Category: Books I Loved Back in the Day

This Crazy Thing Called Love

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

I was trying to rearrange things on my bookcase to make room for my latest treasures after last week’s trip to the Friends of the Ferguson Library book shop (stoked I found an almost pristine copy of the Mitford sisters letters in hardcover but it’s a doorstop and a half!) when I managed to knock over the knee high stack of mass market paperbacks next to my dresser. I really need to buckle down and write those V.C. Andrews reviews I’ve been planning one of these days. But instead of settling down with Clan Dollaganger, I found myself putting aside Dominick Dunne’s The Two Mrs Grenvilles. But Friday afternoon found me combing the stacks of the Avon Free Public Library and adding This Crazy Thing Called Love: The Golden World and Fatal Marriage of Ann and Billy Woodward to my armload of books.

Now given my fascination with true crime and the life of the very very rich, you would think I would have reviewed  This Crazy Thing Called Love: The Golden World and Fatal Marriage of Ann and Billy Woodward ages ago. This weekend’s reading wasn’t the first time I’ve encountered the book. Back in 1992 when This Crazy Thing Called Love was published I was right on the library reserve list behind all the old ladies who where old enough to remember the case and in one or two cases, ran in the right circles to have met the Woodwards back in the day. The old ladies in my home town? Full of surprises!  What boggles the mind is there are people out there who devoured Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers and Dominick Dunne’s The Two Mrs Grenvilles and took those embellished stories as the gospel truth. That’s like reading Jackie Collins writing about her late night soap opera diva Sugar Anderson and assuming you now know all there is too know about Joan Collins and Shirley Maclaine. The true story is so much more interesting.

For those of you who have never heard of the Capote or Dunne books or even know who the Woodwards were, here are basics. In 1955, socialite Ann Woodward shot what she thought was an intruder at her family’s country home. Only, instead of an intruder who had been targeting their neighborhood, Ann Woodward had killed her banking heir husband Billy Woodward. The Woodwards had a stormy marriage with affairs on both sides and many people thought Ann Woodward had killed Billy Woodward in cold blood to keep him from divorcing her to marry someone from his own class. Billy Woodward’s family stood by Ann Woodward but she spent the rest of her life under a cloud of suspicion and died just before Esquire magazine published part of Truman Capote’s uncompleted novel Answered Prayers that included the story of a scandalous woman who shoots her very rich husband.

Thanks to Susan Braudy, the picture of the Ann and Billy Woodward is treated with fairness and a steady hand. Ann Woodward (born Angeline Luceil Crowell) wasn’t a saint, but she wasn’t the whore that Dominick Dunne and Truman Capote paint her to be in their stories. There wasn’t a secret hick first husband she was hiding from Billy Woodward. Given the changes in Billy Woodward’s will as their marriage crumbled, Ann Woodward would have been better off financially as the former Mrs Billy Woodward vs the Widow Woodward. Believe it or not…there really was a burglar prowling in their exclusive neighborhood the fateful night Billy Woodward died. And you can’t help but feel that if Ann Eden (the stage name Angleine Crowell used before her marriage) had never meet Billy Woodward or at least if their affair had been just a passing thing versus a marriage, both parties might still be alive and thriving in their own worlds.

If you’ve read Answered Prayers and The Two Mrs Grenvilles, make an effort to track down and read This Crazy Thing Called Love. Ann and Billy Woodward and their family deserve that much.

Theater Shoes

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

The weather is slowing getting a tinier bit warmer but once I get home from Company X and feed the spouse? It’s off to curl up on the bed with a book.

Well, at least the plan is to read but mostly I wake up a few hours later with the edge of a book pressed on my cheek.

Not exactly the best look ever…Now during those brief moments before I drift off into Dreamland I’ve been reading cozy books like Noel Streatfeild’s 1944 Theater Shoes (published in the UK as Curtain Up).

Like just about every other Noel Streatfeild’s children’s’ book, Theater Shoes features a family of children who through circumstances shed their everyday (i.e. boring) lives and discover a world of creativity and a whole new way of life.

It’s World War II England and the Forbes children (Sorrel, Mary and Holly) have been uprooted from their cozy existence living with their widowed former Naval officer father in Guernsey once the Germans came calling. Mr Forbes joins the Navy and entrusts his motherless children to his pastor father and his housekeeper Hannah.

Since this is war and it is a Noel Streatfeild children’s’ book, Mr Forbes goes missing in the Pacific and then Reverend Forbes (a very vague man who barely remembers he even has grandchildren dies). Oh what will happen to the Forbes?

If you’re thinking the Forbes end up a children’s home or are parceled out around their late grandfather’s parish, bad reader! Bad! The children find out their late mother was a member of the Warren family, one of the most illustrious and amazing theatrical families in England. It’s like finding out you’re a Barrymore or a Booth. Apparently, the Forbes have never meet their Warren relations because their mother ran off and married their father vs the husband chosen for her.

But there isn’t a book if the Forbes don’t go to London and explore their Warren heritage so off Sorrel, Mark, Holly and Hannah go.

Once in London, things aren’t the best for the Forbes. Their Warren grandmother lives in her own little glamorous world barely acknowledging there is a war or that life outside the theater exists. In my head? Grandmother Warren (aka Margaret Shaw) is played by Dame Maggie Smith and says theater “thea-a-tah” like she’s channeling a drunken Bette Davis. Now the Forbes children have been gently raised and are SHOCKED! Shocked I tell you by everything around them.

First off, their late mother’s room is a creepy shrine while the rest of the house that Grandmother Warren never ventures in has been stripped bare, the furnishings sold to pay bills. Their aunts and uncles help out Grandmother Warren but they have their own issues. And the Forbes children are going to go to theater school. Because heaven forbid a Warren not be talented and amazing. Even duds like Aunt Lindsey and Aunt Marguerite go on stage.

And the only school good enough for the Warren/Forbes? Madame Fidolia’s Children’s Academy of Dancing and Stage Training.

What?

Did you think they would end up at Cora Wintle’s school? 🙂

If at this point you’re tempted to roll your eyes and put down Theater Shoes, keep reading. Ever wanted to know what happened to the Fossil sisters? Well, Pauline is huge Hollywood star, Petrova is flying for the war effort and Posy is safely in Hollywood too, dancing in movies and wanting to re-create a ballet troupe. And remember Pauline’s rival for parts? The ugly but clever Winifred in the mustard frock? She’s teaching at the Academy now alongside Theo Dane, Miss Jay and the rest.

Of course, the Warren talent is in the Forbes children and the Fossil sisters “adopt” them with Pauline sponsoring Sorrel, Petrova sponsoring Mark and Posy sponsoring Holly even though Holly can barely dance. One of my favorite parts about this? Besides Petrova being all “dude here’s a screwdriver for a present” is the provision that the Forbes children get pocket money. Pocket money sounds so much cooler than an allowance. I’m going to call my Ladies Nice Things Account my pocket money from now on. But even better than pocket money? The Forbes have some Warren cousins who also attend the Academy and the Warren cousins are so much cooler than their dull Forbes relations. Isn’t sorrel something sheep eat? <shakes self awake>

Once you’ve read enough Noel Streatfeild things, you stumble across the trope of a child being destined to follow a certain path. Skating Shoes‘ Lalla Moore is being groomed to fill her dead skating champion father’s shoes. Dancing Shoes has Rachel becoming an actor like her late father and Hillary’s late adoptive mother wanting her to attend the Royal Ballet school because Hillary’s biological mother was a dancer. And let’s not forget Dancing Shoes’ Dulcie Wintle and Ballet Shoes‘ Posy Fossil almost dancing out of the womb. And imagine if one of David and Polly Forum’s brood didn’t have a lick of talent?

Sorrel and Holly have inherited the Warren talents and of course they will find a life in theater. But Mark? He might like just like Sir Joshua Warren but he’s future Navy and resists anyone telling him he is the least bit Warren. I find Mark boring and wish he had been packed off to school far far far away from London. Because damn…thank goodness for Cousin Miriam (one of the few Streatfeild characters with amazing talents who you don’t want to smack into next week) and Cousin Miranda who I would love to see in a cage match with Dulcie Wintle over a part circa 1959. Noel Streatfeild is so good at writing these quite talented and lovely little bitches in training.

But for every scene of Sorrel worrying about Mark getting into the right school so he can join the Navy (don’t care more Miriam and Miranda please!), the reader gets a little slice of life in wartime London. The growing lack of variety in food, how hard it is to manage decent clothes on coupons, consumer goods disappearing unless you have oceans of ready money.  Money might have been tight for the Fossils growing up but hey pawn your necklaces to your boarder and you can take that five pounds, go to Harrods and get a velvet dress in less time than it takes me to explain to Blacklight why his Facebook feed is blowing up about football on Super Bowl weekend. There simply isn’t the money or clothing coupons to replace a shabby outgrown dress for Sorrel until Aunt Lindsey is able whip up a dress by cutting down one of her evening frocks. Cousin Miriam looks wonderful in a white fur coat but I really hope she likes that coat because she’s going to have to wear it even when the sleeves creep up her arms and the fur dries out and sheds everywhere like the Reverend’s leopard gloves in a Fairacre novel. And your sweet ration? I really hope Pauline can keep sending those chocolates from America…

Of course, everything comes out right in the end. Even if the longed for brawl between Miranda and Sorrel in a dressing room never happens. I really wanted costumes crushed, powder and makeup smeared, telegrams and boxes of chocolate flung all over the place. Because that would be amazing and so not Noel Streatfeild. Or should I say everything comes out right-ish because the war is still ongoing. And if you know your history, things are about to get much rougher for the British citizens. It’s not my all time favorite Noel Streatfeild children’s book, but it’s certain in my Noel Streatfeild Top 5 and if any of my step-nieces showed the least interest in something that wasn’t Disney (highly doubtful)  I would buy them their very own copies of Theater Shoes in heartbeat.

Skating Shoes

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It’s January and the parking lot at Moderate Income Apartments is a bit tricky when it snows as you lug a trash bag to the dumpster. If I fall would I be as graceful as Skating Shoes‘ Lalla Moore? Or would I go smack splat smash on my butt like something out of a Keystone Kops flicker? Given my natural grace (none) I say the latter would be true.

As you might have guessed the Noel Streatfeild kick continues. Nothing like a cozy book on a cold New England January afternoon. And on the chopping block (or shall I say skating rink?) is the charming 1951 tale Skating Shoes (aka White Boots in the UK). Little Harriet Johnson is all wobbly and bobbly from being sick. Her family, a good one but not in the best financial state what with a shop filled with substandard offerings and four children to support, will do almost anything for her to be strong and well again. Enter the family doctor who pulls a few strings and gets Harriet free skating time at the local ice rink. But you need ice skates and well, the Johnson family certainly doesn’t have the money for those. But eldest Johnson child Alec gets a paper route and gives the bulk of his earnings for Harriet to rent ice skates. You know it can’t be easy for the Johnson parents to agree to this but they are in desperation mode. Harriet means just as much to her parents as her three brothers. And Alec is happy to help, he’s not being forced into his decision. Now before you die from the wholesome, who does Harriet meet on her first day at the rink? Only budding future star Lalla Moore. Do the two girls hit it off and become fast friends? Did I eat Utz Sour Cream and Onion chips for lunch yesterday (come on…of course I did!).

The two girls not only become fast friends but lonely orphan Lalla who has everything her rich uncle David’s money can buy gets absorbed into the Johnson family. The children let her join their secret society and plans to turn the shop around, mother Olivia regards Lalla as another daughter and is more than happy to try and helpful Lalla when she gets into a sticky patch. Basically, the Johnson family (except for George’s horrid older brother Uncle “Guzzle”)? Awesome.

Skating Shoes is from the Golden Age of Noel Streatfeild and hits all the classic Streatfeild tropes. Orphaned character? Lalla. Big but loving poor family? The Johnsons? Distant but actually quite awesome and reasonable father figure? Lalla’s Uncle David King. Fame hungry brittle woman who shouldn’t be a mother figure? Hello Lalla’s Aunt Claudia! Talented child getting too big for their boots? Waves to Lalla post skating exhibition. Look into a creative field? Duh…skating. Technical performer vs the popular performer? Harriet might have championships in her future. Lalla? Total Queen of the Ice Capades. Annoying, gorgeous and knows it snot of a younger sibling who needs a good smack? Come here Edward… Snippets from Noel Streatfeild’s childhood? The Johnson family estate and how they’ve declined in the world. Child planning for its future/learning a trade? Alec deciding to how turn the family shop around. Devoted servant? Nana and her everlasting knitting and Miss Goldthorpe the tutor.

Skating Shoes may not be in the first Shoe book you think of (quick! Noel Streatfeild book! you know you want to say Ballet Shoes) but it’s worth the read and you need to snap up a copy when it’s in print.

A Vicarage Family

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I’m on a Noel Streatfeild kick so let’s look at the first volume in her semi-autobiographical series, A Vicarage Family.

Our Noel character is Victoria, the second eldest of the Strangeway children, the misunderstood child of the local vicarage. Poor Victoria can’t seem to do anything right in most people’s eyes with the exception of the maid Annie and her beloved cousin John. Without these two wonderful people? Victoria’s very soul would be crushed. Her father comes from a good family with some land but it’s a narrow living compared to his other siblings. Granted, looking at this Edwardian vicarage life with 2014 eyes, having servants, sending your children off to private school and the like seems pretty sweet indeed and not too bad even if the children can’t eat cake and ices at a birthday party because it’s Lent. A life with servants, even the skeleton crew that runs the vicarage is pretty darn awesome when you’re the person who has to do all the housework.

Reading A Vicarage Family, you see how Noel Streatfeild was able to make her books so true to life for her readers. Whenever you encounter a little girl whose growing out of her clothes and there just isn’t the money to replace them with something better, those velvets that have been let out and patched and have the velvet nap going in all directions (the Fossil girls, Harriet Johnson, etc) it’s something the Strangeway girls experienced. The feeling of horror and disappointment and shame the Streatfeild characters feel is so real, so vital that you can feel in your bones that the Streatfeild sisters endured this too. And if you’ve read the Bell family series (if you can get your hands on them? Do it. Seriously.) you’ll know why out of all the perfect Bell siblings, imperfect stocky Ginny jumped off the page and into your heart. Both Ginny and Victoria fight to be understood and loved for their talents in the same way the world showers love and attention on their siblings.

And A Vicarage Story gives something not found in the Shoe books. In the Shoe books, the parents/parent figures are loving and care deeply about their children. In Ballet Shoes, Garnie is willing to take in boarders to give her charges a decent life. Given the circumstances she has been raising the Fossil sisters in, taking boarders is a step down on the social ladder but it’s a step Garnie takes. Skating Shoes‘ Olivia and George do everything possible to restore their beloved Harriet back to health even if it means accepting financial help from their son Alec. The money for Harriet’s skates is found and Olivia extends her maternal care and love to Lalla Moore without a thought.  Sure Rachel and her adopted sister Hilary end up in the clutches of Cora Wintle after their mother dies but their mother scraped and scarified to make sure her adopted daughter could dance. And Pursey and their tutor are willing to stand up to Cora Wintle for Rachel. And even when Ginny messes up? Mrs Bell loves her.

Reverend Strangeway does care about his troubled daughter and tries his best to understand her. But Victoria is just one member of the extended flock he ministers to. And the elder Strangeways love Victoria and understand her life isn’t easy and try to give her both love and the tools to make her way easier. Victoria’s mother? Mrs Strangeway? If Victoria fell down a well or disappeared? Not a problem. It’s not that Mrs Strangeway doesn’t want to be a mother, she doesn’t want to be Victoria’s mother, yes she comes to have a better relationship with Victoria as she gets older but that’s as a confident or companion not as a mother.

Just try reading about Victoria’s birthday dessert or what happens when the family gets the flu. In Annie we understand why the loving and devoted servant is so important in the Shoe books. When you haven’t received love from your parent, a person who doesn’t have a blood tie can still love and cherish you no matter what.

If the Deaccession Squad came a’calling at the local library and I couldn’t convince the librarians to sell me A Vicarage Family and it’s sequel On Tour? I would combing Awesome Books UK, hoping against hope that they had copies of A Vicarage Family available even if it was a 1970s paperback reprint. And given the prices for the trilogy on-line? Would some kind publisher (coughcoughBloomsburyGroupViragoPersephone Classicscoughcough) please please please talk to the Noel Streatfeild estate and put out the Strangeway books in an omnibus? Pretty please?

 

Merry Christmas! Now Let Me Read…

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

It’s Christmas morning. Blacklight is trying to get some sleep before we go to my father’s house for Christmas lunch. The kitchen wants cleaning from last night’s snack fest. Upstairs? Go ahead, play Christmas songs at full blast all day long. But me? Getting ready to curl up on Mr Couch with a Christmas read and losing myself between the covers until Blacklight’s alarm goes off.

  1. The Christmas scenes in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. Don’t care if it’s the Big Woods, the Prairie or the surveyors house in the embryo De Smet, love them all.
  2. Louisa May Alcott’s Christmas stories. Better make sure I have a stack freshly ironed vintage hankies at hand because “The Quiet Little Woman” and “What Love Can Do”? Make me cry and want to be a better person every time I read them.
  3. Miss Read’s Village Christmas and No Holly for Miss Quinn
  4. Maeve Binchy’s This Year It Will Be Different And Other Stories
  5. Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather
  6. Nancy Mitford’s Christmas Pudding
  7. Sharon Krum’s The Thing About Jane Spring. We should all pull up for Christmas in a vintage white convertible with the top down!
  8. David Sedaris’ Holidays on Ice

The hardest thing?  Deciding which to read first! 🙂

Inside Peyton Place

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Sometimes when you read a book, you want to fire up the old Literary Time Machine (Blacklight: “Lemme guess, you want to make out with H.P. Lovecraft” Me: <death glare> “No…”) I want to go back to the 1956 and smack away every glass of Canadian Club and 7 UP that Grace Metalious even gave the slightest longing look at. And I also want to frog-march her directly to a competent agent and financial manager and not let her sneak back to The Plaza until every last paper was signed. I wonder if Emily Toth ever had the same crazy thoughts while she was working on Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious. Because let me tell you, out of the Shirley Jackson/Grace Metalious/Jacqueline Susann trio? Grace was the clear winner of the shouldn’t be coveted Most Bleeped Up Her Life title. And we’re talking about some stiff competition because Shirley Jackson and Jacqueline Susann? Lots of Bad Life Choice Theater.

Blacklight: “Who the heck is Grace Metalious again?”

In case you haven’t visited the Grace Metalious page or are my beloved Minecraft addicted spouse Blacklight, Grace Metalious is an author who wrote the mega best seller Peyton Place about the secrets of a small New England. This novel spawned an Oscar nominated movie, several television shows and sequels. If you’re under 40 years old? Your parents or grandparents read Peyton Place in secret, clucking over all the s-e-x. Unless of course you’re my parents. Neither of them read the darn book, even though my mother remembers watching the 1964-1969 prime-time soap opera and “not liking that Allison girl at all”.

Now of course as a wee lass reading Peyton Place, Return to Peyton Place, The Tight White Collar and No Adam in Eden, I had no idea that the lady behind these crumbling paperbacks I found at tag sales died young and broke. Or that we shared a French-Canadian heritage. Grace Metalious just seemed so young and innocent and sad in the iconic “Pandora in Blue Jeans” picture. Nothing like the glamorous leopard clad Jackie Collins whose books I was devouring as fast as Her Collins could produce them. Then one day, after I had a license and realized my library card could be used at any public library in the state, I found Emily Toth’s Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious. And boy oh boy was my image of Grace Metalious shattered.

Grace Metalious’ rise from child of blue collar workers in a New Hampshire mill town to marrying young to living a shack of a rented house  with a dry well to writing the bestseller Peyton Place was like something out of a Hollywood movie. One with Joan Crawford in Adrian gowns at the end. And what happened after the fame and fortune from Peyton Place? Something John Waters and his stable of stars would film with Divine in a sloppy housecoat with booze stains down the front as Grace. How do you just sign over all the film rights to a movie studio without protecting yourself? Or blaze through all your royalties and that sweet $250,000 studio check in less than eight years?

Would you still want to read Peyton Place, Return to Peyton Place, The Tight White Collar and No Adam in Eden after encountering Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious? YES! It’s worth the trouble of tracking them down. Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious adds annotations to the experience. Who knew Grace could have avoid certain legal troubles if she just changed certain character names? Or just how much of her own life was being woven into her books. The quick end coming out of nowhere in No Adam in Eden is easier to understand once you know the circumstances in which the book was written. And after reading Grace’s notes for a third Peyton Place novel, you wonder what could have been if Grace Metalious was able to stay away from the bottle long enough to plop her butt in that lovely office in her dream house and write. A lesser writer than Emily Toth would have sneered at the wreck of Grace Metalious’ life  with all it’s scandals but Emily Toth has the skill make you care as deeply about her subject as she did.

Private Demons

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There are biographies that make Blacklight scream in terror when he stumbles in the living room and finds me curled up on Mr Couch reading (i.e. Eric Myers’ Uncle Mame: The Life Of Patrick Dennis but I think it’s because Blacklight is terrified of the Patrick Dennis in the tub picture on the back cover). And then there are biographies I’ve checked out of the local library so many times that the darn book spends more time at my house then on the library shelf, the ones I would own if only they weren’t out of print and didn’t cost more than a tank of gas or a month’s groceries or even <shudder> the electric bill. Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson by Judy Oppenheimer is firmly in the second category.

So what makes Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson something that has me seriously wondering if Blacklight would object to me feeding him spaghetti and baked ziti for dinner for a month vs his usual boneless loin pork chops so I can buy the like new hardcover copy from Amazon? Judy Oppenheimer has done the hardest trick in the biographer’s tasks, she not only makes Shirley Jackson come to life but makes you want to visit the house with the pillars and spend an evening with the Hymans circa 1954. Anything could and did happen with Shirley. Imagine being at the Hyman’s on a night when Shirley got up from the table, went into the study, pounded out a story and then read it to the group, took the editing suggestions and had said story ready for submission by morning?

But Shirley Jackson was more than a machine for cranking out perfect tales to chill your soul or warm your heart. Oppenheimer draws back the facade that Shirley Jackson constructed through her writing to the public, friends and family to reveal the different facets making up such a creative soul. There’s the ungainly girl who never could win her mother’s approval even to her dying day. A devoted mother. A wife who almost waited on her literary critic/professor spouse hand and foot while supporting the household on her writing fees. A women who didn’t seem to care about her appearance but spends oodles of time tracking down a pair of elegant shoes. A mother who fiercely loved her children but didn’t seem to notice when they needed bath time and a good long shampoo.

Some of the very best parts of Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson are when Oppenheimer steps back and allows Jackson’s children to speak about their mother. It’s interesting and very heartbreaking to know how Jackson’s older daughter felt like she was an offering to her grandmother and how the younger daughter felt pressured into being her mother’s shadow/double. Did the pressure of being Jackson’s daughter rob us of another literary light? Do Jackson’s sons feel like their mother loved them less or more than their sisters?

So if you hear Blacklight wondering why baked ziti or pancakes or scrambled eggs are on the menu every night, be assured I’ve broken down and ordered Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson from Amazon or Thriftbooks. Track down Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson from your library, spend some time curled up on the couch reading and you might find yourself doing the same.

 

 

 

Elsa Lanchester Herself

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Sometimes I swear my favorite podcasts just know what I’m reading or watching. Last month, I was doing my usual Films I Love To Watch In October thing, checking Creepshow out of the library so many times that Blacklight is certain it’s because I have a movie boyfriend in it, laughing at the clothes and hair and Karswell in Casting the Runes and sprawling out on Mr Couch watching Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein on the weekends until Blacklight comes lurching out of the bedroom and into the living room like an Advil popping zombie. And then one day at Company X, I pop on the headphones and turn to the latest episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class to drown out Coworker 123 and find Holly and Tracy talking about the Bride herself, Miss Elsa Lanchester.

Now if you’ve read this blog before, the next part should not come as a surprise. The second my morning break rolled around?  I was logging into the Central Connecticut library system and placing an inter-library loan request for Elsa Lanchester’s autobiography Elsa Lanchester Herself and then heading to the cafeteria for tea.

Once Elsa Lanchester Herself arrived at my local library, I could not wait to get my hands on it. After all, Holly had been in ecstasies in the podcast. But would it be as awesome as I remembered when I found Elsa Lanchester Herself at a tag sale as a teenager and read it? Had I made a mistake getting rid of it in the Great Book Purge of 1998 when I got scared the wooden shelves in my closet had reached the breaking point?

But the book was in my hands and I started reading as I made Blacklight’s breakfast. And then put it down, and then read some more and put it down again. And this cycle of reading a bit and then put it down continued over a few weeks. Normally an inter-library loan that has me racing from work to the library to snap it gets consumed faster than Lay’s Honey BBQ chips on a buy one get one free special. Elsa Lanchester Herself was getting consumed like a bar of Cadbury Dark Chocolate, a bite here, a bite there, wrap it up and “Oh I have chocolate. Maybe I should eat a piece…”

I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t barreling through the book like I had at seventeen, cramming Elsa into my maw so fast I wasn’t getting everything there was to consume. I mean who wouldn’t devour a book about someone who was born to unmarried parents, raised in a loose fashion at odds with Edwardian society, studied dance in Paris under the doomed Isadora Duncan, had her own nightclub, moonlighted as a professional correspondent, met and married one of the great actors of all time and started in one of James Whale’s finest films? My teenage self loved reading Elsa Lanchester Herself. She was a Creative. A Bohemian. A rule breaker. So awesome. So very awesome.

Reading Elsa Lanchester Herself as an adult, I can see why it upset so many people and her late husband’s friends. Elsa Lanchester comes across as cuddly as a patch of nettles. Sometimes I wondered if she truly loved or cared about anything beyond living her life the exact opposite of her parents. Mom an anti-marriage, vegetarian with two children? Then marry, eat meat and don’t have children. And if that is true, is staying married to a person who seems to resent you and the marriage why Elsa Lanchester didn’t leave Charles Laughton. Because the love and bonds Elsa claims exist between herself and Charles? I can’t see them in their later years. What I do see is sadistic and sad. What kind of life is it being married to someone who can’t give you love and gets rid of everything you express fondness for? When Elsa talks about Charles selling a mask she treasured that turns out to be a very valuable and rare piece, I wanted to smack Charles and shake Elsa for not standing up for herself. And that’s just one of the many times I felt that urge.

I do agree with Stuff You Missed in History Class‘ Holly Frey that Elsa Lanchester Herself needs to be republished. Heck, I even liked the Facebook group. But maybe not for the same reasons. Elsa Lanchester Herself is a portrait of a very unique and interesting performer that no longer exists in our modern world. It’s also a look into a time where every choice both Elsa and her mother Biddy made was unusual and shocking. It gives a peek into making of one of the best horror movies of all time. And it makes me wish that someone would write a biography of Edith “Biddy” Lanchester who was just as fascinating as her daughter.

Princess Daisy

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If there was ever a book that belongs in the “How Did I Get Away With Reading This When I Twelve/Thirteen/Fourteen” files, Judith Krantz’s 1980 best seller Princess Daisy is in the top five. Then again, I didn’t grow up with the most bookish parents and the cover of Princess Daisy is all lovely and soft focus vs the sexy glamor of a Jackie Collins mass market paperback circa 1983.

A few months ago, I was at the S-bury library, checking to see if they still had Anita Loos’ A Mouse Is Born because not even the most awesome library for old books in the Central Connecticut library system (aka the Raymond Library in East Hartford, CT) didn’t have it among it’s endless stacks. Now I can’t remember my left from right, north from south and east from west  so of course I got all mixed up in the fiction stacks and ended up in the K’s vs the L’s. Then as if I was being controlled by an unseen being, I drifted over to the KRA shelf and pulled down Princess Daisy.  And the darned thing stills opens right to the two sections that scandalized all my friends circa 1984*. But Best Sibling EVER Andy was all “Want Cheng Square for lunch?”, so I popped Princess Daisy back on the shelf and off to lunch we went.

But coming back from S-bury, stuffed full of lovely sushi, I had to pass the library on the way to Moderate Income Apartments and well, why not stop and see if they had Princess Daisy? 

Now if you’ve never encountered Princess Daisy, which shocks me, but then again not everyone is me and spends their time reading utter, epic and delicious trash from the 1980s, our heroine is Princess Marguerite “Daisy” Valensky. Dad is walking sex on stick Prince Stash. Mom is a movie star. Of course Our Daisy takes after her gorgeous parents with lovely fresh as a peach skin, dark eyes and white blond hair and an amazing figure. Did you think Daisy would be a troll? Come on! The only ugly Judith Krantz main character ever was Billy from Scruples and she was just fat and poorly dressed.  But back to Daisy. She’s broke . She’s seen way too many things in her young life and has some big secrets including a developmentally disabled but gorgeous twin sister Dani. And she’s agreed to sell her heritage to a cosmetic giant run by a mummy slash stick insect (coughcoughpagingEsteeLaudercoughcough) for a wad of cash big enough to choke a dinosaur. But will she find love? Umm…it’s a Judith Krantz novel, so…YES!

But Princess Daisy isn’t just a sex and shopping novel. It’s educational! Here are some very valuable things I learned from Princess Daisy.

  • Always take ALL THE JEWELRY when you’re running away from your estranged Russian prince husband-EVERYTHING silly Francesca!
  • The richest of the richest can get away with the most eccentric things
  • Jumble (tag/garage) sales are awesome for find vintage treasures
  • I want a lurcher. Seriously.
  • Don’t trust guys called Ram

Who needs The Real Housewives of Anything when you have Francesca giving up life as a movie star for life as a Princess for life on the run? Or Daisy mixing among the mega rich? Or Kiki and her glorious outfits? And yes, Anabel is totally Pamela Churchill Harriman! (Blacklight: “Who?” Me: “Shouldn’t you be putting up torches in that mine before a Creeper spawns or something?” Blacklight: “Creeper!??! Where?”) Princess Daisy is a terrific introduction to the world of Judith Krantz and might very well be her best work. Trawl your library stacks, haunt the fiction section at Savers, buy the Kindle e-book already!

*pages 41-49 and pages 242-246 Princess Daisy (1980) Crown Publishers, first edition

Danse Macabre

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few months I’ve been re-reading Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature and S.T. Joshi’s The Modern Weird Tale on Mr Kindle. But I could only get a few pages into each before changing to something different. Both are interesting looks at the genre but not what Mr Brain wanted. Mr Brain wanted the fast food version, hot and greasy and salty, not Lovecraft’s high prose or Joshi’s snipping (as much as I respect the work S.T. Joshi has done in the field I don’t think I’m a lesser mind for loving Stephen King or Jacqueline Susann or Grace Metalious). So off to the library I toddled for Stephen King’s Danse Macabre leaving The Modern Weird Tale abandoned on Mr Kindle.

The library gods must have been looking favorably on me because I found the 1981 hardcover edition and a CD audiobook edition with a new essay “What’s Scary”.  Even though certain critics (coughcoughSTJoshicoughcough)  (Blacklight: “Do you need cough drops?” Me: “NO!”) might regard Uncle Stevie as a hack or untalented or just a hot mess with Qtips shoved up his nose and a desk drawer full of empty bottles, I have a certain fondness for the gentleman. He’s the fun uncle who has a room full of goodies and is more than happy to share even if your parents are trying to shake their heads in a big “NO”. He’s the babysitter who will tell you stories and let you watch movies that will keep you up all night, but what’s a few hours of sleep anyway?

Danse Macabre, like the best Stephen King books,  is sprawling, full of interesting tidbits and will keep you reading until very last sentence. Some might wish Uncle Stevie’s editors had reigned him in a little more and made Danse Macabre more just the facts. What makes Danse Macabre so much more appealing and accessible are the meanderings. Part of how we process horror and the weird is tied in with our introduction to those things. And the meanderings also remind us that the person writing the book isn’t just a lucky hack with a typewriter but a person who has studied and loved and taught literature. Another thing to remember is the scope covered. Uncle Stevie just doesn’t look at books alone, he dives into movies and television with same relish as he does the classics like Dracula and Frankenstein. Imagine going to an amazing used bookstore or revival movie theater with Uncle Stevie?

And for the reader of 2013 vs the reader of 1981 there is the added benefit of access. Back as a very young Gwen circa 1983, stumbling across a library bound paperback of Danse Macabre with its haunting cover of Uncle Stevie’s face looming in shades of purple, there was just wasn’t access to all the wonderful things Uncle Stevie was telling me about. I had strict parents and a tiny allowance. The only resources I had were the local library and video store, basic cable and the hope I might stumble across something at a tag sale. Now? I can walk a few blocks down to my local library and scoop up The Blob, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Night of the Demon, The House Next Door, Richard Matheson collections and more without breaking a sweat. Actually I may have already done that last Saturday. Heck, I can pick up my Kindle and have books in the blink of an eye or use “methods” to find anything that the Central Connecticut library system doesn’t have.

Danse Macabre is just as wonderful as my twelve-year-old self thought it was. It’s a love letter to the genre. It was my introduction to an author called H.P. Lovecraft. It makes me want to actually read Harlan Ellison beyond “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream“. And It gives some glimpses at one of Uncle Stevie’s truly greatest creations, his son and fellow writer Joe Hill as a mouthy youngster who you want to know more about. The only way Danse Macabre could be better? Having Uncle Stevie and Cousin Joe Hill sitting down and writing an overview of horror from 1981 to 2013…together.