Hollywood Style

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32298, 16 May 1970, Page 4

Hollywood Style

Marriage Is The First Step Toward Divorce. By Pamela Mason with Vi Wolfson. W. H. Allen. 184 pp. The divorced wife of a Hollywood film star writing a book on marriage is not an inspiring thought. The reality is depressing. Pamela Mason (ex James, ex Another) is much given to trite, self-opinionated generalisations; has a penchant for salacious Hollywood gossip accompanied by hints and innuendoes: and has a strong disposition for the vernacular. She is very apt to compare the behaviour of human beings with that of the animal kingdom and contributes some bizarre interpretations of nature. Men and women are natural enemies, like jungle animals, she tells us, instinctively clawing out at each other—and paying a few dollars for a marriage licence cannot change these basic facts of human nature. In her opinion, marriage today is a very inconvenient and unnatural relationship. “The main body of married people make nothing but demands on each other, have no consideration for each other's right to be, and right to live, and right to think." Parenthood is considered to be a

highly over-rated pastime and Mrs Mason claims that many marriages are broken up by the arrival of a first child. It is rather a shame, she says, we always get babies when we can least afford them and have the least time to spend with them. Perhaps it just has not occurred to her that in normal families they are lovingly welcomed when parents are physically and mentally best able to cope with them. Her cynical philosophy allows her to think only of “so-called” happy marriages—these are found only where the partners can see no possible way out, they have nowhere to go and their financial situation precludes divorce. “I personally doubt there is one happy marriage except for where there are so many children, so many responsibilies, so much work to be done and such solid unimaginative people that they never question the fact that they’re stuck with each other until the day they die. . . .” There are 184 pages in this vein. It all becomes rather tedious. An embarrassingly intimate look at her own marriage to James Mason and divorce, an offensive stab at Roman Catholics and touches of downright vulgarity are neither diverting nor jocose. This book

is an indigestible morass of cynicism, spite and disillusion.