Some Books I Have Recently Read

When I did my stint at the local book exchange, I took perhaps 300-400 books to keep in my collection as well as buy a few from there and ordered others from Amazon or bought locally in bookstores/flea markets. That's just during the last six or seven months. Of course I have literally hundreds of books in storage, and I hope they are okay. Anyway, I figure I have enough reading material to last me a couple of years, since many of the books I took home from the book exchange are reference works. Very few are novels since I am not big on fiction. A few books I have recently read with a few remarks:

The Girl by Samantha Geimer (2013): Excellent account of the Polanski case through the eyes of the victim Geimer, who was 13 years old when it happened. Most people STILL haven't figured out or refuse to admit Polanski DID serve his time, which was the result of a plea deal since Samantha's mother did not want to subject her through the ordeal of a trial. However, a corrupt, publicity-seeking judge wanted to change his mind, which is something that CANNOT be done. THAT was always the issue, not whether Polanski's sentence was too lenient or that he skipped out of the country to avoid prosecution. Geimer's tells her story with considerable humor. She wasn't a "victim" but was a survivor who went on to achieve much in her life. I highly recommend this book.

Jimi Hendrix: A Brother's Story by Leon Hendrix with Adam Mitchell (2012). An account of the man behind the guitar by somebody who perhaps knew him the best, his younger brother Leon. Jimi virtually raised his brother since their parents constantly broke up and reconciled, while their father struggled with drinking and gambling issues. Most of the book is about this relationship. After Jimi leaves home for first the army and then for show business, the book centers more on Leon and his struggles growing up, dealing with his brother's untimely death in 1970, his substance abuse problems, and his finding his own direction in life. Very little of the book is about the infamous legal battles between him and his stepsister/adopted sister Janie, and it's just as well. Another book I enjoyed and an easy read.

Life Is Too Short by Mickey Rooney (1991). If even half of this book is true, Mickey Rooney led one hell of a life. It is an almost unputdownable book about his career in vaudeville, in films, and on television. Of course there is a lot in his book about his eight marriages, including the tragic marriage to wife Barbara Tomlinson, the one who was murdered by her lover in 1966, who in turn committed suicide after he shot her. Rooney clearly loved this woman more than all of the others, or at least until met eighth and last wife Jan Chamberlin, and probably loved Barbara the most of all after his marriage to Chamberlin went on the rocks. The book was never updated by Rooney, so all of the mess regarding his final years, with allegations of elder abuse, is not there.

The reader also gets a good perspective of his friendship with Judy Garland, a friendship that lasted until her death in 1969. Many people thought Mickey and Judy should have married each other because they understood each other so well, and perhaps Judy would not have self-destructed and died young. Even Rooney pondered that in his book, but as it was, there was never any kind of romantic feelings between the two.

Anybody who is interested in Hollywood's Golden Age should get this book. It's a great read.

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I typically read several books at a time, and then I get a "burst" of speed and will finish off a book in a day. Right now I am reading or have started to read about six or seven books.

I am thinking about writing short reviews here every now and then as I finish reading books. I have been reading a lot of biographies and memoirs as of late. There just isn't a hell of a lot of news out there I care to comment on, including all of the police shootings and shootings of police. I mean, what else is there to say about it? What could I possibly add about it?

I Don't Know Why "Serious" Biographers Peddle Urban Legends

One of the five books--real books, not downloads on Kindle, since I love to skip around on non-fiction titles and read out of sequence--I am reading is a biography I got the other day about the Hollywood star and dancer Vera-Ellen (1921-1981). The title of the book is called Vera Ellen: The Magic and the Mystery. Since I started the book near the end which talked about her tragic final years of losing her baby to SIDS and living a life of seclusion as a result, I am not sure where the mystery about her is. Everybody who knew her never had a bad word to say about her and remembered her as a very kind, thoughtful person. Onscreen she always had a impish quality about her and was cute as a button. Of course she was an extremely talented, extremely dedicated dancer almost and perhaps to the point of being downright anal about it. She pushed herself so hard she likely ruined her health because of the weird eating habits she supposedly had (and to this day are still common among dancers) to keep her weight low and most likely suffered from anorexia in the years before it was commonly known to the public. She died of cancer in 1981, aged only 60.

Vera-Ellen made very few films in her career, a total of 14 in all. Her best known films remain 1949's On the Town and 1954's White Christmas. Unfortunately for her, the Hollywood musical declined by the end of the fifties, and here she was still in her thirties and could still dance up a mean streak. There just wasn't enough for her to do, so she married a second time to a Rothschild (who wasn't all that rich) and had a baby daughter when she was 42 (old back then) who unfortunately died at three months of age.

She was as talented a dancer as anybody who ever appeared in films. There is no question of it. She could dance any type of dance and could easily keep up with the likes of Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire. The sad thing is she is little remembered today, but she should be.

Anyway, getting to the urban legend. This biographer, David Soren, still peddles the easily debunked story of Vera-Ellen's neck. The legend goes that Vera-Ellen always kept her neck covered once she started displaying signs of anorexia because she had basically what is known as a turkey neck. The neck covering was most noticeable in White Christmas where it was obvious she was extremely thin and frail. The story goes that if a woman suffers from the effects of anorexia, it prematurely ages the body, especially the neck. Vera-Ellen was so self-conscious about it, the story goes, she had all of her costumes and clothes designed to hide this hideous deformity or always wore chokers or necklaces to somehow deflect attention away from it. Of course one of the reasons women wear chokers or necklaces is to ATTRACT attention to the neck, but why get in the way of a good story?

Unfortunately for the urban legend, there are pictures and film footage of her taken around the time of White Christmas that plainly show her neck was normal. Now she might have had a tiny scar on her neck she wanted to hide, or she thought her neck was too skinny, or perhaps she liked high collars, but whatever the reason, the turkey neck explanation ain't it.

I still think the book is okay, but if you are going to be a serious biographer, you can't be peddling urban legends. He probably shouldn't try to psychoanalyze her, either.

In case there are readers who don't know who I am talking about, here's Vera-Ellen in one of her most famous numbers, "Naughty But Nice" from the 1952 film The Belle of New York:

Book Review: Fireball

I just finished reading a book about actress Carole Lombard and the 1942 Nevada plane crash that cost her life and the lives of 21 other people, Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3. The book was published about a year ago.

It's a good biography, although almost all of the information about Carole Lombard is old news, including the rumor that she took the plane after completing her war bond tour instead of the train because she was worried about husband Clark Gable's supposed flirtation with a co-star named Lana Turner. That rumor has been around forever, and Turner, to her credit, refused to dignify it. As an aside, that's the problem with many biographies of show business people: The major characters are dead, so unscrupulous authors have a tendency to repeat rumors, or, as in the case of the infamous Kenneth Anger of Hollywood Babylon fame, literally make shit up, relatives and libel laws be damned. You kind of have to take many of these books with a grain of salt.

The main value of the book is the discussion and description of the circumstances surrounding the plane crash itself. I don't believe any other book has gone into this kind of detail about it. For that reason, I recommend it.

I do have a few complaints, however. There is sloppiness with the editing and with some of the facts. I found a number of typographical errors which never should have made it into print. What really irritates me is the continued misspelling in the book of McCarrAn Field--it's NOT McCarrEn Field. How hard is it to look up the correct spelling? The field, now one of the busier airports in the country, was named after Senator Pat McCarran. There is no excuse for that typo. The author is at times careless with his facts. For example, The Misfits filming was in the Reno-Dayton area of northern Nevada, which is well over 400 miles from the site of the Flight 3 crash. Matzen asserts in his book the filming was "not far" from Mount Potosi. Four or five hundred miles is not anywhere near close to the site of the crash. It is things like this that create questions on how much of this book can be trusted.

Perhaps if a paperback version of this book comes out some of these egregious mistakes will be corrected. I am not holding my breath.

Today

I received a copy of a new coffee table-sized book on Reno titled Historic Photos of Reno, published by Turner Publishing Company. The author, Donnelyn Curtis, is a librarian with the University of Nevada, Reno, and Director of Research Collections & Services and Head of Special Collections there. Her pictures and commentary cover the first century or so of Reno from around 1868 to the end of the 1970s. I not only read the book and looked at the outstanding pictures culled from the university archives and other collections, I also shared the book with my landlord who has lived in Reno since 1947. We spent several hours browsing the book and reading the captions, and we both came to the conclusion this is the best pictorial volume about Reno we have seen.

Curtis took great care in selecting the photographs, all of them black and white, covering many aspects of Reno's history, including the Johnson/Jeffries fight of 1910; various businesses in and around Reno and Sparks; the rise of gaming in Reno; parades of note which included a parade featuring aviator Charles Lindbergh; the 1950 Reno flood; vintage University of Nevada, Reno, pictures; and even a picture of the original "Biggest Little City in the World" sign and how that came to be. Some of the businesses and buildings still exist, but for older people such as my landlord, those which don't exist anymore but are depicted in the book bring back a lot of memories. Curtis' captions and commentary are brief and to the point.

I can't recommend this book enough for those who are interested in local history as I am.

Interested readers can order the book here.