6/29/2001 Relax, it's summer! Time to unwind with a good mystery. Barbara Seranella continues the saga of Munch Mancini, the best female auto mechanic this side of Brentwood, who drives her limousine at night for paying customers in "Unfinished Business" (Scribner $24.00). Someone is killing the Brentwood women. He knows where they live and when they are alone. But someone is using his M.O. to throw the blame. Munch becomes involved when a wealthy widow who is donating Munch's service at a charity ball, is found dead with the same signs as the serial killer's clues. He rapes them and leaves them with duct tape over their eyes. Part of the fun of Munch is watching how Barbara Seranella has allowed her to grow from an ex-con to a respectable working woman with a seven year old adopted daughter. One has to have read the earlier three books to know how all this happened. They are out in paperback. But now Munch has an eligible, white-bread boyfriend whom she met in an adult education class in repairing automobile air conditioners. I told Barbara that she may have just created a new meet and date spot. At the end of the book they are still together, but I wouldn't buy a wedding gift, just yet. Barbara, herself, is a former auto mechanic, who at one time rode with the bikers; so that when she writes about the women getting even with a biker who raped one of them, there is truth in her writing. She told me about being raped herself and the long lasting after affect. We also talked about the use of writers' groups and how constructive they can be both for a new writer and for socialization for the successful writer. Barbara's writing could stand alone, but a new writer stands a better chance at getting published in the mystery genre. I first met Ethan Canin when he was just graduating from Harvard Medical School and had written his book of short stories, "Emperor of the Air". After that I would ask him if he was still practicing medicine? Knowing how hard it is to be accepted at Harvard Medical School, I think I gave him the old mother guilt. But, he has found peace with himself. He now is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, which is the graduate Harvard for writers. During this time he has written, "Carry Me Across The Water" (Random House $23.95), which I liked and found very provocative. It's the type of book that will work very well for a book group as everyone will have their own interpretation. It is the story of August Kleinman, born Gertzmann in Germany. His mother escapes the Naziis as well as escaping her husband, and takes August to New York City. He joins the army in WWII and is sent to the Pacific and in 1945 he is stationed on Okinawa where he hides in a cave and discovers a Japanese soldier already there. He takes a letter from the cave which will play back in his later years. He reminded me of something Aaron Haas said who has documented the survivors of the Holocaust that until these people retired they were too busy and too tired to have nightmares. Now it all comes back. August has made a fortune in the beer brewing business. Now his wife has died and he is living in Newton, Mass. Out of loneliness he goes to work as bagger in a supermarket. He visits his son with whom he does
not have a good rapport. His son, Jimmy, has become an observant
Jew. August has become indifferent to any religion, Suddenly
he decides to look up the recipient of the letter he has kept
all these years. There are those who expected a different book
from Ethan and who seem to have been reading for a book they
wanted and not the book he wrote. I think that he has written
a symphonic poem of a character study that is worthy of praise,
but, no, it is not a full blown symphony. 6/22/2001 Column not on file 6/12/2001 He is your lover, father of your children, your master and the President of the United States of America; but you are shown an article "Notes on The State Of Virginia" that he wrote in 1787 in which he wrote disparagingly about members of the "Black race" and their off spring, and you are Sally Hemings and he is Thomas Jefferson. This makes for one of the great confrontation scenes in Tina Andrews' "Sally Hemings, An American Scandal; The Struggle To Tell The Controversial True Story" (The Malibu Press $24.95). Tina Andrews, a graduate of New York University Film School, was working as an actress in the soap opera, "Days of Our Lives" in a plot line which included an inter racial romance sealed with a kiss, which, due to the outraged mail that came in, sealed her ongoing role on the soap. For three years she looked for work. Her parents in Chicago offered to build her an acting school; but it was her father who suggested she get off the acting track and turn to her writing if she was going to stay in Los Angeles. Do something like "Roots" to tell the story of her people. He ended the conversation by saying, "Or the slave Thomas Jefferson was involved with … ? " Thus , Tina's journey began. First came the play title, "Mistress of Monticello", with research in the Santa Monica library where she discovered Jefferson's incendiary "Notes on The State of Virginia" which was written four months before Sally came into his life in Paris. This was in 1984, in 1985 the play had its first stage reading in Chicago. Tina now tells the reader of the travails in getting the play on the screen. The first excitement had been to learn that they were doing a four hour miniseries for sweeps. This was in 1999. I told her that I enjoyed the fact that she included the executive's notes on her screenplay in this chapter. Tina has included photographs of Jefferson and Sally's children, grandchildren and the family reunion of both the black and white sides of the family. Chapter eight delves into the Pre-Production areas of film making. From casting, production design, the script, the director and shooting on location. Finally in November 1999, Tina saw the first cut of "The Memoirs of Sally Hemings". In February 2000 there was a grand premiere in Columbus, Ohio for over eight hundred descendants of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. For those interested in screenwriting, Tina has included the final screenplay of "Sally Hemings : An American Scandal" and , although, today Tina is a writer/producer she read from two scenes in the screenplay on the show. She was superb! It's an excellent book on history, film making and one woman's struggle to be heard. On a similar vein but without a president being involved, Lalita Tademy has written a novel "Cane River" (Warner Books $24.95) based on the history of the women in her family in Louisiana. Lalita, herself, was a vice-president of Sun Microsystems when she decided to resign to pursue the writing and tracing the history of her family. Cane River was a community where Creole French planters, free people of color and slaves co-exited, and where the free people of color had accumulated land and wealth, and, often, owned slaves. Lalita's cousin, Gurtie, had written a primitive outline of the family history; but it is Lalita's penchant for research that unearthed the recorded documents of wills, slave sales, and court records. The book begins in 1834 with Suzette, whose mother, Elizabeth, was sold in Virginia by her master's wife to the Derbannes, a Louisiana family. Elizabeth was separated from her children who had been sired by the "Master" and the wife couldn't stand to see them or her on her land. This selling of children and husbands and wives to different parts of the country is devastating to read. Often the widow would have no choice in the matter as she needed to raise capital to save her farm. Suzette is seduced by Eugene Oreline and they have a daughter, Philomene who will have a daughter by another Frenchman, Narcisse Freideau. Their daughter, Emily, will be Lalita's great grandmother who died in her bed in 1936 with $1,300 in cash hidden under her mattress. Emily had lived with Joseph Billes until the KKK came and threatened his store and them unless he married a white woman. There is an interesting true story line that Lalita uses in writing about Emily's desire to keep "bleaching the line" until they are white when Emily's son ,T.O., brings home the woman he will marry, Eva Brew, who has "nappy hair" and has "ginger-colored skin, her broad nose" . It was the necessity to define who they were to themselves. I asked Lalita about her feelings as she wrote about taking on the persona of each of these remarkable women who were survivors. If you are ready for a laugh, don't miss Stephen Randall's "The Other Side of Mulholland" (LA Weekly Book for St. Martin's Press $23.95). The characters who provide the loving humor are the twin brothers, Perry, the heterosexual who never met a girl he didn't want to form a production company with, and Tim, the homosexual who just wants to find love, and their parents in Studio City, Syd, who owns a car dealership, and Ann, who keeps finding , with great passion, new interests, such as real estate, family psychology, valley secession, etc. Stephen covers the double dealing of getting a TV show into production, the friendship of Tim with the girl in the next cubicle, Sandy, who will dress him for success. The family dynamics of Sunday dinner with take-out food is familiar to every family on either side of Mulholland. In his day job Stephen is executive editor of Playboy magazine, this is his first novel but certainly it will be followed by many more. Stephen may have opened up the Dave Barry view of Los Angeles. Save November 5, 2001 for the Literary Odyssey Dinners which are being coordinated by The Council of the Library Foundation. Fifty dinners will feature well-known authors hosted primarily in private homes. A few years ago, my husband and I dined at the Japanese Consulate, for a few hours it was like being transported to a different country. It truly is a remarkable event. The library will also be celebrating it's 14th Annual Stay Home and Read a Book Ball. Another Beverly Hills resident, Andrea Grossman, has lined up evenings with authors for her Writers Block, that any great impresario, like a Sol Hurok, would envy. She has been producing these events for the past few years and deserves great credit for entertaining and enlightening her audience. 6/05/2001 When Daniel Schorr was born, someone must have wished/cursed him with, "May you live in interesting times". Not only has he lived in interesting times, he has made those times more interesting and informative for us. He has written "Staying Tuned: A Life In Journalism" (Pocket Books $26.95). Born to impoverished immigrant parents in New York City, fatherless by age six, educated at De Witt Clinton High School and City College of New York where one could go without paying tuition, which as Dan told me would have prevented him from attending if there had been a tuition fee. During his college days, he was hired by the Jewish Daily Bulletin as a "stringer", his first real job in the profession he had been destined for ever since he earned five dollars from the Bronx Home News for calling in a news tip about a suicide. After serving in WWII he went to work for the ANETA news agency in Holland. During that time he interviewed Otto Frank, and with the help of Simon Wiesenthal he found the Austrian policeman, Karl Silberhauer, who had captured Anne Frank, who would reply chillingly, "I was only doing my job". I asked Dan about the green and orange rosette which he wears in his lapel. While he was in Holland, he did some interviews with Prince Bernhard who was very disturbed about his wife, Queen Juliana's reliance on a woman who claimed to be a faith healer who received messages from God. Queen Juliana's second daughter was born partially blind and this faith healer, so called, had offered her help. Dan went to see this healer, Margareta Hofmans. He had been given the lead by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt who was a good friend of Queen Juliana. Having been given all this information, Dan wrote an article to be published in LIFE magazine. Suddenly all hell broke loose, that he was implored to kill the article, that he would bring down the monarchy, etc. etc. The story was killed. One of the charms of this book is that Daniel Schorr quests openly and inwardly about some of his decisions. In this case, he quotes his journalist son, Jonathan, who told him that he "never adequately explained a decision that violated my principles and my image of myself as the uncompromising purveyor of truth". In 1955 he was a CBS correspondent in Washington when he was informed that the Queen had conferred on him the decoration, Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau. Because of being Jewish, Dan was not hired by The New York Times to be a foreign correspondent, he had to accept second choice, CBS. And as Robert Frost would say about the two roads diverged in that yellow wood, what a difference it made in his life. He was sent to Moscow where he had face to face meetings and time spent with Nikita Khrushchev at one of the most volatile periods in the Soviet Union. By 1956 he was invited to be a participant in the end of the year round table of the Edward R. Murrow team at CBS. He covered the Hungarian uprising and he was pivotal in doing the first international television interview with Khrushchev. On a lighter side, he is documented in Truman Capote's book on Porgy and Bess in Russia. He traveled with Khrushchev on his trip to America. Laughing, Dan told me at one point he was the subject of investigation by the KGB and the FBI. But then came Nixon and his discovery that he was number 17 on Nixon's enemy list. In between there are visits to Cuba, his time spent in Germany and his trauma of visiting Auschwitz. In 1966 at the age of fifty, he met
and married Li Bamberger, who was working at the Office of Economic
Opportunity. Years later, Li would write a book. "Within
Our Reach: Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage" through which
she and I would meet on her book tour. But life would not be
all roses and Dan, whose greatest asset and most dangerous asset,
his compulsion to "tell truth to power and the public"
would find himself in limbo with CBS over his disclosures and
publication of the Pike Committee Report. For this he was served
a subpoena and the threat of jail if he did not reveal his source.
I asked Dan, "Who stayed your friend?" Joe Califano
was his lawyer and the first people to arrive at his home with
wine were Judith and Milton Viorst. I didn't have time to ask him about our current president, but last night at a reception for him, hosted by Henry and Margo Bamberger, Li's cousin, he referred to the election of the president "by five Americans". The book, "Staying Tuned" will deservedly be on the best seller list for many weeks, not only well written but the events he writes about shaped our world and made for "those interesting times". Why was I surprised to find that Robert Shapiro, yes, that Robert Shapiro, had written an excellent novel? The book, written with Walt Becker, is called "Misconception" (William Morrow $25.00). It is a harrowing story of a married doctor, Daniel Wyatt, in Lafayette, Louisiana who, after a brief period of fame for saving a man's life as a good Samaritan, is nominated for the post of Surgeon General of the United States. Prior to the nomination he attends a medical convention in New Orleans where he bumps into a female patient, named Sarah Corbett. They have an affair and three weeks later when he is about to go to Washington to be questioned by the Senate committee Sarah calls to tell him that she is pregnant. Dr. Daniel Wyatt in a pro-life city is a pro-choice believer, who has worked and helped support a group led by an attorney, Claire Davis, who sees her future success as counsel to Daniel in Washington. Claire arranges for Daniel to spend a few days at a beach house with Sarah where he will provide her with the pills RU-486. A senator in Washington has urged the FBI to dig up any dirt it can on Wyatt to stop his nomination. Running as a subplot that will connect with Wyatt is the FBI's up to now hopeless search for the serial bomber and killer of abortion doctors. When Claire begins to hemorrhage, her next door neighbors, who are the local sheriff and his daughter, Millie, take her to the hospital. Hicks mentions the miscarriage to his deputy Tom Jenkins who sees an opportunity to make political currency by telling the District Attorney, Riley Mills, who immediately sees visions of being governor. The die is cast and Dr. Daniel Wyatt is charged with murder of the fetus. I told Bob Shapiro when we talked that I learned that the prosecution always wants to arrest on a Friday, so that the person charged has to spend the weekend in jail until Monday when they can post bail. From that point on, every word, every question is based on legal fact, he assured me. Meanwhile the reader discovers who the bomber is and how he plans to create a chaos in the town. But the book is also a book that will provoke discussion on the moral choices involved in abortion and the father's role. If a mother can choose to abort, why
can't the father? Maybe because, it is the woman's body that
is involved. The book also addresses the role the crazy, hungry
media plays both in a trial and on the ego of the attorneys involved,
as Claire defends Daniel and at the same time listens to offers
from CNN and other legal firms. No need to wonder where he got
that experience. Bob Shapiro has another career as a writer any
time he wants, he also is a witty and charming guest. Deanne Stillman, the author of "Twentynine Palms, A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave (Wm Morrow $24.00), has captured a slice of America in her book. It is the America of single mothers with children from various unions who find jobs as bartenders and waitresses on the outskirts of military bases. In some cases they are semi-illiterate and would fit the description as "white trash"; but as Shakespeare asked, "Do they not bleed?". Debie McMaster's fifteen year old daughter, Mandi Scott, and twenty year old Rosalie Ortega were raped and murdered by Valentine Underwood, a six foot six Marine who not only murdered them but stabbed each of them thirty-three times before taking off to play basketball. Stllman has written this book with an intensity that mirrors Dreiser's "An American Tragedy". There is an inevitability to the life of these young women, not unlike the vast emptiness of the dry and threatening desert. Behind it all is the largest Marine base whose young men use Twentynine Palms for their R & R.. Stillman portrays Debie and the violent world she came from. It is as if from generation to generation nothing will change. The trial of Underwood took ten years to come to judgment. He was found guilty but not before his attorney dragged out the old "they asked for it" argument. Yes, Mandi had a boyfriend who was in jail who was a member of the Crips gang, but did this make her murder any less traumatic. Rosalie's story is told and she left a little girl who is being raised by relatives. She was castigated for having had an open house for strangers, but she knew Underwood. There had been charges against Underwood for rape that had been dropped because he was a Marine. Stillman, who had written and published articles about the case during those ten years, found herself part of the affair as her notes were subpoenaed, and she became "persona non grata" in Twentynine Palms, to the point where editorials were written against her, after all their economic health depended on the Marine business. There were calls in the middle of the night with insulting anonymous voices and there were daytime calls from the Marine head office suggesting alternate subjects. I told Deanne when we talked that my heart went out to Mandi's brother Jason who took the abuse in school from classmates and coaches because his mother, Debie, was determined to sue the Marine Corps for wrongful death of her daughter to the tune of five million dollars. Today, Debie lives in Chicago with her daughter, Krisinda, while she appeals the dismissal of that suit. Diane di Prima, the heroine, the poet and the chronicler of the Beat Generation, has written "Recollections of My Life As A Woman: The New York Years (Viking $29.95). It is a compulsive read, as no one can eat just one peanut, one cannot read just a few pages without wanting to know what happened next. I told her that she had to have been one of the bravest women of her generation. She left Swarthmore College without graduating and without being engaged. Unheard of in the fifties. Diane writes about growing up with dysfunctional parents and depending on her maternal grandparents for love and security. Her mother was a graduate of New York University and her father was a lawyer, she always new that she would be a writer. But this is the story of her life and of an era in New York. Her family turned their backs on her when she had her first child out of wedlock. Her friends became her family, especially the dancer-choreographer, Fred Herko, whose suicide becomes the bookends for the New York years. During this period, she met and worked with LeRoi Jones on The Floating Bear, a literary newsletter, as well as having a daughter, Dominique,whom he fathered. Diane and LeRoi were arrested by the FBI for alleged obscenity of the Bear. She and her two daughters travel across America to California with Alan Marlowe, actor and co-founder of Poets Press and Poets Theatre. To the approval of her family, Diane and Alan marry and they have a son, Alexander. It was a marriage destined to fail, as did the theatre. Along the way, Diane met and worked with names such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Merce Cunningham, etc. Diane had her first book of poems published,
"This Kind of Bird Flies Backwards" in 1958, he first
book of prose, "Dinners and Nightmares" in 1960 and
her move to Timothy Leary's LSD community in 1966. She still
regrets that her father made her sell the house in Topanga Canyon
that she and Alan bought for twelve thousand dollars. We might
have her living and writing in Los Angeles rather than up in
San Francisco. It was a colorful and creative time that she has
painted for the reader. Despite the drugs and trips, it's not
as if the dishes didn't get done. 5/22/2001 Heeding her father's request to tell the story of her great grandfather, Henry Villard, born Heinrich Hilgard in Speyer, Germany on April 10, 1835, Alexandra Villard de Borchgrave has written with John Cullen "Villard" (Doubleday $30.00). Talk about an interesting life!. He came to America when he was eighteen years old, having disappointed his father with his academic progress. His future looked bleak in Germany but it was even bleaker when he arrived in New York not speaking English and with only twenty borrowed dollars in his pocket. Fortunately, there was a large German speaking population located in New York City, but until he learned to speak English he was isolated. By the time he was twenty-one, he was working for a German newspaper in Racine, WI. for eighteen dollars a week. As part of his newspaper work he was assigned to cover the debates of Steven Douglas, a proponent for slavery, in his debates for a third term as senator from Illinois against a lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. Villard became friends with Lincoln whose sense of humor had often shocked Villard. Villard, now accomplished in English, wrote a book, entitled "The Past and Present of the Pike's Peak Gold Regions, with Maps and Illustrations " by Henry Villard, Special Correspondent of the Cincinnati Daily Commercial. He was assigned to cover the Civil War for The New York Herald Tribune , which was under Horace Greeley. It was here that he made a name for himself writing about the battles at Bull Run. Worn out from his work under fire, he went to Boston where he met the woman who would become his wife and the family who stood for all that he respected. He met and married Helen Frances "Fanny" Garrison, daughter of William Lloyd Garrison. I told Alexandra, when we taped , that there was a man she should also write about. Villard went on to become a railroad baron raising money back in Germany to invest in the Northern Pacific. By 1883 Fanny was writing him ,"My dearest Railroad King", He became a very good friend to Thomas Alva Edison, who stood by him when there was an economic recession and the investors were shouting for blood outside his iron gates. He lived long enough to be asked to return to the Northern Pacific board. Today, the Villard mansion on Madison Avenue is open to the public, that is if you can get a reservation at Le Cirque which is now located there. A very beautiful woman in the Jackie Kennedy mode, Alexandra has certainly fulfilled her father's request. As for her last name, "de Borchgrave". her husband, Arnaud de Borchgrave, the writer, flew in from China for her book party at the Koll's which included that other Washington writer, Carl Bernstein. Ariel Dorfman has written "Blake's Therapy" (Seven Stories Press $21.95), a provocative novel that examines those in power and what they would do if they were given absolute power. Graham Blake is one of those men who are invited to World Economic Conferences. He and his ex-wife, potential Nobel Prize Winner, own and pride themselves on their international business with the slogan, "We Change Mother Earth Without Hurting Her". Graham is suffering from insomnia. There is a Doctor Tolgate who runs a clinic for executives with the fee of Three million dollars which will be forfeited if the patient does not follow all the rules. If the patient follows the rules for one month of isolation there will be a cure. The therapy is for Graham Blake to play God to a family whom he can see but they can't see him. It becomes a thinking thriller as you read on. I told Ariel Dorfman, that this is a much brighter book than he has written. He felt that much of that was due to both writing his autobiography and examining his life, and to the changing politics of Chile. Diana Von Welanetz Wentworth has written "Send Me Someone" (Renaissance Books ) Many years ago I talked with a beautiful couple named Diana and Paul Von Welanetz, who had written some cookbooks. They had everything one could wish for, including a beautiful daughter. But life can play dirty tricks. They celebrated their twenty-fifth anniversary and they were preparing to celebrate the fifth anniversary of their organization called "Inside Edge" a networking breakfast group that had grown from the Beverly Hills Hotel to Orange County and San Diego, when Paul was diagnosed with cancer. The cover of the book is a photograph of Diana's hand over Paul's. As Paul was dying, he said to Dana that he hated the idea of her being alone, she tuned to him and said, "Send me someone". Having been "attached at the Hip" as she told me, it was as if his spirit was with her, talking to her, advising her. I should say that the book is subtitled, "A True Story of Love Here and Hereafter". This is the story of how Diana met attorney
Ted Wentworth, a widower, who was looking to find a perfect woman.
When he came to an Inside Edge meeting he knew that his future
wife would be there. He had a list of questions and standards
the woman he dated had to meet. For him, it was two years after
his wife's death. For Diana, it was four months after Paul's
death. I loved her friend's line about Diana being single "Having
a short shelf life". If Paul sent someone, he did well.
Ted is an attractive, take-charge guy with a house, ranch, plane
and boat. They have been married for eleven years and Ted was
with Diana when we taped, totally devoted. Diana is definitely
worthy and her book will give hope to others. 5/15/2001 Column not on file 5/8/2001 For a Happy Mother's Day think about what she likes. If it's theatre, there is "Backstage; Broadway Behind The Curtain" (Abrams $35.00) with photographs by Rivka Shiffman, an introduction by Ethan Silverman and a foreword by Harold Prince. The photos cover plays such as "Sweeney Todd" to the 1999 Tony Awards with a wonderful shot of Kevin Spacey and Jason Robards. The pictures capture those magical moments where the actor is transforming his or her self from their every day person into the character who will walk on the stage. It's as if the dressing room becomes their chapel as they delve into that focused moment. Some of the photos are in color but it is the black and white photos that capture a moment in time, as in the one of Gregory Hines in 1979 in "Coming Uptown". Harold Prince makes the case for his preference of black and white. Christine Conrad met Jerome Robbins at a dinner party in the Hamptons when she was twenty-four and he was forty-eight. He had recently directed and won awards for "Fiddler On The Roof". Their romance was from 1965-69 but their friendship lasted until his death. She has written "Jerome Robbins, That Broadway Man, That Ballet Man (Booth-Clibborn Editions $40.00). He preferred his love to be men rather than women. But this book is like a family album of his life with wonderful photographs that Christine has collected from his family as well as the sketches and notes that he made in his journals. He was a true artist in all disciplines. But it was his choreography that brought him to fame. He was born Jerome Rabinowitz on Oct. 11, 1918 in New York City but he grew up in Weehawken, New Jersey. He didn't start ballet training until he was 16. I loved the pictures of him with his friends at Camp Tainiment in the Poconos. It looked like scenes from the book, "Marjorie Morningstar". His work with George Balanchine and his first contract for $32.50 a week. He says of Balanchine that he made him see that the work was more important than the success… that work in progress was what mattered most". There are the glorious photos of his work with Leonard Berstein and Adolph Green and Betty Comden that truly lit up the New York stage for all of them and life would never be the same. He went through his own Hell and he did not go through it with honor, he named names during the HUAC era on May 5, 1953. His rationale was that he had become disillusioned with the party in 1947 and had quit. The book with its photograph and newspaper clippings is like seeing a documentary come to life. So, if Mom likes ballet and theatre, she will love this book. Yes, Virginia, there are mothers in Hollywood and Joyce Ostin has captured them in "Hollywood Moms" (Abrams $29.95). It is a book that gives back. Joyce was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was helped by Dr. Dennis Slamon of UCLA who had just received FDA approval of a new antibody called Herceptin and she has been on it ever since. This book is her celebration of life. Most of the women in the book are her friends or they were referred by another Hollywood Mom. They were asked to write about their daughters. Joyce told me she took the photos in natural light and spent an hour at most taking each one. There is such bride in the mothers' eyes. Be it Mary Steenburgen and her daughter Lily McDowell as Mary writes about the volunteer work her daughter does. Or the lovely poem Judy Swank wrote to her Daughter Hilary. There are the Bergen women, Frances Bergen, Candace Bergen and Chloe Malle, who says "Singing in the car together" is one of her best memories. Some of the others are Madonna and Lourdes, Laura Dern and Diane Ladd . Some fathers connect some families, as in Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher and Billie Lourd and then Connie Stevens, Joely and Tricia Fisher; or in Peggy Lipton and Kidada and Rashida Jones and Nastassia Kinski and Kenya Jones and Sonja Moussa, but that doesn't dim the unbridles love and pride in the mother's eyes. There is a touching tribute from Joyce to her mother-in-law, Evelyn Ostin of whom she writes, "Her generosity and beauty have graced the world of Hollywood" "She truly has been an inspiration in my life. And for the last twenty-one years., she has remained a breast-cancer survivor.". Joyce is donating 100% of the proceeds of the sale of this book to breast and ovarian cancer research. Ina Garten must give great parties, she has written "Barefioot Contessa Parties" (Potter $32.50). New ideas and simple recipes with lovely pictures on silky paper that feels good to touch. How simple to roast cherry tomatoes with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and after twenty minutes transfer to a serving platter and sprinkle with basil leaves and sea salt. Ina informs you that she used to entertain
her husband, an investment banker at the time, and his boss and
clients as well as his friends from his previous work at the
State Department who could be fairly stuffy at times. For them
she would serve food to relax them, it's what she calls her "earthy"
foods. "Earthy" foods include grilled shrimp and pasta
pesto. She serves Rack of Lamb a little too rare, raw, for my
taste so use her twenty five minutes for medium - rare. Sandra Tsing Loh who gave energy and grace to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Awards as master of ceremonies, has written "A Year in Van Nuys" (Crown $23.00). Sandra uses her life for jumping off spot to write a fiction-non-fiction book. All the names are mostly changed to protect those who cross her path, like her husband and her sister.
5/1/2001 Watching Charles Champlin present the Los Angeles Times Prize for Murder Mysteries Friday night was a scene of courage under the most extreme obstacles. Charles is suffering from Macular Degeneration which he has written about in his new book "My Friend, You Are Legally Blind - A Writer's Struggle with Macular Degeneration" (John Daniel, and Company $8.95) and which we had discussed earlier in the week. It began with a blind spot on the right edge of his central vision in his left eye, he underwent laser shots to stop the leakage. It was diagnosed as Age -Related Macular Degeneration. He began to have some problems with depth perception but his "good" right eye was sufficient for his needs until the day arrived when the right eye also developed a comparable blind spot. For one who lives by their eyes this is a palpable fear. "Chuck" Champlin told me that he still has peripheral vision but that in order to watch a movie he has to tilt his head in such a way that he loses a great deal of the film process. He gives great credit to his wife, Peggy. He jokingly says that they have become a one car family once again. There are some very touching moments as when his brother Joe, a priest based in Syracuse, NY came to see him and the whole family came around "Chuck" to say a prayer and a laying on of the hands as a healing. Or the time he had to wait for someone to come along on Wilshire Blvd. to help him cross the street with the lights. Champlin goes into the still unknown causes of AMD and the research being done to find a cure. So far the best that can be done for his type of MD, which is the "wet" MD is arresting it at as early a stage as possible, He has undergone the Visudyne procedure which has stabilized his condition. As he told me, there is much that is in the experimental stage , and there is such hopeful thinking on the patient's part. It was inspiring to watch him Saturday night as he regaled the audience in Royce Hall with the outlines of the nominated books. If you know anyone who is in this circumstance, read them this book and give them books on tape , after all our first query to our parents was, "Tell me a story ". It's not the same as reading with your eyes, but then nothing is. I look forward every Monday to read Peter Bart's column in Daily Variety. He minces no words and I refer to him as the Savonarola of Hollywood. Savonarola, in case you don't remember, was a monk in Florence in the 1400's who walked the streets warning the inhabitants to repent their sinful ways. Bart's Monday columns and his essays in GQ have been compiled into a book, "Who Killed Hollywood?" (Renaissance Books $24.95). The book reminds one of the changes that have occurred in the film industry, the mergers and acquisitions that brought foreign ownership and bottom line accounting to the quasi artistic form known as movie making. Bart has worn many hats in the industry, beginning as a writer for The New York Times, as a VP of production for Paramount Picture during the era of "Love Story", "The Godfather" and, a film that he told me that couldn't be made today, "Harold and Maud", a time at Lorimar and now as Editor-in-chief of Daily Variety and Variety he is in a position to be Hollywood's Wizard of Oz. He is particularly repulsed by the rudeness of the young agents who don't return phone calls. I did ask him about the future for deposed heads of studios today. How do they handle the Budd Schulberg syndrome of "The Year there were no Xmas Gifts"? We also talked about the future of Bill Clinton who had been a speaker at a Variety convention in New York. Peter Bart is also writing a book of short stories that will be published in the fall. He told me that the stories relate to the Below the Line , i.e."the little people" who live from paycheck to paycheck, who have their moment of glory when they can say that a star spoke to them on location. It should be a most perceptive and interesting book. For Mother's Day, considering the stock market, you may not be able to buy Mom a Picasso, but you can do the next best thing, "Loving Picasso - the Private Journal of Fernande Olivier" (Abrams $35.00). Poor Fernande, she was the great first love of Picasso from 1904-1912.They met in Paris where she had escaped from a forced marriage. The only work she could find was as an artist's model. Her memoirs reveal a Paris that begs to be a movie. She was a beauty as revealed in photographs from that time and from paintings by Kees Van Dongen, Marie Laurencin, but it is Picasso's nudes and the erotic sketch of "The Lovers" that shine with her beauty. There is even a self-portrait that Fernande painted. John Richardson, the great biographer of Picasso, writes the Epilogue in which he tells of their final debacle. Picasso had been implicated in the stealing of the Mona Lisa, he was never charged but he was cross-questioned by the French police which left him paranoid and hostile to Fernande. Both of them became involved with other people and Picasso is quoted as writing, "…If you see Fernande, tell her that she can expect nothing from me and I should be quite happy never to see her again." In 1966 she died at 75. She had become old , fat and toothless , Picasso had paid her a million francs if she would not allow her diaries to be published while he was still alive. Again with that stock market in the toilet, raise your sights to what might have been with a book by John Loring entitled "Paulding Farnham, TIFFANY'S LOST GENIUS" (Abrams $49.95). His fame came at age twenty-six in 1885 when the New York Times wrote about Tiffany's jewelry based on the use of colored stones in the design of flowers. There is a magnificent gold vase that
he designed for the 1900 Exposition called the Adams Vase which
was given to the Metropolitan Museum. It looks like the work
of Cellini. There are colored pages galore of his designs of
flowers and diamond bugs, as well as adorned coffee sets and
ink wells. One might say that he was our "Faberge".
It's truly a book to relish. |