INTEREST IN BOOKS

Taranaki Daily News, 23 March 1935, Page 14 (Supplement)

INTEREST IN BOOKS

PUBLISHERS’ CHOICE VICKI BAUM ON HOLLYWOOD. BRAVE GIRL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. “Fallinc Star," by Vicki Baum. Geoffrey Bles, London. -A. J. Fyfe Ltd., New Plymouth. In “Falling Star” Vicki Baum has chosen the extraordinary and somewhat fascinating atmosphere of the Hollywood of a decade ago for the setting of this story. It was the period when film artist reputations made in “silent” pictures had been subjected to swift and., brutal re-assesstoent by the “talkies ; the period when “film worship” of favourites was at its height; and when the contrast between the huge earnings of the favourite and the struggles of the unknown was widest. The hollowness, the camaraderie, the immorality and the kindness, the competition and the hard work that surrounded thfe picture film artists and industry are displayed with that remarkable skill in dramatisation for which the author is noted.

The book is largely the record of “Oliver Dent,” a film picture hero, and oi his love for Donka MOrescu. “Aldens ” Dent’s understudy, and “Frances Warfen,” whose story is one of the many tragedies of Hollywood, are chief among the minor characters, but the book is full of interesting people and of situations that add what Hollywood would have then called “pep,” to this exciting volume.

When the story opens Dent is at the pinnacle of his tome. Donka Morescu is on the down grade. She had failed when the talkies made something more than appeal-ance and expression necessary for film success. Nevertheless Dent is deeply in love with Morescu and she with him. Motescu’s life had been the sordid one of a Roumanian city girl sold fof hef looks "when she was 15 years bld, her CoUrtesanship- becoming, however, the prelude to a wealthy marriage, travel, and aft introduction to the “films.” The stimulus of their companionship had brought to Morescu the patience to begin again. She learned what was required for “talkie” acting and with the thought of acting with Oliver Dent as,a spur she makes a “come-back” that sets Hollywood in a stir. Oliver Dent is becoming “fed Up” with, all the adulation and publicity he is receiving. He sees the hollowness of .’t all, ahd he to perturbed lest hto relations with Donka should be less engrossing for her than his loyalty to her deserves. He finds what he thinks to evidence of Donka’s unfaithfulness to him and the discovery sends him away from Hollywood seeking for distraction. The end of his quest to highly dramatic, but 'in the meantime production of the picture that is to herald MorescU’s return to stardom must go on. The life behind the stage, the hard work entailed in production, the ceaseless search for new effects and the ruthless scrapping of any material, script, human beings, or stage effects that are not considered up to standard to told With lucidity that awakens much respect for those who lived those strenuous and artificial lives. Motescu and Frances both loved Oliver Dent. 'Their paths only crossed once, but it was ain occasion fraught with many consequences. It sent Frances to the underworld of Hollywood society. Morescu had to sacrifice inclination to duty, and for ■ her indifference to ordinary consequences she plays the game and sees the picture through. Whether the price she had to pay was worth while to for the reader to judge.

“Fortune Grass.” by Mabel Lethbridge. Geoffrey Bles, London. A. J. Fyfe Ltd., New Plymouth.

The realism in this book is just aS Vivid as the story of Hollywood, but it is of a starker nature. “Fortune Grass” is the autobiography of a girl of good family with a desire for adventure heightened by wartime conditions in England. Mabel Lethbridge’s restlessness sent her at the age of sixteen to a probationer’s job at Bradford hospital. For eight months she continued the drudgery of a junior nurse in a overcrowded with military as well as civilian patients, and it was not until her mother had consented to her undertaking other war work that Mabel returned to her home in London. Her next adventure was at a munitions factory near London, where her first job Was that of “washing containers in paraffin and chipping them with a small hammer to remove the caking of amatol.” Tire description of conditions in the “filling factory” is calculated to remove any impression that the women munitionworkers did not earn their pay. The climax came when it was discovered that condemned machines were being used for filling shells with high explosive. It led to a stop-work meeting, but Mabel and another girl volunteered to complete the day’s work. The last shell was being filled when there came an explosion that cost Mabel her leg and for many days her sight as well. The suffering that followed is realism of wonderful power and deepest poignancy. She had thirteen serious wounds. “My head and left upper jaw were badly crushed. My left leg was amputated. My right leg and thigh fractured, my right foot had practically every bone broken. Both my arms had been fractured and my hands badly burnt, and I had countless small wounds and injuries. The sockets of my eyes were torn by the force of the explosion and the eyes burnt and injured.” It was a high price to pay for nine days experience in making munitions! Yet she recovered and -within a year was doing clerical work for the War Office, losing in consequence the pension of £1 a week granted her as compensation for permanent disability! Truly the ways of the authorities were past finding out. Still, she was given the M.B.E. medal and received a message of sympathy from the King and Queen. With returning health came the desire for fresh adventure. Romance had entered her life earlier, but she had refused to marry the officer she had only known through correspondence, and he had married a girl he met when on leave from the frenches. The romance was renewed when the war was over, but in the meantime Miss Lethbridge was to learn how little her patriotism counted. She lost her official position, and became masseuse, charwoman. step cleaner, and accepted any kind Of work that would provide food and shelter. Her lover found, like sc many demobilised army men, that there was little employment for the ex-officer, and ultimately he and Mabel obtained

.-. position as butler and housekeeper at a shooting lodge in Gloucestershire. The situatiqn lasted six happy months, and. when they returned to London, they learned what real privation might mean. It took them down to the depths, in more senses than one. Nevertheless this girl of 20 would not be daunted by circumstances or even by her owii grave errors of judgment. She married worthless man, and although in material affairs she won through, the book closes with the struggle “for possession of her soul” by no means ended. It is an open question whether the poignancy or the power of this autobiography of a brave worpan is the greater. Whatever may be the reader’s verdict he will close the volume feeling that heroism can still be found, and that it is more plentiful than pessimists would have us believe.