was marrying Bill Sampson.") She also writes of her protectiveness towards her three children, Margot who was mentally disabled and institutionalized, her only son, Michael, and particularly her strained relationship with her older daughter, B.D. Hyman. Her quote referring to Christina Crawford's Mommy Dearest about Joan, "The one thing in life I know is that my children would never write such a hateful book about me" came back to haunt Davis after the publication of B.D.'s book My Mother's Keeper. Among the allegations were that Davis was an alcoholic amd abusive. Calling it a "hateful indictment" Davis and B.D.'s relationship was completely severed and the two remained estranged until Davis's death. "Your children are there but for a few short years. They grow up and leave you. But the power they have over you last a lifetime", Davis said.

The title of the book comes from someone who asked Groucho Marx why he brought two girls to a party. Marx responded, "I hate to see a girl walk home alone." "That's been the story of my adult life, Davis said. "I was always afraid of walking home alone. And it's not only my story, but it's true now for so many women. Many girls and women will walk home alone." For many women, Davis gave a face and voice for that woman who walked home alone.



5. Me: Stories of My Life  by Katharine Hepburn (1991)-Katharine Hepburn's (1907-2003) autobiography begins with a conversation between herself and someone she called "The Creature" or "The Character". This was the public persona that people saw in Hepburn. This was the character that she played in most of her films: a witty, independent, tough minded heiress or career woman who could always hold her own against the boys, the character who while she usually ended up falling in love, usually with Cary Grant or Spencer Tracy, was still herself in the end. It is this character that goaded Hepburn into writing her autobiography. "I am writing my life story. I've been driven to it. What else can I do? I have to say that's probably why people write their life story." Hepburn wrote.
Hepburn's book is filled with warm, sometimes funny, always moving stories which seem disjointed and repetitive but using many of her verbal expressions such as "Mother died when I was forty odd." and are always personable. It seems as though Hepburn is in the same room reading aloud.

Hepburn wrote lovingly of her childhood in Connecticut with five siblings, her father, Dr.  Thomas Norval Hepburn, who studied venereal disease and lobbied for  contraception, and of her mother, Katharine Maria Hepburn, who headed the local chapter. of the women's suffrage association. Because of the Progressive nature of her parents, the children were encouraged talk about anything from sex, to women's votes, to politics to social issues. "There were NO RULES," Hepburn wrote. "There were certain things that which we did-and certain things which we didn't do because they hurt others."
Hepburn also recalled the suicide of her older brother, Tom with aching sadness. At 14, Hepburn was the one who discovered her brother's body from being hung. Even at the time of writing, Hepburn still was confused about the motives towards Tom's death, "There seemed to be a sort of feeling at the time that he might have made a pass at his girl and maybe it didn't work and maybe in despair he- Anyway we'll never know."

Hepburn recalled her earliest influences that led to her acting career like her education at Bryn Mawr where she picked up her distinct accent, her experience in plays like The Warrior's Husband which helped her shape "The Character", and her only marriage to Ludlow Ogden Smith who helped finance Hepburn's move  to New York to start Hepburn's career. (Hepburn's marriage to Smith ended in divorce mostly because of pressures of her new Hollywood career and Hepburn admitted her own selfishness "being a me, me, me person" but they remained good friends.)
Many of Hepburn's most famous film roles are detailed such as: Jo March in Little Women (which she said was "Heaven to do" because it reminded her of her Connecticut childhood and her youthful self who was a tomboy), Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story ( which she played the role on Broadway and then for the 1940 film. She cited the popularity of this movie and the role from saving her reputation from being labelled as "box office poison"), and Rose Sayer in The African Queen (A previous book Hepburn wrote about the making of The African Queen, detailed Hepburn's relationship with director, John Huston "For and Against. He was an amazing character. He had flashes. And those flashes were brilliant.") All of these characters were examples of the independent woman that Hepburn often played both on screen and off. Throughout the book she demonstrated her love of sports like golf and swimming (particularly swimming in cold water), her preference for wearing slacks and exhibiting a cold air about her and not being overly emotional in public.  Her Democratic politics were important to her  particularly when she campaigned for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's​ reelection and spoke against the McCarthy Hearings.

Above all, this book is about Hepburn's love for her frequent co-star and lover, Spencer Tracy to whom Hepburn devoted the final section. ("You may think you've waited a long time," she informed the Reader. "But let's face it. So did I. I was thirty-three.") The two made nine films together from 1942's Woman of the Year to 1967's Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. Hepburn spoke of discovering what "I love you." really meant. "I loved Spencer Tracy. He and his interests and demands came first," Hepburn wrote. "This was not easy for me because I was a me me me person. It was a unique feeling that I had for (Tracy) I would have done anything for him. My feelings-Katharine can you describe them?-the door between us was always open. There were no reservations of any kind." While Hepburn's devotion to Tracy belies her reputation as an independent woman, her writing reminds us that unlike her screen characters, Hepburn was a  woman of many facets and many personalities that recognized love when she saw it and the sacrifice that came with it. Hepburn supported Tracy through his frequent bouts of alcoholism, cared for him during the last seven years of his life, and was with him when he died in 1967. The final chapter, an open letter to Tracy where Hepburn discussed the last moments of his life and the legacy he left behind "You were really the greatest movie actor.", Hepburn wrote. " I say this because I believe it and also I have heard many people standing in our business say it."

Hepburn's autobiography is simple and plain writing but filled with real warmth and emotion. Thank you to "The Character" for making her write it.








4. The Fifty Worst Films of All Time And How They Got That Way by Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss (1978)-Before Mystery Science Theater 3000, before the Golden Raspberries, there was this hilarious book by Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss which recalls Hollywood's worst mistakes.(besides giving the Kardashians their own show) The authors wrote in their introduction, that they conceived of this idea because during conversations, "people show greater enthusiasm in laughing together over films they despise than in trying to praise the films they admire."

The lowlights include Abraham Lincoln("Such an inspiring moment was not seen again for thirty years, until Walt Disney designed his"Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" attraction for Disneyland. The only difference was that Disney's robot gave a far more life-like performance than did Walter Huston in the film."), Lost Horizon (Mocking the lyrics to one of the musical's insufferable lyrics: "Why can't we make ourselves believe it/Have we found nausea or has it found we."), and The Conquerer (5 words: " John Wayne as Genghis Khan." However, the book does not mention that the movie was filmed where fallout from the nuclear tests lay resulting in cancer from various cast and crew members including Wayne.)

Medved and Dreyfuss even tear into art films like Last Year at Marienbad. ("The three stars compete with one another to see who can do the best imitation of a talking corpse") and cult favorites like the Trial of Billy Jack (On the opening scene in which Billy Jack hangs his head in disapproval as a bloody massacre of Vietnamese civilians goes on around him-" the bloodlust of the audience is appeased at the same time it's social conscience is stroked.")

Besides being a book of funny reviews, it also provides interesting information on the filmmaking process such as while filming the Sci-Fi dud, Robot Monster the production team realized that they couldn't afford alien costumes, but the director decided on what he felt was the next best thing....a gorilla suit. Or that The Samuel Goldwyn musical romp, The Goldwyn Follies was originally going to feature the music of George Gershwin including his tonal poem, "An American in Paris". However, Goldwyn turned it down concerned about what "the miners of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania would think" and replaced the score with a bland tuneless one by Vernon Duke. ( Somewhere out there, Gershwin can't be too upset. Look at what happened when the 1976 musical At Long Lost Love tried to recreate the songs of Cole Porter and failed miserably.)

Extreme publicity campaigns abound as filmmakers and theater personnel went to some unusual lengths to promote these movies.
American International Productions, the team behind the lackluster animated film, Alakazam the Great displayed caged monkeys in the theater auditoriums. While filming Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the producers booked the seagulls in a room at the Holiday Inn in Carmel, California. (New maids would be tricked into cleaning that room. The noise was so deafening that people in the lobby could hear the gulls.) Then there's Tom Laughlin's " Billy Jack Vs. The Critics"campaign in which, the star/director/producer/screenwriter of the Billy Jack franchise wrote an open letter criticizing the critics who would dare oppose his film. The backlash was so great that Laughlin himself withdrew distribution of the movie one week after it's rerelease.

Besides the extreme lengths of the filmmakers to film and promote their turkeys, Medved and Dreyfuss describe the lengths they went to in finding these not-so-treasures, particularly the Ronald Reagan-Shirley Temple vehicle, That Hagan Girl. The duo write of playing telephone tag with various production companies until being allowed a private viewing at the University of Wisconsin's film depository. "The cost of the screening-free." They write, " The plane fare to Wisconsin however, made it one of the most expensive admission prices we had ever encountered." Some people will go the extra mile to prove something is terrible.









3. Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger(1975)-Celebrity and Gossip go hand in hand from the Silent film days all the way to the current bumper crop of Reality stars and Internet sensations. Sometimes the gossip is worse than the source and sometimes it's the truth that is worse. Anger's book filled with such gossip and is tacky, tawdry, questionable in facts, but is fascinating and hard to ignore and put down.

Hollywood Babylon begins during the Silent era giving faces and names to performers many of which the younger Readers may never have heard. Such as Olive Thomas, who committed suicide shortly after a heroin deal gone wrong on behalf of her husband Jack Pickford. ( Mary Pickford's brother.)  William Desmond Taylor, an early  Paramount director who was found murdered, a case that has remained unsolved. Barbara La Marr and Alma Reubens, two actresses who were beautiful and addicted to heroin. Then there are the most infamous scandals that still resonate today: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's alleged murder of actress, Virginia Rappe, Rudolph Valentino's short-lived marriages to women who were lesbians and his mysterious death ( rumored to be at the hands of a jealous lover but was in reality appendicitis.),  and Charlie Chaplin's teenage brides  Mildred Harris and Lita Gray who were 17 and 16 respectively at the time of their marriages to the much older Chaplin.

When silent movies gave way to sound, the scandals just kept on coming some related directly to sound's advent such as the debacle involving John Gilbert's first "talkie" revealed his voice to be a shrieking whine. (Some believe his voice was deliberately sabotaged by sound engineers under the pay of MGM boss, Louis B. Mayer who was looking for a reason to end Gilbert's contract.)

Some involved sex such as Mary Astor's diary which detailed her affair with George Kaufman ending her marriage with Dr. Frederick Thorpe, or the list of Hollywood stars who were homosexual or bisexuals like Marlene Dietrich and Cary Grant. Suicide and murder are also prominent features in post-sound careers such as Peg Entwhistle, who jumped off the Hollywood sign and the murder of Lana Turner's lover, Johnny Stompanato, by her daughter, Cheryl Crane.

Many of Anger's allegations were found to be untrue but became the stuff of urban legends such as that Silent actress, Clara Bow serviced the USC football team ( she didn't but was a big fan of college football and hosted parties for the team.) or that bombshell, Jayne Mansfield was decapitated ( She wasn't but the photograph shows her wig thrown on the dashboard after her fatal car accident.) However despite the exploitiveness of the book, Anger clearly shows empathy for many of these actors and actresses considering them innocents caught up in fame. Nowhere is this more prevalent than Anger's chapter on Frances Farmer.

Farmer started in a few minor movies and was billed as " The New Garbo". In 1942, she was arrested for drunk driving and attacked her arresting officer. This incident led to a series of public drunkenness, violent outbursts, and an eventual breakdown. No one came to her aid, not the studio who wrote her off and not her mother who had her committed. Instead she was lobotomized and became a pleasant vague  shell of her former self. Anger wrote that "Her downfall brought little compassion in the Glitter Town that exploited her.......The unusually gifted actress was no threat against law and order of the public safety. Something that began as merely a traffic reprimand grew into a case of personal violence, a serious charge, and a jail sentence. And all because a sensitive high-strung girl was on the verge of a nervous breakdown." Frances Farmer, another like the other stars in this book fallen into the shadows of Hollywood Babylon.











2. Hollywood: Stars and Starlets, Tycoons and Flesh Peddlers, Movie Makers and Moneymakers, Frauds and Geniuses, Hopefuls and Has-Beens, Great Lovers and Sex Symbols by Garson Kanin (1967)- Many of the books on this list are from authors or about characters who hate Hollywood or want to expose it's flaws of being all surface and image and little else. It's very rare to read a book from someone who loves Hollywood and while is aware of it's flaws also recognizes it's worth of being filled with creative talented eccentricities. Garson Kanin captures that love in his memoir of his time as a screenwriter of such films as Adam's Rib (also written by his wife, Ruth Gordon) and Born Yesterday.

Kanin talks about​ his first job as a story editor for producer, Samuel Goldwyn ("I checked into the Goldwyn Studios on Monday morning and Alice in Wonderland was a piker.") Even after he worked for other producers such as Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures, Kanin remained good friends with Goldwyn, the man who always called Kanin, "Talboig" (because Kanin resembled Irving Thalberg, head of Universal and Goldwyn liked the idea of ordering Irving Thalberg around or rather his doppelganger.)

 Many​ of Kanin's reminisces are about Goldwyn, portraying him as a temperamental witty man with the occasional delusion of grandeur. (He created the big budget musical flop, The Goldwyn Follies because he wanted to measure up to Broadway producer, Florenz Ziegfield.) Goldwyn is quite a character. There is a whole chapter devoted to his sayings, Goldwynisms some apocryphal like " Gentlemen include me out" some genuine like "modern dancing is so old-fashioned." But he is written as aware of the needs of his movie-going public, such as during a storyboarding session when he suggested that some exposition be cut from the opening of a film. When told the plot of the movie is too complicated with many characters and there were concerns the audience wouldn't understand the film, Goldwyn responded: "Stop worrying! The public is f'Chrissake (sic) smarter than we are."

Besides Goldwyn, Kanin also writes anecdotes of other Hollywood figures, with their quirks, oddities, peccadilloes, and above all talent. There is John Barrymore  who refused to be upstaged by anyone even a little girl who does a simple gesture like playing with Barrymore's tie. Carole Lombard who Kanin describes as a vibrant funny lady with a colorful vocabulary​ and frequent profusion of the F-bomb ("She was clearly using language to express herself and not to shock or offend." Kanin wrote) Ginger Rogers who was known as a beautiful and talented actress/dancer and her films with Fred Astaire but really wanted to play Queen Elizabeth I in Mary Queen of Scots.
Then there's Kanin's dream opportunity of observing the films of childhood hero, Charlie Chaplin with Chaplin in attendance making wry comments and criticisms about the works. These little details make these performers into real people instead of matinee idols or symbols of Hollywood's decadence.

Besides the performers, Kanin's book offers an interesting look at the movie making process and the many hands that go into making and shaping a movie. An insistence on creating a vehicle for actors, Gary Cooper and Merle Oberon results in a game of word association and a thin plot where a cowboy and a lady fall in love (called originally enough The Cowboy and The Lady.) To cheer up his depressed wife, Kanin suggests putting up a billboard with her name on it. This idea germinates in the Judy Holliday film, A Name for Herself.
 Of course there are the times when an idea is completely changed such as Kanin's intriguing script of a woman's life possibilities with three different sets of  potential adopted parents. Daryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, altered with the script until it changed to three separate actresses all with standard happy endings.

Kanin does explore the darker nature of Hollywood a little bit here and there. He became an eyewitness in a marital battle between Vivian Leigh and Sir Laurence Olivier over Olivier's private time with Greta Garbo, which he insisted involved a discussion about flowers and nothing else. Ingrid Bergman who Kanin was somewhat responsible for her introduction to director and future husband, Roberto Rosselini (Kanin recommended her for Joan of Lorraine in which one of her co-stars introduced her to Rosselini). Bergmann's affair with  Rosselini resulted in scandal when she left her first husband for  him and almost ruined her career forever. It wasn't until the 1950's with the movie, Anastasia, that Bergman was able to make a comeback.
The most interesting scandalous section involves Kanin's visits to Mae's Pleasure Palace in which "Mae West" (or a madam who resembled her) serviced men with prostitutes that looked and dressed like Hollywood starlets like Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Jean Harlow etc. (an obvious inspiration for James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential.) Not only were the prostitutes required to look like the Stars but they had to read the latest news on them so they could respond in character. Mae's Pleasure Palace showed that everyone from the lowest hooker to the highest mogul had something to show their public.





1. You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again by Julia Phillips(1991)- One thing we can say about Julia Phillips' tell-all. It's​ title is dripped in irony and foreshadowing. Shortly after the book was published, Phillips was denied service for life in Morton's, a swank restaurant. However, Phillips' bitingly honest and witty memoir proves the adage that if you go down, you might as well go down in flames.

Julia Phillips was the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Picture for The Sting, and was the producers of  Academy Award nominated films, Taxi Driver and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. However, her book is less about her successes than it is about her struggles with cocaine addiction, living the high Hollywood life in the '70's, and her relationships with the members of New Hollywood which she calls " a Rogue's Gallery of  Nerds."

Her book is honest about her own problems. She wrote that she spent Oscar Night 1976 high on a variety of drugs. That her frequent drug use interfered in her relationships with men especially her former husband and business partner, Michael and enabled her to be involved with an abusive drug dealer, she called "Rottweiler"

She also has a lot to say about the Hollywood crowd. Some gossipy like Goldie Hawn ("always dirty but you have to love The Giggle."),  actresses, Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt ("best friends and roommates until they fell out over a man.") Some more serious like Martin Scorcese ("complete mysoginist.....only hired Cybil Shepherd for Taxi Driver because he loved her ass."), Richard Dreyfuss (always getting Phillips to try new drugs like one called "The Green."), and Steven Spielberg whom Phillips shared more than a love of filmmaking.

While there are plenty of targets for Phillips' rancor, two men in particular stand out: director/actor, Francois Truffaut and head of the Creative Artists Agency and Hollywood Power Player, Mike Ovitz. Truffaut earns Phillip ire after he pens an open letter accusing her of being unprofessional and difficult to work with on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind which he featured. Phillips wrote that she spent a great deal of time working with Truffaut's accent and paying him concessions. The fight becomes a factor along with an expanded. budget and Phillips' frequent drug use that causes Phillips to be fired from Close Encounters during post-production thereby ending Phillips' once promising career.

Phillips spent the'80's trying to revive her career but getting rejected for one picture after another such as Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire. She only produced one film,. The Beat, which was a critical and commercial flop. She blamed much of her inability to find work on the "Hollywood Boy's Club" particularly agent, Mike Ovitz whom she accused of sexism.
She implied that if she were a man, she would have been forgiven for past sins and produced a blockbuster. Phillips also blamed Ovitz for the decline of filmmaking in the'80's because of people like him who cared more about profit than about artistic challenges.
 Many debated and challenged her claims. Some defended her. Richard Dreyfuss has gone on record to say the truth was far worse. One thing that can be said: Until her death in 2002, Phillips stuck to her claims and never refuted them proving that she had the last word in the end


Honorable Mention: The Last Tycoon  by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Easy Riders and Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind, , Tinseltown: Murder Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood by William J, Mann, I  Fatty by Jerry Stahl, Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford, Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud by Shaun Considine,  Awake in The Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert, I Hated,. Hated, Hated This Movie, and Your Movie Sucks by Roger Ebert, Weird Hollywood: Your Travel Guide to Hollywood's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets by Joe Osterle, Mark Moran and Mark Securman, Hollywood Goddesses by Michael Moellering, The Story of Hollywood: An Illustrated Biography by Gregory Paul Williams, Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe by Anthony Summers, Cary Grant: A Biography by Marc Eliot, Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography by Frank Capra, and L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy.

And...Cut and print. That's a wrap.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

20 Favorites LGBTQ Books For Pride Month

20 Favorite LGBTQ Books For Pride Month
as Julie Sara Porter Bookwom



June is Pride Month, so I have compiled a list of 20 of the best books that portray gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

Since it is such a wide varied topic, I have separated the books in two major categories: Fiction and Non-fiction. Honorable Mention also includes Children's, YA, Plays and other. To qualify for this list, the book has to feature a GLBT character or event in a prominent role, so I did not choose books that only featured such characters in supporting roles or cameos. For the most part, I included works that portray GLBTQ in an understanding and compassionate light. If you agree with this list or know of others to include don't forget to comment below or on Facebook. And as always, there may be spoilers.

Fiction




10. Orlando:A Biography by Virginia Woolf (1928)- Orlando, the eponymous protagonist of Wooolf's novel could be considered way ahead of her time. With all of the current controversies regarding transgender rights it's intriguing to read a book featuring a character that transcends gender.

Orlando begins life as a Elizabethan nobleman and a favorite of the Queen. He is unfortunate in both his love life and his hoped for literary career. A Muscovite princess seduces and then abandons him. A poet insults current literature and Orlando's literary aspirations and then satirizes Orlando in a spoof about a dilletante nobleman.

Orlando is assigned as Ambassador to Turkey where he marries a dancer,  falls ill and sleeps for several days. When he wakes up, he discovers that he is now in a woman's body. No reason is given (except maybe magic from three Romany women) and Orlando is not shocked nor amazed. She realizes that she is the same person with the same intellect just in a different body.

As a woman, Orlando is able to retain some power sexually over men.( "Praise God, I'm a woman" she says to herself as the sight of her leg almost sends a sailor overboard.) She also finds limitations in her role when she returns to England almost 300 years from when she left ( and looks ageless) and she is unable to claim her former property because " 1) She was dead and therefore could not hold any property whatsoever 2) that she was a woman which amounts to the same thing and 3) that she was an English Duke who had married Rosina Pepita a dancer; and had by her three sons which sons now declarimg that their father is deceased, claimed that all his property descended to them." (One wonders why being immortal, Orlando doesn't just assume a different identity or claim to be the male Orlando's direct descendant but never mind.) She lives in a wealthy near solitude in an estate.

Orlando later finds happiness in a literary career in the late 19th early 20th Century from a literary society willing to experiment ( shades of Woolf herself or her lover/fellow author and possible inspiration for Orlando, Vita Sackville-West)
 She also finds love with a male sailor that Orlando realizes had also once been female. In her 20th century life, Orlando is able to be happy within herself and her identity.




9. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (1956)-James Baldwin's short novel is a powerful tragic story about a man confused about his life, sexuality, and identity.

David, the narrator, a young American visits Paris while taking a break from his girlfriend, Hella who goes to Spain on her own. When an acquaintance takes David to a gay bar, the American locks eyes with Giovanni, a handsome Italian bartender. The two engage in an affair that alternately fascinates and frightens David.

David is a character filled with contradictions. He remembers when he was a young boy and felt a sexual arousal for a male friend, Joey then spent the rest of their school days bullying Joey to prove his manhood. He alternates being romantic with Giovanni in their long talks and late night strolls and feelimg smothered during their time in Giovanni's room. (Which  David at first finds liberating then compares to a prison.) David can also be cruel and neglectful such as when Giovanni gets fired and depressed and David shows his loving concern by......abandoning him for three days and reuniting with Hella.

David is confused by his sexual identity and role in his relationships with men and women. When he is with women like Hella and another woman, Sue, he thinks that he has to be strong and forceful, his perception of a man. When he is with Giovanni, he cleans his room and cooks his meals and takes a more submissive role. Even though he plays these roles for both genders, David is unable to make a real connection or accept love from either Hella or Giovanni. No wonder why both Giovanni and Hella make variations of the same claim that David can't feel love for anyone. It is only too late when Giovanni makes a destructive decision that David realizes the depth of his feelings for Giovanni.




"The Better Part of Wisdom" by Ray Bradbury(1976)- Ray Bradbury's Irish stories are sweet gentle sometimes funny character-driven stories. This is the best of these stories which portray a deep love and undstanding between a grandfather and grandson and the loves of their lives.

Irishman Tim Kelly visits his favorite grandson Tom to announce he's dying and to take the "farewell tour" himself to visit his relatives.  He examines Tom's beautifully decorated flat (an unfortunate bit of stereotyping) and meets Tom's roommate Frank Davis.  Upon finding a portrait Frank painted of Tom that is clearly painted with detail and love,  Tim realizes the two men are lovers.

Instead of being furious or even asking questions Tim tells his grandson of when he was a boy and met Jo,  a young Traveler boy.  Tim explains he and Jo spent a beautiful seven days running,  playing,  and just being young and carefree.  Though the relationship is youthful and Platonic,  Tim  and Tom both recognize the parallels between Tim and his first love and Tom and his current love.

The title comes from Tim's words of wisdom:"The Better Part of  wisdom is what is left unsaid. " Tom never outright tells his his grandfather that he's gay. Nor does Grandfather voice his approval (except to give the standard paternal  "you-hurt-my-kid-I-hurt-you" speech to Frank. ) By the end of the story,  The Reader realizes that doesn't matter. The movements,  gestures,  and thoughts between Tim,  Tom,  Frank,  and Jo are enough.








7. Tipping The Velvet by Sarah Waters (1998)- Sarah Waters' picaresque novel explored the lesbian subculture of 19th Century England and provides the Reader with a beguiling narrator who begins the novel as naive to the love between women but by the end not only finds real love but the courage to be true to herself.

Nancy Astley the daughter of fish-mongers finds excitement in her typical dull gray life by going to the music halls. It is at the halls, she encounters Kitty Butler, a talented singer who dresses like a man when she performs. Nancy also catches Kitty's eye and eventually Kitty hires Nancy to be her dresser then her partner on the stage.

The music hall scenes are amazingly detailed of the performing life and reveals a world where some characters show their true selves while others aren't what they seem. This is particularly shown in the characters of Nancy and Kitty.
Nancy, now taking the stage name of Nan King, feels true freedom in her role as a male impersonator and loves to dance and sing of true love on stage while experiencing it off in a slow moving relationship with Kitty. For Kitty however most of her act is simply that: an act. She is terrified of even the slightest suspicion of lesbianism. After a disastrous performance when the audience calls out various names and Nan makes an uncomfortable return home to her family, Nan finds Kitty in bed with their oafish male manager whom Kitty intends to marry.

Nan is heartbroken and like many romantic leads who are dumped by their first loves before and since, Nan swears to never feel love again. Using the tricks of the trade that Kitty taught her, Nan continues to wear men's clothing, to become a rent boy/male prostitute. Nan makes a decent living at prostitution, but feels empty still longing for Kitty. While soliciting company, Nan is put right in the path of Diana, a sinister wealthy woman who sees Nan as a potential plaything. Diana displays Nan in front of friends like a living doll. She indulges in sadistic tricks and mind games that transform Nan into a suffering victim. One of the best moments is when Nan defends a younger maid who is about to be molested by Diana's friends. Nan really let's the upperclass women have it calling them to task with all of the insults she had buried inside for so long. However the denouement is not what Nan or the Reader expected and Nan is left once again left destitute and heartbroken.

Above all this is a story of maturity. When Nan lives with another family, Florence and Ralph, two social workers and union organizers, she reaches out to them in friendship long before she is willing to accept their love. She cares for their home and their young charge, Cyril finding a loving family for the first time in awhile. While at first indifferent to the siblings' causes, Nan becomes involved to the point where she gives a stirring speech at a rally. She also learns of another woman's heartbreak and helps heal it finding a love that accepts her and makes her a whole complete person. No matter if she wears a skirt or slacks











6. Carol AKA The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith (Original title:1952; Revised version with new title: 1984)-
Carol is a beautiful lyrical novel about love between two women and the cost of finding happiness in the repressive 1950's.

Therese Belivet is a young store clerk in the doll department of a fashionable department store but has dreams of being a set designer for the theater. She is in a relationship with a man whom she does not love. She is unsettled with her life but does little about it, until she meets the gorgeous blond female customer, Mrs. Carol Aird.

Carol is buying a Christmas gift for her daughter, Rindy. The two share an interesting first meeting which inspired Therese to visit Carol at her home. (She had given her address and phone number for shipping purposes.) The two spend many evenings talking and sharing stories mostly about their unhappy pasts: Therese's orphaned background and lack of emotion for her boyfriend, Richard and Carol's miserable marriage to her soon-to-be ex-husband, Harge and custody battle over Rindy. While the two are attracted to one another and share kisses, they don't officially become lovers until they talk about their pasts weaving elegant strands of their past hurt to find a real emotional connection with each other.

Their initially secret relationship consisting of "lunches between friends" and understated calls over the phone eventually becomes forced open. Richard thinks that it's just a fling and that Therese will come back to him. Carol's friend and possibly former lover, Abby warns Therese to stay away from Carol. Carol's maid is put on Harge's payroll to spy on the two women. Harge speeds up the divorce proceedings and sues for custody of Rindy. With all of the stress and the lack of acceptance from their peers and wanting some alone time, Carol and Therese decide to take a road trip through the U.S.

The Road Trip features some of the best passages as the Midwest becomes an almost Fairy Land for the two women.
 They go to a circus and sit on boxes like small children. They meet with mostly friendly people who offer assistance and their love is strengthened underneath the various natural landscapes. Unfortunately, one person makes Carol and Therese's vacation short of Paradise: a private detective hired by Harge to blackmail Carol into surrendering custody of Rindy.

Carol is forced to return to New York while Therese remains in South Dakota working as a receptionist at a lumber mill and turning date requests from old and new friends (the book's slowest moments. However they do establish Therese as a self-sufficient independent woman.) When Therese returns to New York to see a thinner, saddened more sickly Carol, Carol admits that a sacrifice had to be made., albeit an unfair one. Their final dialogue shows that sometimes in the course of love one must be willing to make a sacrifice to be loved and happy especially in a society that wasn't ready for such love.














5. "Jumping Off The Planet" by David Gerrold (1997)- This wonderful Science Fiction/Family Drama came to life as a Novella for Science Fiction Age Magazine. Then it was expanded into a trilogy novel series called The Dingilliad, which expanded on many of the concepts but lacked the simplicity and coherence of the original novella.

The plot is deceptively simple: three brothers take a vacation with their divorced father up a large futuristic elevator from Earth into space. But the real heart of the story lies in the relationship between the eldest brother, Douglas Dingillian and his lover, Mickey Partridge.

The future world that Gerrolld describes is fascinating, particularly the Elevator AKA The Line. It is seen as the ultimate vacation fantasy (a luxury trip to space and then a private ship to the moon- all this was written before the privately donated space flights.) But it is also shown to be an escape from an earth filled with poverty, environmental disasters, and war. One of the scariest passages happens when one character describes the drastic measures that Line officials would consider in the event of war: Breaking the cables off on Earth and letting the Line pull itself off Earth together. (Thereby affecting Earth at the equator where the Line is connected.) These measures reveal the depth of a planet on the verge of destruction and makes it understandable why the Dingillians choose to leave it.

The novella is narrated by the middle child, 13-year-old, Charles with all the sarcasm and rebellion of a 13-year-old. (He constantly refers to his brothers, Douglas and Bobby as "Weird" and "Stinky" respectively.) We get a young teenage perspective of this future world that he is just barely beginning to understand. He is also caught between his combative parents: his shrill abusive mother who kept using legal loopholes to keep custody of her sons and his passive-aggressive father who has ulterior motives for the family vacation including kidnapping and industrial theft.

Despite the hatred on Earth and between his parents, Charles sees real love and tenderness, that exists between his brother and Mickey. By far the most interesting character in the story, 17-year-old Douglas Dingillian starts as a socially awkward nerd who quotes statistics about corporations, metallurgy, and gravity to the confusion and irritation of his brother. He spends most of his time in cyberspace. (The novel further explains that he "sells technology to the technologically illiterate".) But he is a character who is not without depth or understanding. He is the first to suspect his father's motives for the vacation. He is peacemaker during fights between Charles and their youngest  brother, 8 year old Bobby. In one scene Charles has a near breakdown and panic attack, Douglas cares for him like a loving parent would.

Mickey is also a well-written character who takes a liking to Douglas and vice versa. A cabin attendant for the Line, Mickey initially befriends the family just on the basis of his job. However after he and Douglas have sex (or as Douglas describes it:"(He) just joined the Elevator Club")and Mickey is removed from his job "for getting involved" Mickey volunteers to aid the family anyway. He requests help from his attorney mother and judge aunt to help the Dingillians. He and a friend navigate them through the Line's interior system to evade security., after security is notified of their father's theft.  After Douglas argues with his father about the abuse and deception that the brothers suffered at the hands of both parents, Mickey provides a shoulder to cry on and a lap to sit on.
 In the end the family is dragged into court over custody of the brothers, Douglas and Mickey are proven to be the ideal parents for Charles and Bobby. When Douglas is declared a legal adult and granted custody over his younger brothers (after the wise judge sees both parent's true characters: Mom as a harpy and Dad as a crook.), Mickey willingly accepts co-responsibility. With Douglas and Mickey, Charles finally sees real love and possibly a stable family.





4. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg (1987)- While the 1991 film adaptation is beautiful, moving, and is filled with great performances including Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Mary Louise Parker, it pales in comparison to Fannie Flagg's original novel, because the movie tap dances what the book is not afraid to say aloud: Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison are a lesbian couple and a very sweet devoted loving couple at that.

Idgie is a true original character. She is like a female Huckleberry Finn, wandering the woods in men's clothes, riding trains from one section of the South to the other, getting honeycomb straight from the hive surrounded by bees, and is a charter member of the Dill Pickle Club, a group of yarn spinners and tall tale tellers. She is bound to be wild and unattached until she meets Ruth Jamison. Ruth couldn't be more different than Idgie, a quiet, proper lady who teaches Sunday School and leads youth church activities. From the time they meet in the summer of 1924, they are inseparable until Ruth begins to feel a stirring that she feels is wrong and unnatural. She then leaves for Valdosta, Georgia and throws herself into a marriage with Frank Bennett, who is far from the ideal man.

It doesn't take long for Ruth to realize that Frank is a philanderer with several illegitimate Little Frank Jr.s and Frankies running around not to mention a wife batterer and a Ku Klux Klan member. With the help of Idgie, Idgie's brother, and their servant Big George, a pregnant Ruth manages to leave Frank and settle in Idgie's home of Whistle Stop, Alabama.

Idgie and Ruth open the titular cafe with the house specialty fried green tomatoes. They raise a lot of eyebrows by serving transients for free and seating African-American patrons with whites. They are also very kind to people with mental disabilities, such as Albert, the son of Ninny, the narrator.

Surprisingly despite the time period, the '20s-'50s and the setting in the Bible Belt South, Idgie and Ruth's relationship is not a cause for controversy for the town. They accept it as they would any other relationship. Ninny and the gossipy news writer, Dot Weems refer to Ruth's son, Buddy Jr.,  as " Ruth and Idgie's boy." Many are on hand to offer marital advice such as when Idgie comes home drunk and their friend, Sipsy reminds her "that Ruth already left one no-account don't make her leave another." This town acceptance of Idgie and Ruth's relationship shows how connected the two are to the town and moves the characters beyond stereotypes into real understanding people.





3. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)- When Joseph Kavalier and his cousin, Sammy Clay the protagonists of Michael Chabon's amazing Pulitzer Prize winning novel, create their famous comic book character, The Escapist in 1938, they little realize how much of an impact the character will have on the comic book world or how much he will become a metaphor for their lives.

For Joe, the character becomes a symbol of liberation and escape, particularly for his family who reside in Nazi-occupied, Prague. For Sammy, The Escapist becomes the strongest source of wish fulfillment, a strong masculine figure who though is disguised is unafraid to be himself. It is Sammy's connection to the character and his own life that is the focus of this review.

As a teenager, Sammy is unable to express his feelings for other boys, such as the erotic twinge that he feels upon encountering his cousin for the first time. It is only after the cousins create The Escapist, that Sammy feels free to explore his sexuality. While Joe pursues a romance with the lovely Surrealist artist, Rosa Sacks, Sammy becomes involved with Tracy Bacon, the charming radio actor who supplies the voice of the Escapist. The two men enjoy a few romantic nights out attending parties, visiting the World's Fairgrounds, and having a night out on a lookout tower while Sammy is on duty spotting for unusual aircraft. Things are about to go well until a police raid frightens Sammy away from moving to California with Tracy and untoward circumstances force him into a life of marriage and suburban respectability.

The Reader feels the ennui of the characters as they settle themselves into suburbia and a comfortable benign life. Sammy in particular tries to put his comic book past and homosexual affairs behind him. Though he edits the comics, he considers them "trash." While he is involved in the life of his adopted son, he thinks that he is indifferent to him and simply friends and colleagues with his wife. He is disconnected and disillusioned to his past until he is called to be a witness for the Kefauver Senate Hearings.

The Kefauver Senate Hearings in 1953 tried to use comic books as a cause for juvenile delinquency. When Sammy is called to testify to defend his characters and their male sidekicks(which he is aware are not meant to be lovers or pedophiles but are stand ins for loving father and son relationships which Sammy did not have.) , Sammy realizes that unlike his crime fighting character, he cannot escape or hide behind a disguise. He has to find the heroism to be himself.





2. The Color Purple by Alice Walker(1982)- Alice Walker's moving Pulitzer Prize winning novel tells the tale of two very unlikely women, the wife and mistress of one man who find love and comfort in each other's arms.

Celie, in particular needs someone to love and hold her. Impregnated twice by a man she believes to be her father and separated from her sister Nettie, her only loving relative, Celie is practically sold as a child in marriage to Mr.-, a cruel abusive man. Mr.-, his children, and associates ridicule Celie as a timid mouse and morsel. Mr.- beats her to force her to "mind." He openly flaunts his mistress, Shug Avery, in front of Celie and when Shug becomes ill, Mr.- practically forces Celie to care for her.

Shug Avery is a fascinating character to Celie and the Reader. Shug is a strong-willed bawdy blues singer who dresses in furs and jewels. At first Celie is intimidated by Shug and Shug thinks Celie is "as ugly as sin." The two women slowly become friends and then lovers after they start sharing a bed.

Shug proves to be a great influence on Celie. She encourages her to stand up for herself against Mr.- in little ways like calling him Albert, his given name. Shug helps the younger woman locate letters that Mr.- hid from Celie detailing Nettie's life in Africa. When Celie begins to doubt God's existence, Shug offers her own philosophy of God "whoever he or she might be."

The greatest gift that Shug gives Celie is the courage to leave Mr.- which she does in the book's best passage when Celie curses him with the hurt he gave her all those years. She and Shug leave for Tennessee where Shug sings with a band  and Celie makes a good business designing women's work pants.











1. Maurice by E.M. Forster (1971)- On his deathbed, E.M. Forster left the complete manuscript of his final novel originally written in 1915, , Maurice with a note that said, "Publishable, but is it worth it?" Well, the short answer is, "Yes." The long answer is that this is a beautiful story about a young Englishman coming to terms with his sexuality in repressive Edwardian England and challenging expectations by daring to have a happy ending.

Maurice Hall, a confused snobbish Cambridge student befriends Clive Durham, a handsome freethinking gentleman who talks about Plato and religious philosophies. The duo's friendship evolves to near physical touch until one night when Clive unguardedly confesses that he loves Maurice. Bewildered at first believing this declaration to be "rubbish", Maurice leaves his friend with a kiss and a return of his affection.

Maurice and Clive's relationship becomes merely Platonic, involving sharing of words and ideas and very little else. Just as abruptly as it began, Clive's relationship with Maurice cools, the one weak spot in the book. (The equally well-done Merchant-Ivory 1987 film gives a further reason for Clive's rejection of Maurice: the arrest and disgrace of a friend for sodomy giving more understanding to Clive's decision and also more admiration for Maurice's later actions.)

Clive settles into public life and politics on  his country estate and married life with dizzy heiress, Anne Woods. Maurice is devastated and seeks help from others( His family doctor tells him not to let the thought enter his head. A hypnotist urges him to adopt manly poses:. "Stroll around with a gun.") It is not until Maurice falls in love with and sleeps with the assistant gamekeeper, Alec Scudder that Maurice becomes awakened to the idea of true love.

Some of the best passages are Maurice and Alec's time together particularly when Maurice tries to convince Alec to remain with him instead of moving to Argentina like he initially planned. Their reunion, plus the conversation Maurice has with Clive where he can't " hang his whole life on the five minutes (Clive) can spare on ( Maurice) between Anne and politics."is the stuff of good romance.

There have been criticism over the years whether Maurice and Alec's would have a chance of being happy ever after. In his review of the film, Roger Ebert's wrote "in a few weeks or months the British class system would have driven them apart." Forster wrote that when he showed his book to friends, some gave them six months at most. There are two reasons to dismiss the naysayers. 1)Forster believed there should be a happy ending. In his afterward, Forster wrote "I was determined that in fiction anyway two men  should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense Maurice and Alec's still roam the Greenwood." 2) Maurice Hall and Alec Scudder were based on a real-life couple, friends of Forster's. Edward Carpenter, a writer and philosopher and George Merrill, a working class man, lived together as a loving, for all intents and purposes, married couple for over 30 years. Sometimes truth can go hand in hand with fiction



Non-fiction






10. On Being Different: What it Means To Be Homosexual by Merle Miller (1971; Introduction and Afterword: 2012)-
Miller's essay, On Being Different, bears the unique distinction of being topical when it was first published and when it was republished.

Miller wrote this essay in 1971, two years after the Stonewall Riots in which police raided a gay bar in Stonewall Inn. Instead of accepting their arrests, the patrons fought back against the police. This act of courage helped spark the modern LGBT movement and inspired Miller to come out of the closet and write this essay.

While Miller was proud that homosexuals were finally making their voices heard, the reason for this essay was for more personal reasons: He was tired of the jokes, the. comments that people made behind his back and to his face, and the swishy stereotypes shown on television and movies. One particular incident stands out: A former friend refused to let his sixteen-year-old visit Miller anymore because he was afraid Miller would molest his son. "I have never molested a child" Miller wrote.".... Neither have any of my homosexual friends Certainly not in my living room or bedroom. Moreover I have known quite a few homosexuals, and I have listened to a great many accounts of how they got that way or think they got that way. I have never heard anybody say that he (or she) got to be homosexual because of seduction."

While the first half of the essay is mostly dark discussing Miller's difficulties with society's perception of homosexuality, but carries a ray of Hope because of the burgeoning Gay Liberation Movement, the second half of Miller's essay is more hopeful dealing with Miller's sudden fame and notoriety after the original publication of the "On Being Different" essay in The New York Times Magazine. He wrote about his friendships with his former wife who became one of his strongest supporters. He publicly supported the Gay Activists Alliance considering "(his) friends, brothers, and sisters," After another writer posted an article favoring "genocide for queers." Miller spoke out against him in public saying  that he was "sick and tired of reading and hearing such goddamn demeaning, degrading b*@##$t about me and my friends." His essay also allowed Miller to help other people come out particularly one he talked out of suicide. For Miller it also meant he could let them know who he really was, and what comments bothered him and that he was happy being himself.

The mark of a good essay is how much of an impact that it has on future generations. This is exemplified in the Introduction by author, Dan Savage and the Afterword by Charles Kaiser, former journalist and President of the National Lesbian.and Gay Journalist Association. Both write of the impact Miller's essay had on their lives. Savage in particular compares Miller's family life to his own saying that he, his husband, and son have never been judged or harassed by their friends and that the (mostly heterosexual) parents let their children hang out with their son, including a trip to Hawaii, without fear that their children would be molested. Savage thought about that essay while sitting on the Hawaiian beach with his husband, son, and their son's friends and wrote: " Thank you, Mr. Miller for telling your story, thank you for your anger, thank you for fighting back against the demeaning, degrading, b@#$$*"&t. We couldn't have made it to the beach without you."






9. Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble Rouser by Rita Mae Brown (1997)- Rita Mae Brown is known to some as an outspoken author of lesbian fiction like Rubyfruit Jungle. Others know her as the author of genteel Southern cozy mysteries like the Mrs. Murphy Series. In her autobiography, Brown combines both aspects of her writing personality: the genteel Southern lady and the outspoken lesbian activist.

The Southern writer aspects emerge when Brown writes of her birth to a young unwed mother and adoption by Juts and Ralph Brown. Brown makes the adults in her life memorable particularly her mother and her Aunt Mimi. Two sisters, Juts and Mimi seem to have argued since birth: One's a Catholic, the other's Lutheran, one's a Democrat, the other's a Republican, one's given to outbursts, the other to cold looks. It seemed that if there were a blank piece of paper on the ground, the two women would have argued over it. The arguments annoyed and amused Brown but helped shape her as a strong independent woman.

Brown's Southern gentility writing also shows when Brown writes of her relationship with animals. Her companion from her college days to middle age is her cat, Baby Jesus. (In one humorous incident, Baby Jesus escaped from her mistress at Sak's only to be found in a leather aisle and was rewarded with her own card marked B.J. Brown.) Brown had other cats such as her Mrs. Murphy Series co-author, Sneaky Pie who gets as much fan mail as Brown does. (Brown was miffed that Sneaky Pie thought of Brown as her secretary.)

The lesbian activism side of Brown comes through when describing her involvement with NOW and it's founder, Betty Friedan. Brown and several lesbians joined the group and Friedan fearful of their involvement in the group called them the "lavender menace." Incensed Brown and the others defected to form a separate group. Brown also founded the Furies Collective, a group which raised consciousness on lesbian issues until Brown's combative behavior forced her removal. Brown then decided to make her lesbianism known best through her writing such as her land mark novel, Rubyfruit Jungle.

Brown also writes of her relationship with other women, such as Fannie Flagg who was too fearful of pursuing an open lesbian relationship ending hers and Brown's. Then there's a messy triangle between Brown, and Tennis great Martina Navatrialova and her then lover, Judy Norton which resulted in gun shots, jealous tantrums, and an infamous lawsuit resulting that gay and lesbian lovers can sue exes for palimony. After the dust settled, Brown found love with a sweet woman who loved animals as much as she does. Still Brown writes in the final chapters that she wants to continue writing showing there's a lot of Rabble rousing left in this  genteel Southern lesbian activist.






8. Transition: The Story of How I Became A Man by Chazz Bono (2011)- As the only child of mega-stars Sonny and Cher, Chaz Bono was never comfortable under the spotlight partly because he never felt comfortable in his skin. When he was younger, every time he looked in the mirror at his then female body, he would see a stranger. "Despite my breasts, my curves, and my female genitalia, inside I identified as a man," Bono writes. "This meant of course that I was transgender, literally a man living in n a woman's body. I have always felt more comfortable wearing boy's and men's clothes. Without a doubt, as a child I thought of myself as a boy. But the process of coming to terms with the reality that I am in fact transgender was horrific. It upended my entire life."

It is this journey of transitioning from female to male that is the focus of this touching book. Even as a child with the name of Chastity, Bono knew he was different from female children. As a child, he preferred to play sports and rough games with a boy, Ricky rather than other girls. He was caught between his father encouraged his boyishness and called him "Fred" and his mother, who wanted Bono to dress more feminine and have girlfriends. This division lasted throughout Bono 's life.

As Bono matured, he thought the confusion was sexual, so for a time believed he was a lesbian. "I had skipped over the gender piece of the puzzle," Bono realized recalling the many times in lesbian relationships when he played the male role with women. Bono 's writing illustrates the confusion young Transgenders often feel when they experience the difference between their sexuality and their gender identity. He also writes the extreme pain he felt during puberty during the menstrual cycle and that breasts were an invasion on his body. This shows the physical discomfort those with gender dysphoria feel with their bodies, that it goes beyond a girl liking to play with trucks or a boy playing with dolls. Transitioning to another gender is much deeper than that, it is complete physical and psychological discomfort with the gender one is born with and complete happiness in the opposite gender or in being genderless in some cases.

Bono describes his lesbian relationships many of them unhappy such as Heidi with whom he formed a short-lived pop/rock band, Celebration. Managers wanted the two to hide to hide their relationship and Heidi willingly acquiesced to sexual favors with their manager leading to their break up. Bono had a much happier romance with Joan, an older female friend of his mother's. The two remained intimate until Joan's death in 1994 of cancer. Bono realized being a lesbian but was unfulfilling and that he was still threatened by his body. To numb his pain and confusion, Bono turned to drugs and alcohol.

At the age of 31, Bono began to realize that he was a man in a woman's body. After intense therapy and recovering from the drug and alcohol abuse, Bono began the transition. He found dissension in some of the most unlikely places. His then girlfriend broke up with him saying, " I don't mind that you're Butch, but I can't be with a man." Surprisingly, Cher, his mother (long considered a gay icon) was extremely uncomfortable with Boon's transition and spent a long time freezing him out. (They have since reconciled.)

However, Bono also felt support. Members of the gay community spoke out in favor of his transition. The Bono side of the family all stood by him, even though the majority were Republicans.  "I don't mean to offend anyone; my point is that those of us who are politically active often demonize individuals of the opposing party instead of understanding that we are all just people," said Bono, a life-long Democrat.(Unfortunately, Bono began the transition after Sonny's death in 1998, so he never learned what his father would have thought, but hopes he would have understood.) Bono also found love with Jenny, an understanding and supportive fellow recovering alcoholic.
Bono's book is a great example of a man struggling with the body in which he was born and journeying until he found the true person inside the body allowing him to come out.



7. Outlaw Marriages: The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples by Roger Streitmatter (2012)- Though brief Outlaw Marriages details the homosexual couples in the times before gay marriage became legal. The Outlaw marriages tell sweetly of stories of love making, fight having, and the enduring support and sometimes break ups of these memorable couples.

There are two major themes in the stories. One theme is how only one-half of the couples gained fame while the other supported being the proverbial "wind beneath the wings." Many Readers won't forget the story of Peter Doyle who besides being Walt Whitman's life partner also served as Whitman's secretary, inspiration for his poetry and nurse when the poet suffered a stroke. Another story of love and loyalty is that of Mary Rozet Smith who not only aided  her lover Humanitarian, Jane Addams in her endeavors at running a home for immigrants, Hull House and fighting for global peace, but also had the unenviable task of taking care of her workaholic lover and make sure she didn't overexert herself.

Another theme is the lack of acknowledgement that the relationships receive from the media. The obituary of composer, Aaron Copland described him as "a lifelong bachelor" despite his over 30 year relationship with Victor Kraft. Neither the obituaries of Bryn Mawr's first female President, Martha Carey Thomas nor her companion, Mamie Gwinn referred to each other despite that Gwinn helped Thomas organize the college during her presidency.

Not all of the relationships are filled with sacrifice and life-long dedication. Some were as troubled as many heterosexual relationship. The romance between Greta Garbo and her lover, Mercedes De Acosta becomes doomed because of Garbo's desire for privacy and "vanting to be alone" vs. De Acosta's desire for attention including her 1960 book which revealed more than the actress liked. Tennessee Williams' outlaw marriage to Frank Merlo alternated between stability and Williams' fertile inspirations and periods of Williams' infidelity and alcoholism and drug addiction.

Above all, the book reveals relationships that are troubled and loving, unhappy and happy of people who created many things that were beautiful, lasting, and changed the world from ar, to literature, films, education, humanitarian services and other works. People who despite perception found love and happiness and deserved to be recognized just as much as any heterosexual couple.



 6. It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living Edited by Dan Savage and Terry Miller (2011)- Justin Asberg was a 15-year-old boy who came out of the closet at age 13. After two years of intense bullying, Justin killed himself in 2010. Billy Lucas, also 15 was perceived gay and was also bullied. In 2010, Billy hanged himself. The news of these suicides grieved Dan Savage. He was also angered that Christian parents blocked efforts to curb anti-gay bullying at Justin's school because they claimed it violated their children's "religious rights." Savage wrote a tribute to Justin and Billy on his blog and read a comment: "My heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas. I wish I could have told you that things get better."

Things get better. That simple phrase gave Savage the idea to create a video to let all LGBT kids out there to know that things would get better. The idea was so important that Savage was able to convince his normally publicity-shy husband, Terry Miller to take part in the video. That one video led to hundreds then thousands of videos in which people mostly LGBT adults spoke of their lives and offered words of encouragement to young bullied teens. This wonderful encouraging book is the companion to the It Gets Better Project (http://www.itgetsbetter.org) a website that digitizes, collects, and archives the videos so the videos and the words in this book provide hope to LGBT youth.

The narratives are from a variety of people from college students, to activists, to farmers, to business people to celebrities like Ellen De Generes and Sia. Even former President Barack Obama posted a video. (Savage stated that when Obama posted his video, Savage's computer crashed.) "We've got to dispel the myth that bullying is just a normal rite of passage-that it's some inevitable part of growing up. It's not," Obama said. "We have an obligation to ensure that our schools are safe for all of our kids. And to every young person out there, you need to know that if you're in trouble, there are caring adults who can help."

The stories are wonderful and uplifting. Not many will forget the story of marketing analyst/dancer, Bruce Ortiz who survived a suicide attempt to find support with his family and a loving relationship with "a wonderful partner." Also the story of British Lance Corporal James Wharton who after the ban was lifted in the UK on gay military personnel in 2000, Wharton was pleased. He came out in 2005, after having served in the British army for two years and as of his writing celebrated a civil union with his partner.

Some of the stories are funny. Krissy Mahan who is proud to live in a rural area and build chicken coops in upstate New York writes "Work hard and then go do something fun on Saturday night, like go look at girls....that's better." Author, Michael Cunningham recounts word for word the "typical guy talk" between himself and his friends as teenagers in which they casually threw out the word, "f$#@&t" making him reluctant to come out to his friends. After college and becoming a writer, Cunningham sent a copy of his book to the same friends. The friends greeted him with open arms and teasing such as asking if they could talk about women in front of him (they could) and if he thought one of the guys in the bar was cute. (he wasn't.) Mahan and Cunningham's accounts are among the many that find humor in the years when things get better.

Of course, there is no quick fix and things don't become 100 percent perfect. Author, Gabriella Rivera, wrote this in her account. "What happens is this: You get stronger. You realize what's going on, see how people are you see how the world is. And as an adult, you learn how to deal with it. You learn how to love yourself. You learn to just take it for what it is. You learn that other people are just crazy and are caught up in their own crap."

This book is not only useful for LGBT teens and adults. It's for anyone who reaches that moment where they are standing on a bridge, or looking at the barrel of a gun, or a handful of pills. It's a universal message that helps that person get past that thought and see beyond that moment so they can instead see and visualize a future where, yes, it does get better.




5. The Oldest Gay Couple in America: A 70-Year Journey Through Same-Sex  America by Gean Harwood (1997)-Gean Harwood and Bruhs Mero had the kind of romantic partnership that most couples would long to have, gay or straight. Harwood's moving and beautiful memoir recounts his relationship with Mero from the day they met in 1929 through a mutual friend to Mero's death in 1995 from complications from Alzheimer's.

After they first met in 1929, the two did not instantly become lovers. While Harwood had previous relationships with men (including one in which he was raped by a sexually aggressive man), Mero had a girlfriend. The two roomed together and on New Year's Eve,1930 the two kissed and fell into each other. "There was no turning back now," Harwood wrote. "We were starting down a quick descent. There was no time to question my action-no thought of trying to stop. Somewhere along the steepening slope he must have felt any resistance melt, for he gave himself completely in total surrender to my passionate pursuit."

Harwood wrote of the struggles and triumphs the two shared over the years such as when Mero moved to Florida to work with his brother. The separation resulted in " Come and Take My Hand", lyrics by Mero and music by  Harwood, the first of many beautiful songs the two wrote together that described their relationship. They were reunited in 1933 and the two explored musical pursuits, Mero began to study modern dance and began to dance professionally, sometimes with female partners. Harwood, who normally worked as a driver for Paramount Pictures, also accompanied Mero on the piano. (A running gag runs through the book that wherever the two moved, Harwood insisted on having a piano no matter the size of the apartment. It's an example of the cute running arguments couples often share which are often amusing, annoying, and endearing. Like a husband constantly quoting from a favorite movie to his wife's chagrin or a girlfriend babying her toy poodle to the embarrassment of her boyfriend.)
The happiest times the duo shared professionally were in the late '30's when the two opened The Dance Gallery, a dance studio and hosted The Nucleus Club, a small group of gay and lesbian lovers who could meet and be themselves without outside interference. (As soon as they left the apartment, men would have to leave alongside female friends so they wouldn't be stopped and questioned.)

Harwood also writes of his and Mero's political ideals including their commitment to pacifism especially their refusal to serve in the military in WWII even after Pearl Harbor. (Harwood wittily recounted their questioning by the local draft board which granted their 4F: Army Psychiatrist: Do you have any male friends? Harwood: Yes. A.P.: Have you had sexual relations with any of these men? H: Yes. A.P.: How recently? H: Last night.) Greatly inspired by Dalton Trump's anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun (also the inspiration for Metallica's song and music video, "One".), In 1941, Harwood and Mero created Awake and Speak, a musical about a disillusioned soldier that also included references to lynching of African-Americans and the violence of anti-Semitism. This plus their friendship with outspoken artists like actor, Canada Lee show Harwood and Mero's commitment to equal rights for everyone.

Their relationship was particularly tested in 1943, when Mero suffered a heart attack. While he recovered, Mero had to give up dancing. The two ended up closing the Dance Gallery and working in desk jobs. While they were as close as ever, Harwood described the many times when Mero would be depressed recalling dances that he used to do or would refuse to watch a dance performance because it reminded him of what he lost.

In the '80's, Harwood and Mero came out to friends, family, and the public. The results varied including Mero's niece and her husband who thought their union was "unnatural" to Mero's nephew, Richard who supported the two so much that he moved in with them becoming Harwood 's son and heir. Harwood and Mero's were interviewed by journalist, Arthur Bell and featured in a documentary about couples who had been together for 50+ years. The fame brought some comfort to Harwood allowing him to speak as a senior gay man and some much needed relief from nursing Mero who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 1983. Harwood continued to nurse and care for his partner, visiting him in the Amsterdam House, nursing home until his death in 1995.
Harwood died in 2006, but his and Mero's love continues in this book and their songs and poems, one of which Harwood called Assignment For Today:" "We only have today/to nurture every needy soul/ to comfort the disconsolate/to give the fallen hope for their discouragement/ to embrace all men as brothers/for, in truth we are all one."




4. The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family by Dan Savage (2005)- When the subject of gay marriage comes up, many Conservatives that are against believe it will destroy the concept of a traditional family. Not so, argues Dan Savage the author of the funny and touching book, The Commitment. In fact Savage points to his family as an example of one. He works outside the the home albeit as a sex advice columnist while his boyfriend, Terry Miller, was a stay-at-home dad to their young son, D. J. They had everything to mark them as an ideal traditional family the type that many Conservatives dream except a marriage license and it is the journey to get married including the conflicting opinions that result from the issue that is the focus of this book.

At first Savage and Miller were non-committed even blase about the issue. Savage didn't want to jinx their relationship citing divorces such as that of his parents and all of the celebrity gay and lesbian couples who fought for the right to get married  only to break up shortly thereafter (such as Ellen De Generes and Anne Heche and Rod and Bob Paris-Jackson who wrote a book about their civil union only to break up shortly after it was published.) Miller said that he "didn't want to act like straight people" but suggested that they get matching tattoos instead.

They also find conflicting opinions within their own family some in surprising places. Savage's Catholic mother is for their marriage sending various news articles about the benefits of marriage ( usually in envelopes with no return address. except "The Mad Clipper.") Their son. D. J. doesn't want them to get married. In some of the most humorous passages the 6-year-old explains his reasons in a child's circular logic such as: " Since you love each other and since you are my dads, you have to live together forever. Married people live together and you wouldn't be able to do that since you have to live with each other and be my dads forever and so you can't get married because then you would have to live with the girls you marry, and not with each other, which you couldn't do that because you're my dads and you have to live together forever because you're my dads." ( " The kid makes sense" Miller said after the boy's tirade.)

While dealing with his family's conflictimg opinions and his and Miller's wavering feelings about whether to get married or not, Savage explores the concept of marriage and relationships in general such as the various relationships within his family such as his grandparents'marriage comparing it to the hand painted topper from Germany on their wedding cake. ('fragile but something of value. something lasting. but with a little touch of fascism about it-but for the whole idea of marriage circa 1939.")  He also compares his relationship with Miller with his brother's relationship with his live-in girlfriend, Kelly ("Mom's finally convinced I won't get married so she's given up on me. But you and Terry are getting it with both barrels because she's convinced you should be married and you' ve failed to convince her you shouldn't be.") Savage also looks at the changing tide of heterosexual and homosexual relationships in which young straight people engage in sexual encounters without commitment vs. homosexual couples who have been together many years and want to settle down considering it "borrowing lifestyles from each other."
He also looks with justifiable anger at the politicians during the Bush Administration who created legal battles against civil unions and religious speakers who blame homosexuality for everything even natural disasters. They wete quoted as saying the 2004 Earthquake/Tsunami was "God's wrath for allowing gay marriage." (" God may be all-knowing and all-powerful but He is it seems a lousy shot, the Mr. Magoo of higher powers" Savage writes "Same Sex couples get married in Boston,  Toronto and San Francisco and a vengeful nearsighted God triggers an earthquake that slams a killer wave into Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka killing a quarter of a million people who weren't even invited to the wedding.")

Above all this book isn't about politics or religion, or even the changing definition of family, it's about love which Savage's mother reminds the two men in a speech. She tells them their relationship is everything a marriage should be about two people who love and trust each other and should get married because of that love. Ultimately it is that love that allows Savage to add two final chapters to the book in which he, Miller, and D.J. endure a long car ride into Canada, the obtainment of a marriage license in a drug store, and a last minute harried arrangement with a wedding planner to say "I do."





3. Fun Home:A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel- Among the most important details in Alison Bechdel's graphic novel is that the humans are drawn in very unrealistic ways. With large faces and eyes, the characters are drawn in an almost cartoon manner like characters in For Better or Worse or Family Circus. Like they are drawn to be a typical comic strip family or trying to act as one. It is only when the Reader peers inside and reads the story that they find the division within that the Bechdels have secrets that interfere with the image they are trying to portray as w happy loving family. The image that Bechdels opens and exposes of a father who committed suicide rather than reveal his homosexuality and a daughter coming to terms with his death and hidden private life as well as her own lesbianism.

Bruce Bechdel ran a funeral home which Bechdel describes almost as a museum of artifice. Everything had to be arranged just so and it had to be decorated to perfection. Many passages show Bechdels being yelled at by her father for breaking something or making too much noise or some other trivial issue. This care of maintaining a perfect facade carried over into his private life in that only after his death does Bechdel view the photographs and pictures her father saved of handsome young men and boys.

While Bechdel struggled to understand her father, she is aware of a language that the two shared: that of books. Both big readers, Bechdel decodes many of the mysteries of her father's life and her own by comparing them to her and Bruce's favorite works of literature. Bechdel compares her father to Jay Gatsby of F. Scott Fitzgerald' s The Great Gatsby with his desire to project a sophisticated outgoing heterosexual image while hiding secrets that he felt he couldn't express and coming to a bloody end because of them (though unlike Gatsby, his death is by his own hand.) Bechdel compares her mother to Isabel Archer protagonist of Henry James' novel Portrait of a Lady in her earlier free-spiritedness and wanting a to live a nonconformist lifestyle, but instead settling down to a seemingly respectable marriage and putting all her artistic talents into her home. Bechdel and her father also use books to understand their sexuality. While Bruce felt a deep connection to certain characters that he could never articulate or comprehend, his daughter uses books to identify and understand homosexuality and find lesbian characters to relate to and authors that remind her that she wasn't alone.

The most moving section is towards the end when Bechdel compares her decision to come out as a lesbian and the discovery of the true nature of her father's death with her dissertation of James Joyce's Ulysses and the epic poem, The Odyssey. While searching through these works Bechdel finds parallels in her journey in coming out of the closet thinking of it as Leopold Bloom and Odysseus coming home. She also finds a contrast with her father, forever lost at sea unable to truly come to terms with himself. That is when Bechdel realizes that she doesn't want to live as her father did always hiding her true self. It is when she comes out and lives openly that she finds her way home and is able to put the memories of her father to rest.



2. A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski (2011)- When people ask what is the earliest monumental moment GLBTQ history that they know of, some may say "The Identification of the AIDS Virus in 1981", " The Assassination of Harvey Milk in 1978", or 'The Stonewall Riot's in 1969". Some may go global and name " The Trial  of Oscar Wilde." All of those are important dates and certainly monumental, but Michael Bronski's factual book, A Queer History of the United States considers those dates just a tip of the iceberg in GLBTQ history.

The book begins in early 17-18th Century. The book describes Native American tribes that had "third sex" figures, men and women who dressed as members of the opposite sex and performed the responsibilities of that sex with acceptance from the other tribe members. This conflicted with the Puritan ideal which forbade any deviations from sexual norms. However many Puritans violated those laws and we're arrested or fined. However, Thomas Morton founded Merrymount which encouraged interracial marriage, open relationships, and homosexuality.

The book describes women like Jemima Wilkinson, an Evangelist who dressed in gender neutral clothes, refused to use the pronouns "she" or "he", and preached sexual abstinence.  There are also stories of all male pairings in the Old West that go beyond friendship and "Boston Marriages" in which women live together as a married couple. (Humanitarian and Hull House founder, Jane Addams was in such an arrangement.) These examples show how early Homosexuality and Transsexuality was understood in the early centuries of American history.

The 19th and 20th Centuries reveal various known and some unknown people who fit in the GLBTQ spectrum. Poet Walt Whitman wrote honestly of his love ​for men, particularly in his poem, Leaves of Grass.  One poem "Song of Myself" speaks of an erotic love for a man. There are some who theorize that Emily Dickenson's most sensual poems are for her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had a loving relationship with her husband, but she was also romantically involved with journalist, Lorena Hickock. There is also much discussion about Marlene Dietrich's attraction for men and women and her penchant for wearing men's clothing even when not filming.
Knowing that many writers, performers, and other noted people were also GLBTQ helps readers especially younger readers know they are not alone that there are others like them.

Of course with the stories of acceptance, there are also stories of prejudice such as the Lavender Scare which coincided with the Red Scare of the 1950s in which government employees were fired even if there was even suspicion of homosexuality. There are also stories of gay club raids and threats to diagnose homosexuals as mentally ill. It took until 1973 for the APA to remove homosexuality from the mental illness lists. With the prejudice come those that challenges for GLBTQ groups to be formed and organized, to fight for civil rights, the rights to be married, and to be accepted. This book shows where the GLBTQ community came from and where they are going.

1. And The Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts (1987)-As many know AIDS does not only affect members of the gay community, it affects everyone. However it was first identified within gay men in 1981 and unfairly, they have been tarnished with the disease ever since. Randy Shilts' groundbreaking book peels open the early years when AIDS was first identified. The book becomes not a comedy but a Tragedy of  Fatal Errors and Missteps when public ignorance, scientific arrogance, and denial from the Reagan Administration created a perfect storm of an incurable epidemic.

During the early years, there was little progress made to identify or contain the disease let alone cure it. Shilts wrote of various attempts from individuals to receive funding, but being turned  down and the CDC fighting a disease that they know little about. Arrogance is abound from various immunologists and retrovirologists, such as Dr. Robert Gallo who care more about getting their names heard than helping sick people. Because of the backbiting and arrogance, it takes many years for the HIV virus to be identified.

The book also finds blame in the Reagan Administration and from the Religious Right who  tasted political power on behalf of  the Conservative government. Reagan never referred to AIDS in any of his speeches until 7 years into his Presidency and offered very little support to services that tried to help AIDS patients. Many Christian leaders like Jerry Falwell and Anita Bryant felt that AIDS was punishment from God and that the gay men brought it on themselves.

Shilts also points at the media giving the disease very little attention referring to people who died from it as "from unknown circumstances" or "possibly cancer." By comparison the Tylenol Scare of 1982  which killed 7 people received one article everyday from the New York Times through the month of October of that year. It is only after heterosexuals and actor Rock Hudson ( who was believed to be heterosexual through most of his lifetime.) succumbed that the Media began printing articles on the disease that had been in existence for over five years prior and had already affected over thousands of lives.

The book also found blame within the gay communities. Many were in denial that they had the disease wanting to go on with their lives having sex with multiple partners. Many members of the gay leaders such as Bill Kraus wanted the bathhouses to close so casual sex could be avoided and many fought to keep them open calling Kraus "a sex Nazi." Then there's Gaetan Dugas, a French-Canadian flight attendant who was rumored to be "Patient Zero," the person who may have brought the AIDS virus to North America.  ( More recent findings since the book's publication dispute Dugas' role in spreading the virus.) Dugas is portrayed as a sociopath who not only is aware he has a dangerous virus but eerily displays his lesions to future conquests saying, "I'm going to die and so are you."

Besides the rage, fear, and sadness And The Band Played On is filled with stories of warmth and compassion. There is the story of San Francisco grandmother, Frances Borchelt who was lovingly cared for by her husband and family. Matt Krieger who wrote in his journal about his tender nursing towards his lover, Gary Walsh and his caregiver fatigue in caring for him. There is also the moving story of Cleve Jones who exhausted from fighting his gay colleagues, the media's lack of attention, and the HIV virus itself became an alcoholic. He recovered from his alcoholism and created what is unquestionably the symbol of AIDS, The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.


Honorable Mention
Fiction: The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, The Martian Child by David Gerrold, Oranges are Not The Only Fruit by Jeannette Winterson, "Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann, Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown,  Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Non-Fiction: A Liar's Autobiography Vol
 VI by Graham Chapman, Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde, The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp, Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein, The Kid: What Happened When My Boyfriend and I Decided to Get Pregnant by Dan Savage
Children's Books: Daddy's Roommate by Michael Wilhoite, Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman, King and King by Linda De Haan and Stern Nijland, LGBT Legends Series by Various
YA:  Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden Hero by Perry Moore, The Geography Club by Brent Hartinger
Plays: Bent by Martin Sherman,  Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein, The Sum of Us by David Stevens, The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman, La Cage Aux Folles by Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herrman, Rent by Jonathan Larson, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams