In 1961 a glamorous, busty blond star of stage and screen laid her life bare for the world to see. If you’re thinking Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield or Mamie Van Doren, you’re thinking much too small.

Such a star could never be duplicated. Well that’s at least what Belle Poitrine would like to think.

Who is Belle Poitrine?

The horror!

Before you go searching IMDB, stop. You’re not going to find her. Trust me.

Belle Poitrine only existed in the brilliant minds of author Patrick (Auntie Mame) Dennis and friends. But what a creation she is. It’s the late 1950s and Patrick Dennis has an idea.

Why not tell the story of a vain actress in her own words just like the overblown, sugar coated biographies that people like Mae West were publishing?

Round up some costumes, hire a lush, ripe blond model and the end result is Little Me: The Intimate Memoirs of the Great Star of Stage, Screen and Television. Broken down in chapters by the decades, little Maybelle Schlumpfert, the only daughter of a working girl goes from being the little girl from the wrong side of the tracks to budding actress to bride to war widow to Countess to film star to mother to living legend Belle Poitrine using her wits, fate and her incredible body.

The joke is Belle is far from an innocent and can’t tell the truth to save her life. Oh course she didn’t marry her first three husbands for money. And she certainly didn’t know that her mother could have anything to do with the tragic death of her third husband. Or that her daughter Baby-Dear wasn’t a micro-preemie clinging to life at a mere eleven pounds at birth!

Never, never, never!

The next thing you know you’ll say her boarding school was a reform school and she murdered a certain gentleman in cold blood…

Peppering her adventures are amazing photos depicting everything from young Belle’s acting studies as a teenager to her night club acts, her friends and exploits. Just try not to spray coffee (or in my case diet ginger ale) on the book as you gaze upon the over ripe Belle’s turn in her updated version of The Scarlet Letter or her test to play Alice in Wonderland.

Little Me is a gem that deserves the title of cult classic. It’s Patrick Dennis at his peak, bitchy and delight and glittering. Jeri Archer radiates Belle from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, stunning figure slamming you into submission while her dead eyes calculate the heft of your wallet. A more perfect Belle could not be found.

If you adore Old Hollywood, the wit of Patrick Dennis, camp and glamor and you are lucky enough to stumble across the original 1961 hardcover or the 2002 trade paperback reprint, snap it up. You will not regret it!