Salacious Biographies

[Matt]

Also, the New York Observer trashed the Audrey Hepburn bio by Donald Spoto, Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn.

That is a fantastically funny review.

[Polybius]

Poor David. That's exactly what would happen if someone ever let me write a bio of any number of actresses past and present.

Incidently, I don't give a shit if I'm the only person alive who feels this way and it's 5 billion to one, but I don't think Nicole Kidman is much of a talent.

[Polybius]

"[...] she appeared in movies primarily to fund her hedonism and work in political causes. She rejected America, hated the movie business, and was kicked out of more European hotel bars than a drunken sailor on a binge."

To this, allow me to say:

[Polybius]

I loathe her performance in the Hours, but then the whole movie reeks of sanctified artistic purity - only Julieanne's all too brief performance has any cogency.

I raise a glass to you, sir.

I actually laughed out loud when Ed Harris' character jumps out the window. (He beat me to it.)

[souvenir]

I was reminded of this thread when I saw Marc Eliot's new biography of Jimmy Stewart mentioned in Entertainment Weekly. Apparently, it claims that Stewart lost his virginity to Ginger Rogers and mentions his 12-year-old masturbation habits. Creepy.

[portnoy]

Not to sound like I'm selling subscriptions, but...there was a long article about Nicholas Ray in Vanity Fair about a year ago (I've mentioned it somewhere around here) and the depiction there was that during the filming of Rebel, Natalie was carrying on simultaneous affairs w/ Ray and Hopper, while Ray was fitting in Mineo and (to a lesser extent) Dean, as well.

This might have been excerpted or paraphrased from Frascella and Weisel's Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause, which is a great read with some deliciously salacious sections about the soap opera that was the set.

[Michael]

The new Kate bio is impossible to put down! Now half way through and guess what? David Ehrenstein is mentioned on page 337!

[Michael]

Yep. He called the gas station attendant: "Hollywood male madam".

[Polybius]

I wish this had all come out in the 60's. The idea that Spencer Tracy was not only gay, but regularly getting full service at a Gas Station To The Stars...Lenny Bruce would have constructed something resembling the Hanging Gardens of Babylon with that.

[Gregor Samsa]

What revelations have we learnt so far?

[Michael]

From William Mann, author of the new Kate bio:

"I've been gratified by the reviews Kate has gotten so far. Thomas Mallon, in Sunday's New York Times Book Review, writes a very smart essay about the book and about what I was trying to do. But in other coverage, the sensationalism continues, and it's disappointing.

This "billboarding" of the book's contents—sensationalizing the stories I tell about Hepburn's (and Spencer Tracy's) sexuality—is an indication that much of the media simply does not know how to talk about sexuality. People magazine, in its positive review of the book, made it seem that Kate's 600-plus pages are all about sex. The Hartford Courant summed up the book with a staggeringly reductive tagline: Hepburn had "a pattern of caring for secretly gay men with drinking problems.â€

[Matt]

I understand where he's coming from, but it's laughably unrealistic (not to mention disingenuous) to expect People Magazine or the Hartford Courant to offer a nuanced review of a work that does, to be frank, drop quite the bombshell. You can, at best, hope for such from The New York Times (which he got), but even that's a crap shoot.

[dadaistnun]

Can anyone recommend a good Bette Davis biography? Looking for one for a Christmas present.

Something closer to the recent Kate end of the spectrum as opposed to, say, Mommie Dearest would be nice.

[Matt]

Can anyone recommend a good Bette Davis biography? Looking for one for a Christmas present.

The recent Charlotte Chandler book, The Girl Who Walked Home Alone has some very candid revelations from Miss Davis, but I didn't think much of it as "biography." The Barbara Leaming book Bette Davis: A Biography is more exhaustive, but it's still "meh"--not very engaging despite its subject. Unfortunately, those are your only options for books still in print. If you have to pick between the two, get the Chandler. It's available in hardcover and will make for a better gift.

For sheer entertainment value, I'd recommend picking up one of Davis' "memoirs" such as This 'n' That or The Lonely Life, but both are long out of print. Also recommended but out of print is Charles Higham's Bette: A Biography of Bette Davis.

You will most definitely want to avoid daughter B.D. Hyman's My Mother's Keeper. It makes Mommie Dearest look like a paragon of literary restraint.

[dadaistnun]

Thanks, Matt; the Chandler it is.

[David Ehrenstein]

Where's David Ehrenstein when you need him!

Present! Yes Kate was a closet dyke, Spence a closet queen and abusive alcoholic, and Cary and Randy had an on-and-off arrangement (more fuckbuddies than lovers) that spanned a decade.

[David Ehrenstein]

And in my interview with Gore Vidal in the current Written By he reveals that Clark Gable got Cukor fired from GWTW because he was a hustler in his youth and Cukor was one of his customers. The source? Mr. Cukor himself.

[Polybius]

Gore Vidal knows everything

An absolute national treasure =D>

[David Ehrenstein]

Howard (Austen) was the man he lived with (best buddies, not lovers)

Harold (Lang) was an old boyfriend (circa 1947)

Gore slept wiith everyone in the cast of Fancy Free except Jerry Robbins.

[Via_Chicago]

And in my interview with Gore Vidal in the current Written By he reveals that Clark Gable got Cukor fired from GWTW because he was a hustler in his youth and Cukor was one of his customers. The source? Mr. Cukor himself.

That little piece of information can also be found in Anger's Hollywood Babylon.

[David Ehrenstein]

That little piece of information can also be found in Anger's Hollywood Babylon

Gore is a far more trustyworthy source than Mr. Angerim.

I recall Anger quoted Cukor as saying William Haines gave Gable a blowjob when he started at MGM.

Actually the story was that Andy Lawler said Gable was "One of Bill's old tricks," meaning Haines. But it was George.

True - they never had sex, and Howard loved NYC while Gore hated it. But I can assure you from my own life a LTCompanion/not-husband (24 years for us) has been the most important thing in my life

SING OUT LOUISE!

George and Howard met at the Everard Baths and discovered immediately they aren't each other's type (both being Tops.) But they got on in absolutely every other way and so decided to live together. I met Howard a couple of times. He was a delightful, bubbly man.

[David Ehrenstein]

"If you believed in this you'd have to believe in a heterosexual sensibility and heaven only knows what that would be like."

Spoken like the Truly Grand Queen that he of course is.

[GringoTex]

And in my interview with Gore Vidal in the current Written By he reveals that Clark Gable got Cukor fired from GWTW because he was a hustler in his youth and Cukor was one of his customers. The source? Mr. Cukor himself.

I guess that explains why Lombard thought Gable was such a lousy lover- he just wasn't interested.

[David Ehrenstein]

Maybe, but don't forget she was a major Fag-Hag. Billy Haines was one of her very closest friends.

[Polybius]

Palimpsest is a recommended prequel to the new book.

And if anyone wants to bask in the man's wide ranging intelligence and breathtaking erudition, get your hands on United States, his collected volume of essays.