LOS ANGELES:

                        

HOLLYWOOD AND BEYOND…

THE LITERATURE OF A CITY IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Fisher, Carrie. Postcards from the edge, New York : Simon and Schuster, 1987.

When Carrie Fisher wrote this comic and profound debut novel, she had known fame as an actress (through the Star Wars movie franchise) and as the child of Hollywood royalty: Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. Postcards from the Edge is the prism through which she interprets her personal life, family and the movie industry, all realised with striking candour, pathos and wit.  Fisher chronicles her alter ego Suzanne Vale (in career and emotional meltdown) as she struggles with the fame game, drug addiction, relationship crises as well as deep-rooted family conflict, mostly involving her mother Norma, a thinly disguised Debbie Reynolds.

She delivers a late-Eighties portrait of Los Angeles that is no less revelatory of life lived in the fast lane, than that of the milieu of Jane Austen's Bath, a slower but no less problematic time.  Fisher's prose style is dialogue-driven and explores different formats: the first quarter of the book composed in diary form before switching to conventional third-person narrative. It hardly surprises that Hollywood promptly filmed this book (in 1990) or that Fisher wrote the screenplay; nor that she has penned a further five successful novels.  She continues to act in film and television.  As does her mother.

Waugh, Evelyn. The loved one: an Anglo-American tragedy, London : Methuen, 1979.

In this short novel the master English satirist Evelyn Waugh turns his gaze on Los Angeles, the studio system and the funeral industry.  As an outsider, he had explored these subjects in a visit to Hollywood made shortly after WW2. Waugh subsequently became fascinated by Forest Lawn cemetery and its bizarre practices; the attitude towards death in general, in a city he viewed as practically a pagan place. 

The satire is mostly directed at the excesses of Whispering Glades (a fictional Forest Lawn), the euphemistic protocols, and philosophy of that institution, where death is given the “Hollywood” treatment.  As a Catholic writer, Waugh sublimates his sense of outrage at the degradation of the body (and presumably, soul) into mild but annihilating humour.

There is a sense that at 128 pages, The Loved One, is a minor work from this author, and while it was well received in 1951, the satire may seem somewhat tame by the standards of today.  The novel was published with a Preface by the author, the entire work having appeared in a single issue of the English literary magazine, Horizon.  The novel had a further incarnation when it was filmed, to a lukewarm critical reception, in 1965.

VIDEO: Excerpt from The Love One (1965)

West, Nathanael. The day of the locust, London : Secker and Warburg, 1957.

This short somewhat bitter novel provides an intense experience for the reader of serious fiction.  Its appeal lies in the exploration of what might be described as the "underbelly"of Los Angeles, on the cusp of WW11.  The Day of the Locust was West's last work and his most famous. It is a world of an unglamorous Hollywood and the unsuccessful small-time players who parlay an existence on the fringes of the big movie studios.

What impresses most is a tangible sense of place.  The author's precise use of language conjures the climate, topography, streets, buildings and vegetation of Los Angeles - from Sunset Boulevard to the San Barndino Mountains.  West uses unflinching naturalistic dialogue as we follow the characters from dingy apartments to brothels, staged cock-fighting, to a big Hollywood premiere. The novel explodes in an almost surreal climax as though the author finds no chance of human redemption in mid-century America.

Nathanael West died in a car crash at the age of 40, soon after completing this work.  He received posthumous recognition and is far from forgotten. Today he is viewed as a writer who was ahead of his time and a forerunner of novelists such as William Rice Burroughs.  The book was adapted for the cinema in 1973 but was a box-office disappointment.

1940's Hollywood: Movie and Radio Studios and Landmarks

VIDEO:

Cain, James M. Mildred Pierce, London : Orion, 2002.

James M. Cain's best-selling novels were embraced by Hollywood in the post-war era.  His oeuvre is firmly rooted in social realism and was welcome fodder for studio scriptwriters who turned his books into melodramatic epics, censorship issues notwithstanding.

Mildred Pierce is a tale of sex and murder, set against the backdrop of suburban Los Angeles. Cain's characters are average people who find themselves drawn into hazardous situations. the plot is a page-turner of twisted relationships; the ambitious Mildred; her spineless husband; a louche lover; and a venal daughter, Veda. It is Mildred's wise-cracking assistant, Ida, who utters the famous line: "Crocodiles have the right idea - they eat their young."

Mildred Pierce was a wildly successful film for MGM in 1945.  It proved a huge money-spinner, won Joan Crawford a Best Actress Oscar and revitalised a career that had been in decline. Guy Pearce starred in a prestigious version for television in 2011.  Other Cain novels have been filmed:  including Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. 

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The last tycoon, London : Penguin, 2010.

One of the 20th century's greatest unfinished novels, The Last Tycoon, is heartbreaking in its unrealised potential.  The book presents a portrait of Hollywood studio czar Monroe Stahr and is based on Fitzgerald's experience of working as a screenwriter for producer Irving Thalberg at MGM, the premier Hollywood studio.  The esteemed critic and editor, Edmund Wilson writes in the Foreword, "Scott Fitzgerald died suddenly of a heart attack (21 December 1940) the day after he had written the first episode of Chapter 6 of his novel."

What Wilson did publish is roughly a third of the novel, which Fitzgerald had revised to certain extent, before his untimely death.  Aside from its elegant prose style, the book's appeal lies in the nascent romance between Stahr and the young screenwriter Kathleen. The glamour of Hollywood is given its due, as well as an  insider's "take" of the movie industry; and the machinations peculiar to a studio conglomerate.

Eventually, The Last Tycoon was adapted for the movies, in 1973 with Robert de Niro as Stahr, amongst an illustrious cast.  However, the film proved to be a box-office flop.  

VIDEO: the glamour of Hollywood at night

Crawford, Christina. Mommie dearest: a true story, New York : William Morrow, 1978.

This torrid autobiography set the gold standard for Hollywood "tell-all" memoirs in the late 1970s, and opened the floodgates for baser forms of biography. On publication, Mommie Dearest was judged as a scandalous demolition job by a daughter (albeit adopted); one who was intent on fracturing the public image of her mother, the legendary star Joan Crawford. 

With considerable relish, Christina demolishes Joan as "Mommie" - and human being to boot.  A frightening portrait emerges of  Crawford as abusive, sadistic, alcoholic...an all-round head case.

The book became a movie (in 1981) with Faye Dunaway as Joan, and was an instant cult hit. Ironically, the film stopped Dunaway's career in its tracks, the over-the-top performance being deemed to have forever damaged her credibility.  

       VIDEO: Joan Crawford with Christina: rare archive footage





   VIDEO: Faye Dunaway as Mommie Dearest...