A feast of passions

Press, 31 August 1985, Page 20

A feast of passions

Queenie. By Michael Korda. Collins, 1985. 668 pp. $29.95. (Reviewed by Diane Prout) “Queenie” is a beaut blockbuster, an ideal book for a long, wet week-end when you can’t get to the ski slopes, walk the dog, or get away from teenage, stereophonic racket. Ranging from the slums of Calcutta to the board rooms of the movie moguls, it traces the glittering route to stardom of Dawn Avalon, born Queenie Kelly of dubious Anglo-Indian parentage. Queenie, with her perfect face and figure, is doomed to success in an era when the film industry was in its hey-day. With nothing but her beauty, natural shrewdness, and ability to manipulate men (even to kill them when the occasion calls for it), she steals her way to England thereby escaping the humiliating destiny reserved for those of mixed blood. Her racial origin is her deepest secret as she strips her way to fame and fortune in a sleazy Soho night club, billed as Rani, exotic dancer, brought up in a Maharajah’s palace. As Queenie’s astral plane rises, so do the myths around her. Husbands and lovers she acquires in the true style of all Hollywood Witch-Bitches. Her

physical perfection plus her business acumen ensure her position as director of Empire Movies. But will the story have a happy ending? Can Queenie find true love as she adroitly manages mergers, meddles with the Mafia, and barters with a blackmailer who has a penchant for Tarot cards? Hard drugs are not yet the currency with which millions are forged and shattered. The facade of marital respectability is still valued in the eyes of prewar movie-goers. Dirty money comes from Nazi Germany or South America, and the F. 8.1. are never far away. Queenie Kelly, Dawn Avalon, Lady Konig, and Princess Corsini are just some of the names she assumes in 60 years in the limelight. For all its 600 pages, “Queenie” reads at a splendid gallop. The names of the really rich and famous — Cecil B. De Mille, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Greta Garbo — are interwoven with those of the author’s own imagining (most of them Jewish). The result is a glamorous beanfeast of celluloid power and passion. Too slick to raise a tear, too sophisticated to evoke more than a token sigh for its enterprising heroine, “Queenie” is nevertheless a jolly good read.