My review of Gypsy: Memoirs of America's Most Celebrated Stripper, by Gypsy Rose Lee

Gypsy: Memoirs of America's Most Celebrated Stripper

by Gypsy Rose Lee

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This 1957 memoir follows the early life of Ellen June Hovick a.k.a. Rose Louise Hovick, alias Gypsy Rose Lee, who became a legend in her lifetime.

The author was older sister of later Hollywood actress June Havoc. The pair began in Vaudeville as toddlers, managed under the tutelage of their mother. Baby June was the cute headliner with gawky Rose in the lineup, the latter often in boys' clothes or a pantomime cow's rear end. When the maturing June deserted the act, Rose stepped out of the cow's behind and into the spotlight, becoming Gypsy. She became an icon of big-time burlesque, as vaudeville outran its course and the options narrowed – she had to do something, with mouths to feed and a mother who had kept her from any schooling. Showbiz was all Rose had ever known when she made this fatalistic transition.

She was a self-made lady, a raconteur, an entertainer of the highest order. Of the many (purportedly self-generated) myths about this original queen of reinvention, the greatest was that generated by the mists of time – that she was just a stripper. No such thing, she instead tastefully removed and discarded the odd glove, stocking or feather, shifting emphasis onto the 'tease' in striptease.

Also an actress, author, playwright and radio talk host, Gypsy turned her talents in many directions. She was a formidable intellect, admired collector of rare objets d'art and antiques, widely read, conversant on a glorious array of cultural topics and one of the best dressed women in the public eye. A renowned philanthropist, she gave generously to and supported a vast range of worthy causes.

Herein lies the inspiration behind Sondheim's blockbuster stage and screen musical Gypsy, considered by many the greatest American musical ever. Adaptations famously showcased a gorgeous young Natalie Wood in the 1962 movie's title role. As Gypsy's archetypal overbearing stage mother, Mama Rose, starred the wondrous Rosalind Russell, scoring the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. Russell's role, earlier created onstage by 'brass diva' Ethel Merman, who won the 1959 Tony Award, became one of theatre's most coveted. Stage revivals have seen subsequent 'Mamas' Angela Lansbury, Patti Lapone and Bernadette Peters reap award after award.

This is a gorgeously written, marvellously entertaining read from a woman with a heart of gold and the sheer, glittering class of showbiz royalty. I adored reading her anecdotes in this delicious memoir, never wanting to put it down and making excuses for early nights with her.

Someone threw away the mold when this fabulous lady was made.

My review of The Pursuit of Love, by Nancy Mitford

The Pursuit of Love

by Nancy Mitford

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

For some years this modern classic was on my 'to read' list, while I was more interested to read about the author. Nancy Mitford, eldest of the famed Mitford sisters, debutante, socialite, committed Francophile and mistress of tease, had a sting in her tail, camouflaged by her droll funniness.

Many have theorised over this, her breakthrough novel of 1945, after her four previous novels had met with little or no critical acclaim. Mitford aficionados have long weighed up what Nancy said about this book's relationship to her infamous family, with what her sisters said and with what endless Mitford biographers have observed or opined.  

That some of the sisters insisted Nancy invented much of their family legend has become misreported over time: Nancy was writing fiction! 

Where this much documented accusation of 'Oh you've made it up, darling' gets distorted is in the sisters' later response to Jessica Mitford's memoir Hons and Rebels|, which Nancy and others said 'borrowed' some of Nancy's fictional detail from The Pursuit of Love for the sake of spinning a good yarn.

So, Nancy firmly altered the real Mitford family structure in fictionalising her kin for this novel - presumably in part to avoid libel suites, such was the infamy already surrounding some of the real-life sisters: 

Three of these six sisters were so politically radicalised that one (Diana Mitford Mosley) spent the war years in prison after leaving first husband Bryan Guinness for British fascist movement leader Sir Oswald Mosley (himself in the habit of suing for defamation). Another sister (Jessica Mitford) eloped with the Prime Minister Winston Churchill's Communist nephew Esmond Romilly initially to fight with the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War, never returning to live in England. A third (Unity Mitford) shot herself in the head after ingratiating herself with Adolph Hitler in the prelude to WWII. 

Mainstream media, including national press and Pathé newsreel, had a field day with them.

By the time Nancy penned this fourth novel, these three sisters' notoriety was set in stone. It's fair to say she used that notoriety in proclaiming The Pursuit of Love as loosely based on her early family life - everyone wanted the juice on this bunch!

But much of the Mitford sisters' real-life controversy was omitted from this novel or juggled around, the resemblances everyone looked for mostly missing. 

Nancy includes fictional Radlett sister Linda leaving husband Tony and going to France with new Communist beau Christian (not a Prime Minister's nephew) to help refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War (as did Nancy herself with husband Peter Rodd). 

She has fictional sister 'Jassy' sister forever stashing her pocket money in a 'Running Away Account' (true for real life sister Jessica Mitford, but this was about as close as it got to the much publicised real life family shenanigans.

So, the novel's similarities to Nancy's kin did not much concern her more infamous three sisters, who had brought the Mitfords into the public eye. What she drew from and elaborated on were things like her parents' eccentricities, quirky household pastimes, the trademark camp Mitfordian lingo, their bizarre pets, and the setting itself, fictionalised as 'Alconleigh' but based on real life Asthall Manor.

This she does deliciously, as agreed by just about everyone on the novel's release. We are there, in Alconliegh, immersed in the bustle of a large minor aristocratic family closely resembling the Mitfords, feeling their love and their growing pains. 

The two heroines, older than the other kids, are eager to escape into adulthood, which will only eventuate by marriage. Hence the title The Pursuit of Love, suggested by Nancy's lifelong friend, sparring partner and sometime literary mentor Evelyn Waugh.   

Once the informed reader accepts this fictionalisation of the Mitfords into the differently structured Radletts, desists digging for disguised public characters and scandals, we are left with the novel itself, as charming as consensus has always deemed. 

However, Nancy Mitford, ever hailed for her wit and humour, was the first to admit she was no serious literary force, at least at this point in her career, her craft developing substantially later. 

There was therefore some anticlimax as I turned the pages, caused by the hype and consequent expectation. Charming and comic as the novel is, it is surprisingly featherweight and not so well penned in patches. 

For example, as primarily autodidactic she had not learned to punctuate, Evelyn Waugh still telling her years later of a manuscript she ran by him: 'The punctuation is pitiable, but it never becomes unintelligible so I just shouldn't try. It is clearly not your subject' (quote from The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh). 

Despite such minor issues I intermittently howled laughing at her characters and dialogue, glowing fuzzily at her heartwarming descriptions of interwar genteel country life.

More recent biographers have said that this was her first 'happy' novel, as in not being meant as a stab at some of her more irritating relatives (definitely so in her preceding four novels). 

The explanation for this was that Nancy, for the first time in her life, was head over heels in love, with the man she would so remain all her life if somewhat unrequitedly, French politician Gaston Palewski. He appears as protagonist Linda's third love interest Fabrice de Sauveterre, a wealthy French duke. 

Nancy even dedicated the novel to Palewski, so much had he loved hearing the tales of her youth. His encouragement and her adoration of him were her incentive to write 'less bitterly'. 

It was with this emotional release, after previously enduring a difficult marriage and before that a fruitless engagement to a gay fiancé, that Nancy wrote minus the stifled anger of her previous works. 

Not quite all 'shrieks' and 'teases', the story does have tragic overtones, providing lightness and darkness, saving it from becoming another of her earlier barbed satirical farces.

Such was its success that Nancy wrote two sequels, Love in a Cold Climate (1949) and Don't Tell Alfred (1960). 

Like many such modern classics, The Pursuit of Love and its immediate sequel Love in a Cold Climate became highly popular screen adaptions, arguably more entertaining than the novels.

As I'll always be a Nancy Mitford fan it's irrelevant how consistently I liked or disliked this one defining piece. The bits I loved outweigh any minor disappointments and I will, without a doubt, read it again.

My review of Women I've Undressed: A Memoir, by Orry-Kelly

Women I've Undressed: A Memoir

by Orry-Kelly

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Orry-Kelly was a name synonymous, in old Hollywood, with Oscar winning costumes and career-long close working affiliations with icons like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Olivia de Havilland, Barbara Stanwyck, Ava Gardner, Kay Francis, Dolores del Río, Ann Sheridan and Merle Oberon. 

A plucky gay kid from the New South Wales township of Kiama, he was born in 1897 and sent to Sydney at seventeen to study banking. Defying his parents' plan for a respectable career, he instead became a small-time stage actor. 

Using the great city Down Under as a springboard to the wider world, he landed in New York earning a crust however he could: painting scenery, wheeling and dealing, blocking handmade ties, getting nowhere on stage but sharing crumby rooms and friendships with other struggling performers, some to become legends, others fading into obscurity. 

Here he established friendships with upcoming or newly established Broadway headliners like Fanny Brice, George Burns and Mae West. He also took under his wing the nay too talented but fast-learning young Englishman Archie Leach, later carved into legend as heart throb Cary Grant. 

Having almost inadvertently landed on his feet as a costumier, with zero training or qualifications, he grabbed an offer in Hollywood in 1932 and stayed, we assume abandoning his own ambition of performing, knowing a good thing when he was onto it. 

He was Warner Bros' chief costume designer until 1944, later designing for Universal, RKO, 20th Century Fox, and MGM. He also spent a stint in the US Army Air Corps in WWII before being discharged with alcohol issues.

Kelly's stylistic instinct defied the lure of glitter and sequins we associate with Hollywood's golden age, instead going firmly with understated elegance, gaining him the unswerving loyalty of great leading ladies who knew a good thing when they wore it on screen. 

With "networking" a phrase long yet to be coined, Kelly's "who-you-know" personal survival technique resulted in close lifelong bonds with the likes of Ethel Barrymore and their ilk. We sense him sniffing out the influential and using a blend of sycophancy and crafty haggling to forge vital allegiances.

His movies included classics like 42nd Street, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Arsenic and Old Lace, Harvey, Oklahoma!, Auntie Mame, and Some Like It Hot. 

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, with several hundred movies under his belt, power dynamics had reversed, and he became an authority to be reckoned with, famously dressing down Marilyn Monroe after one of her on-set flare ups. 

A chronic alcoholic, he died of liver cancer in 1964, aged 65, and was interred in the Hollywood Hills. His pallbearers included Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Billy Wilder and George Cukor and his eulogy was read by Jack L. Warner

His unpublished memoir was found by a relative, in a pillowslip, where it had stayed until half a century after his death, when Gillian Armstrong's TV documentary on him, Women He's Undressed, triggered its erstwhile unlikely unveiling. 

Some argue the piece had never been published because of his open sexuality being too taboo at the time of its penning, with others insisting his priceless anecdotes would have insulted too many esteemed Hollywood insiders. 

I sense that a more accurate explanation is its unfinished condition. Yes, he had reached the end of his tale in this raw draught he left us, but the work is far from crafted to the finished state such a perfectionist would have required. He indeed opens with a thinly veiled disclaimer along the lines of 'people say I talk in circles', admitting, towards the end, of also having hired a ghost writer to rework it, but having thrown away that product, which he believed entirely erased his personality.

Whatever the reason, I find it inconceivable he would have wanted this to be the draft we all read, hence it being hidden away for so long. A character as determined as he would have seen it published in his lifetime had he thought it ready for print. Whilst his flighty personality remains indelibly intact here, this glowing authenticity is the price of his narrative being, for the most part, an impenetrable and irritating rant, skipping back and forth like the proverbial twittering budgerigar. This tipsy dinner-party type rambling, with its apparent petty score-settling, I despaired of. 

Though it took every ounce of patience not to throw the hefty item across the room, I persevered, purely to devour each last golden anecdote. For although an award-winning designer does not a great writer make, here is a fidgety but irresistible raconteur whose priceless content far outweighs his tacky, exasperating style.

The superb photographic content is sadly misplaced, inset among a brash and flippant page design I despised, with its nauseatingly coloured chapter graphics quite at odds with the understated style of Kelly's famous costumes (though perfectly as one with his brassy, undisciplined dialogue). The cumbersome dimensions of the 432-page, 7.7 x 1.7 x 9.4-inch hardback is like trying to hold up an oversized stone house brick to the bedside lamp. I recommend the Kindle or audio editions for all but professional weightlifters. 

Not a person I could bear to sit long with, Kelly's stories nevertheless deserve such preservation, despite their raffish form. I only wish more editing had been utilised for such an important book, to neaten things up and inject readability; but then considering it was published in 2015, so many decades after the narrator's demise, one must appreciate the impossibility of consultation with him over such matters.

For Australians interested in their national history there are fascinating and extensive passages on early twentieth century Sydney, including the brothels and backstreets of Darlinghurst. 

Imperative reading for those drawn to behind-the-scenes Hollywood, here is a time capsule of inestimable value for any showbiz historian. Just conjure up every last ounce of patience for the precariously skittish and roundabout manner of storytelling.

Highly recommended if you live well with the longwinded chaos of the otherwise supremely talented.

My review of Elizabeth's Spymaster: Francis Walsingham and the Secret War That Saved England, by Robert Hutchinson

Elizabeth's Spymaster: Francis Walsingham and the Secret War That Saved England

by Robert Hutchinson

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The icing on the cake for those hooked on Tudor history. This lurking figure has been portrayed as a sinister presence at Elizabeth's court, but one who saved her oft rocky reign from doom and disaster on many occasions. We learn more here about why Gloriana's reign involved such diplomatic intrigue and tightrope walking.

Walsingham's brilliant if callous ensnarement of Mary Queen of Scots, heading her entrapment and setting her up under escalating political necessity, is engrossingly fleshed out to the last detail in this biography. We also read of his intelligence operations penetrating foreign military preparation of the ultimately unsuccessful Spanish Armada.

Walsingham rose from near obscurity, albeit from a well-connected family of gentry. On leaving university aged twenty he travelled Europe before embarking on a career in law. Returning from self-imposed exile in France on Catholic Queen ('Bloody') Mary I's demise, he was elected to Elizabeth's first parliament in 1559. He became ambassador to France in the 1570s, witnessing the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, an experience permanently reinforcing his anti-Catholic stance.

A high-profile pro-Protestant in a post-reformation England constantly threatened by reinstatement of Catholicism, he became one of an elite diplomatic inner circle.

His 'cabinet' directed the Elizabethan state and oversaw foreign, domestic and religious policy. As Elizabeth's principal secretary he supported exploration, colonisation, English maritime strength and the plantation of Ireland. He successfully worked towards uniting England and Scotland under one crown.

Readers of all things Elizabethan must surely cherish this book. Neither an especially charismatic nor sympathetic character to document, Walsingham is deftly humanised by the erudite Robert Hutchinson whose less florid narrative style than that of some 'popular historians' rewards the reading effort.

The crucial extra dimension for readers of this period.

My review of Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball, by Stefan Kanfer

Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball

by Stefan Kanfer

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars4 out of 5 stars

TV comedy mostly irritates me, with a few notable exceptions, one in particular being Lucille Ball.

She had that distinct something. I only needed look at her to be triggered into fits of belly laughter. It's a rare gift, we tend to think. But as with so many such greats, Ball's comedic craft was actually the result of decades of hard work. There was little spontaneity in what she excelled at, it was the product of gruelling repetition, so many times did she practice every smallest detail for a any scene or sketch - frequently driving her fellow cast members to despair. Such is the requisite professional devotion shared by illusionists, mime artists, circus performers, speciality dancers and great singers.

It brightened my week immensely reading about this fascinating, committed artiste who, in my toddlerhood, was portrayed by a tiny carrot-headed marionette dancing across my screen in sequins and high heels, in the opening credits. She was the only screen persona guaranteed to have me rolling around the carpet. Watching blurry old reruns still has the same effect on me, so timeless is the joy she invokes in the human psyche. Her apprenticeship involved learning on the job, on the pre-TV big screen, in supporting roles to legends like the Marx Brothers. 

As an adult I've had passing opportunity to catch up on even her earlier work, which I'd missed out on watching her as I was growing up. It was therefore great to read the backstory of this entertainment history-making trailblazer, dubbed in an earlier Hollywood incarnation "Queen of the Bs".

A thorough, well written biography with great photographs.

My review of Tigers are Better-Looking: With a selection from The Left Bank, by Jean Rhys

Tigers are Better-Looking: With a selection from The Left Bank

by Jean Rhys

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

No Jean Rhys fan would want to let this priceless opportunity pass.

Included is her fateful, first ever published collection 'Stories from the Left Bank', a glimpse of the legend in the making, as a young aspiring novice writer - even then she had the intuitive brilliance that made her adored by her select, intimate following. That her lover Ford Maddox Ford originally published these was clearly no pillow favour - he genuinely saw a rare, unique voice that would echo down through the ages after he gave her that start.

In these earliest of her efforts, which brought her by chance into the arms of her future mentor and lover and kicked off her literary career, we see into the Paris of the 1920s, with its cobblestoned roads, quaint streetlights, underground clubs, bars and restaurants and the English and American arts circles inhabiting this time and place alongside the city's gritty, colourful native characters. 

The more modern stories, written in her maturing years, are equally fascinating albeit for different reasons, her voice having gained greater distinction, her take on life the same as ever and her heels dug relentlessly into her own deeply personal literary ground.

Breathtaking work by one of our most underrated English language greats, a writer decades ahead of her time who yanks at your heartstrings and screams into your ear with a polite, understated whisper.

Like every one of her books, I ached to keep reading and mourned pathetically after finishing it. So much so that I returned to it three times and it still sits in my cupboard awaiting its next round someday.