Tag Archives: Scandal

Mary Astor’s Purple Diary – The Great American Sex Scandal of 1936

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9781631490248_p0_v4_s192x300Whenever I watch old movies, I cannot resist looking up the background of the players, wondering what their lives were really like.  Edward Sorel’s Mary Astor’s Purple Diary was satisfyingly short and funny – with pictures – and  Woody Allen’s review in the New York Times piqued my interest.  Maybe he’ll turn the book into a movie?

Edward Sorel’s Mary Astor’s Purple Diary focuses on a long forgotten scandal involving the movie star well known to old movie fans for playing the deceiving foil to Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon and the wise mother in Meet Me in Saint Louis and Little Women. At a time when movie moguls used the casting couch for plum roles but concealed their movie stars’ indiscretions to gain approval from the “legion of decency,” Mary Astor’s love life was front page news when her diary was discovered.  Her descriptions of her many lovers became fodder for a real-life courtroom drama that could have been right out of the movies.

Sorel is well known for his political caricatures and his “unauthorized portraits”  of the famous.  No modern president or president-elect has escaped his fervor to “attack hypocrisy in high places.”  His style is easily recognized on covers for The New Yorker.

Sorel punctuates this book with a few hilarious scenes of Mary Astor as she negotiates her scandal. unknown-3 In a sideways tale of Astor’s life, Sorel includes facts about her family and background, but in his imaginary interview with the dead actress, he manages to include a funny perspective on her lovers – names old movie fans will recognize, including John Barrymore and George S. Kauffman.  At times, Sorel’s irreverent style and his tangents into his own marriages reflect a Woody Allen style with wry observations and self-deprecating humor.

I cannot imagine why Mary Astor kept an incendiary diary about her lovers; somehow written secrets always find their way out. But thanks to Sorel, it made for fun reading – like flipping through that Entertainment Weekly or People magazine in the doctor’s office.

Related Article: Woody Allen Reviews a Graphic Tale of a Scandalous Starlet

The Arrangement – A Glimpse Into the Life of Writer M.F.K. Fisher

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9780525429661_p0_v3_s192x300  Knowing something of the life of M.F.K. Fisher helped me to understand Ashley Warlick’s portrayal of the author in The Arrangement.  Based on Fisher’s love affair with a married man, while she too was married, Warlick imagines the conceits and innuendoes as the two couples continue their friendship and their marriages – at times all living together.

While the premise would seem salacious, the story is, like the real life it imitates, sad and desperate. When her husband Al, an aspiring poet with a doctorate from Dijon, France, belittles her writing about food, MFK turns to Tim, children’s book illustrator as well as a friend and neighbor, for solace and editorial advice in getting her first book of essays published. When Al loses interest in having sex, she turns to Tim again,  slipping into his bed at night while his movie star wife is at a party.  Eventually, after much angst and soul searching, as well as trips to Europe, M.F.K. marries Tim, her soul mate.

In her recently published 1939 novel, The Theoretical Foot, Fisher describes Tim’s degenerating Buerger’s disease and the amputation of his foot before he completely deteriorates  and dies. Warlick includes this piece and ends the book with Fisher giving birth to her first child two years later. I had thought Warlick might creatively solve the paternity of Fisher’s child since the real M.F.K. Fisher never revealed the identity of the father and it remains a secret. As a result, I read on longer than I should have.

Warlick’s narrative does not follow a steady timeline, and is told like a memoir, jumping in and out of Fisher’s life. Suddenly, Fisher is burning piles of notes, her first attempts at writing and later regretting it – as Fisher herself notes in one of her books. Next, Warlick reverts to Fisher’s conversations with Tim’s young wife, Gigi. But, wait, the ship is leaving for Europe months later with Tim, his mother, and M.F.K – with her husband’s blessing. In a recent article for the New York Times, Jessica Bennett noted “Research has found that when parties are getting along,they tend to mimic each others’ subtle speech patterns: ‘language synchrony’ as it is known.”  I wondered if Warlick had fallen into this mode – modeling Fisher’s brand of memoir mixed with descriptions. While Fisher is noted for nostalgic reminiscences coupled with her eclectic lifestyle, Warlick floats in and out of this sliver of time, trying to fill in the crevices of Fisher’s life before and after her affair.

The Arrangement includes a number of Fisher’s quotes from her books, as well as mouthwatering details of food cooked, served, tasted, admired. Fisher’s renowned hunger – of food and love – is noted and quoted.  But without at least the Scrapbook of Fisher’s life, the novel can be confusing and vague.  The best part of reading The Arrsngement was the interest it awakened in me to read the books of M.F.K. Fisher herself.

Related Review: A Welcoming Life: The M.F.K. Fisher Scrapbook

The Distance

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9780385536998Helen Giltrow’s The Distance is a fast-paced thriller with  a crew of characters who keep changing alliances and identities, and a twisting plot involving murder, sabotage, and relentless secrets.

Wealthy socialite Charlotte Anton operates undercover as Karla, with her steady band of support staff – reminiscent of the “warriors” in the popular television show, Scandal.  They manage impossible uncover tasks, redefining and relocating identities – some not so savory.  Simon Johannsen, a former special ops sniper, has been hired to kill a woman prisoner inside a low security experimental prison.  He contacts Karla to get him in, under the cover of a prisoner.

As the action accelerates, Karla relentlessly pursues the reason for the hit – what has this woman done and who wants her dead?  Meanwhile, Johannsen faces his own problems inside the prison, as ghosts from his past threaten to reveal his cover.  As with any good thriller, no one is who they seem and their motivations shift continually.  Lots of fun – I held my breath til the end – when the unexpected reveals all.  And, as any Hitchcock fan will tell you, all the terror needs a release at the end – and Giltrow delivers.

I found this title on a list of 2014 published books that readers might have missed –  glad I found it.