Martin Smith, author of SHADOW IMAGE ( Jove Books $6.00) has been intrigued with the mind's working. What do we remember and how? In his new book he has his protagonist, Jim Christensen, a social psychologist, become involved with a victim of Alzheimer's , one who is in the second stage. Floss Underhill is the wife of a former two term governor and the mother of a candidate for governor. Someone has tried to kill her.

Jim has met Floss in an art class that is helping Alzheimer patients. Jim is also combining his household with one of his daughters with his ladylove and her son. Jim is the household father , making school lunches for the kids, cleaning the house, etc. while ladylove earns a larger income as a lawyer and has been hired by the Underhill family. I mentioned to Martin that I didn't think this romance was going to last. He laughed and told me that the relationship is based on his and his wife's who is a city manager.

The story is an interesting study of how wealthy families can keep their skeletons in closed closets. Martin told me that in the second stage of Alzheimer's victims can be jogged to remember for some lucid moments by music, art and, surprisingly, by smoking. In this case, Floss smoked cigars.

Martin came to the studio with Philip Reed, who has written LOW RIDER , a sequel to "Bird Dog" which is now out in paperback. "Bird Dog" had left the reader with Harold, the used car salesman, who had once written a book on how to buy a second hand car, in Chile escaping the police for the murder of car dealer, Joe Corvo, which he had not committed. That's a little convoluted to tell you that LOW RIDER is just as funny and the characters just as colorful. Martin and Phil, who are friends, spent the summer months going on a book tour without the wives but with their four kids in a van. They came back still friends. It's interesting learning how "middle list" authors have to work to get their books noticed. In other words, Don't give up the day job.

Richard Torregossa has written and illustrated FUN FACTS ABOUT DOGS, Inspiring Tales, Amazing Feats and Helpful Hints (Health Communications $7.95). In the tradition of the Chicken Soup books, also from the same publisher, this is a book to pick up at odd moments and glean that seeing eye dogs happened by accident in Germany in 1916 when a doctor walking his blind patient was called away and left his German shepherd in charge of the patient, when he returned he was pleased to see that the dog remained with the patient. He then began a training program for dogs.

As for those dogs who sniff out drugs. They have to go to school and four out of five dogs fail drug sniffing school. And it's interesting that both Freud and Hitler called their dogs,"Wolf". And California has 57 million dogs making it the state with the most canines.

Can a small town boy named Abe Orowitz from Vienna, Georgia find happiness and success in Hollywood? Yes, especially when his name becomes Vincent Sherman! Vincent Sherman has written his autobiography called STUDIO AFFAIRS, My Life As A Film Director (University Press of Kentucky). It is a wonderful book that includes, because he lived it, a history of Broadway, the Warner Studios in the 40's and 50's., the Red Scare and his love affairs with Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and an evening bath with Rita Hayworth. Most men could die happy with just that. Not only has Vince great memories but he looks great at the age of 91.

It was Brynie Foy who convinced Jack Warner to sign him at two hundred dollars a week on a seven year contract, as a writer,director and, in case those didn't work out since he never had a play produced nor directed any production, as an actor because he had received rave reviews for his role in "Counsellor at Law" with Paul Muni.

Brynie who was known as "King of the B's" at Warners, had Vince sit in when he talked with writers about screenplays. In this paragraph I told Vince he has given a course to aspiring writers. Brynie took him to dailies and gave him a training in film that, as Vincent writes about it, is still the basis for good movie.

In "All Through The Night",an anti-Nazi melodrama, he worked with Hal Wallis,as executive producer with Jerry Wald, as producer, and starring Humphrey Bogart. Jack Warner came to him and said, as only Jack Warner could,"...make some parts, I'm tired of paying these guys $250 a week to do nothing but sit on their ass." One was "a fat guy, night club comic-Jackie Gleason" and the other"Phil Silvers-very funny" Vince used them, you didn't say "No" to Jack Warner.

Vince writes in detail the making of "The Hard Way" from an Irwin Shaw story with Ida Lupino. Warner had felt it was too downbeat at the ending. Vince went back and shot a "Rosebud" beginning so that the film would fit Warner's requirement of a beautiful person in a glamourous setting. Ida had bemoaned that this film would ruin her career and six weeks after it opened she was nominated for a Film Critics award in New York. Today it is a cult film at film festivals.

Vincent's stories of his romances walk off the pages of a Jackie Collins novel. Although, in this case, truth is sexier than fiction. As for his wife, Hedda, he claims she was a true sophisticat and they were always honest with each other. I said to him," Show me a woman who is that tolerant and I'll show you an incipient Medea."

I empathised with him about his last days at Warners. No one ever was paid what they could get on the open market and yet, it was like leaving home when one left that studio. Interstingly enough, Vincent had nothing but good to say about Harry Cohn and his experiences at Columbia.

Vince describes the two years,during the Red Scare, when he could not get a job. He had never belonged to a Communist group but he was a liberal;it didn't matter he was lumped with the "gray" group.

His story of the making of "Cervantes" for the Salkind Family is a classic case for why directors go mad on foreign co-production shoots. In his later years as film work dried up, he directed television series which are still giving him residuals which is more than you can say for most of the great films he directed.

Here comes another candidate for this years Pulitzer Prize. Lou Cannon's "OFFICIAL NEGLIGENCE, How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD" (Times Books $35.00). It is a brilliant book that paints a picture of Los Angeles that we would rather not see. Cannon was covering Los Angeles for The Washington Post at that time.

Chapter and verse Lou Cannon takes the reader from the Watts Riots in 1965 to the night of Mar 3,1991 when George Holliday had his camcorder out to tape the Rodney King beating. I did not know that the video we saw on TV was an edited version, the first ten seconds which showed King charging on the officers had been cut out because of clarity. This unedited version was shown to the jury in Simi Valley. As Cannon points out, Simi Valley was the last place in Los Angeles County to move a trial that pitted the government against police officers.

By the time of the verdict, African-Americans had seen Soon Ja Du receive, what they called "a slap on the wrist", for shooting Latasha Harlins in the back. An event captured on the store video. It was seething time, Rev. Cecil Murray had preached to his congregation to be cook, use their power by voting.

But, where were the city officials that night when all Hell broke loose? Chief Gates was at a fund-raiser and Mayor Bradley was at a solidarity rally at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in south Central. Both men had expected some kind of a guilty verdict, if not for all for at least Powell.

The most upsetting event was the behavior of the 77th Street Station which was in charge of the Florence and Normandie Intersection. Cannon told me that in their defense that they had no television and no uniformed patrol officers to send into the field. Lou feels that the media heliocopters only fueled the riots with their shots of the Reginald Denny beating by Damion Williams. He also does not think that Denny's beating equates with the King beating.

I told him that it was a shock to read that Mayor Bradley and Chief Gates had not talked for thirteen months, and that the Police Force, in knowing that Gates was retiring in a year, was in a leadership void. This is a text book for city government and the importance of community relations training for the police force. Lou Cannon documents the constructive changes that have been made and those that still need to be reinforced.

The oldest request in the world is,"tell me a story". The storyteller takes you to another world and one of the finest storytellers is T. C. Boyle, author of RIVEN ROCK(Viking $24.95) who has also been identified as T.
Coraghessan Boyle, a name I could never proplerly pronounce. Fortunately, with age and a little mellowing, he is just Tom today.

RIVEN ROCK is fiction based on fact. A few years ago Tom and his family left Los Angeles and moved to Santa Barbara. From his home he could see the estate called Riven Rock, with its bars on the windows. Like the man in the iron mask, it had been the home,castle,prison for Stanley McCormick, the youngest son of the wealthy Cyrus McCormick, born when his father was in his 60's.

Stanley, educated at Princeton, became the man who loved women so well that he could not control the urge to destroy them. So for twenty years he was forced to live without them. He had married Boston heiriess Katherine Dexter in Switzerland who was twenty-nine, the first female graduate from M.I.T. and a leader in the Women's Movement. His family wanted to annul the marriage, but Katherine would not allow it and would fight them in court to deny the annulment.

After being hospitalized in Boston, he was sent with three male nurses and Dr. Gilbert Van Tassel Hamilton to Santa Barbara. Dr. Hamilton was seduced to leave Boston by the enticement of a hominoid laboratory of monkeys and baboons which would be used in later years for his book,"A Study of Sexual Tendencies in Monkeys and Baboons". In talking with Tom, L mentioned that I was sure that this was a writer's creation. Wrong, this was fact not fiction, there was a Dr. Hamilton and, at the end, a Dr. Kempf who treated Stanley with the "talking cure" better known as pychoanalysis. Tom has done extensive research for accuracy in psychiatry and events such as the earthquake in Santa Barbara.

The fiction is in the story of the male nurse Eddie O'Kane who came from Boston and stays with Stanley until the end. Eddie will share much of Stanley's neurosis towards women but in what was considered acceptable behavior at that time for his socialogical group of men who drank at the corner saloon and would occasionally beat up their wives. It is a superbly written book that will provoke discussion groups.

Tell me a story. Of another generation from Toni Morrison, Bebe Moore Campbell writes about today,the college graduate African-American men and women who are television producers and lawyers but who still have roots and obligations to their parents and grandparents. We had talked about her book,"Sweet Summer;Growing Up With and Without My Dad" a very personal and tender book about living with her socially proper mother in Philadelphis and the contrast visiting down South with her father and his family.

The next time we had talked about her novel,"Brothers and Sisters" , an African-American woman working at a Los Angeles bank and the discrimination that occurred. She wrote about the woman being harrassed by a man who was African=American and blowing the whistle on him. For her discrimination brooks both sides of the gender and color spectrum.

Bebe writes in a colloquial style which has made her a most successful author. She will be even more of a best-selling author after "SINGING IN THE COME BACK CHOIR"(Putnam $24.95) Maxine is the executive producer of a network talk show whose ratings have started to fall. Her husband, Satchel, is a lawyer who has left the big firm to go out on his own. He is still doing penance for having admitted to having an affair. She gets a call from Philadelphia where her ailing grandmother,Lindy, one of the oldtime great Blues singers, is living. Maxine is determined to find a good retirement home for Lindy.

When Maxine returns to Philly and the neighborhood it has gone down hill. Houses are boarded up. the streets are filthy, the church is locked up and what was once an integrated area has lost both its white and black middleclass citizens. Out of anger and frustration, Maxine starts to clean up the street. She faces the fact that we do not always do a service to aged relatives to take them out of their homes. It just makes it easier for those of us who live three thousand miles awayto sleep at night.

Bebe shows us the world we live in, no matter one's color. She hires an accompanist to play for Lindy but Lindy has lost her voice. It is not easy to recapture the voice.

In logical sequence, Lindy does regain some of her voice but it is the gang rapper from across the street who will hit the high notes in the city concert. Maxine's show is cancelled ; but her reputation will provide her with another opportunity if that is what she wants. Bebe has created some wonderful characters like Dakota, a black veteran in television who had been one of the first to get a network position and who doesn't want to see Maxine give up the opportunities that women like Dakota had to fight for.

In a terrific story telling way, Bebe shows the reader universal problems and makes them readable, and sometimes, funny. Bebe Moore Campbell will be one of the authors at the Brandeis Spring Lunch that I will be moderating.

Tell me a murder story. Frighten me with what can happen but let me be reassured at the end. Barry Siegel does just that in THE PERFECT WITNESS(Ballentine $24.00). Barry has created a town called La Graciosa in central California. Greg Monarch, an idealistic lawyer who is disillusioned with the legal system, is called to defend his former partner, Ira, on a fixed up murder charge. Ira had become a drunk after his son was killed by a train while he was fishing with him.

So, who is The Perfect Witness? A woman, named Sandy Polson, who can believe her own lies and make a jury believe them too, is the most dangerous witness. Siegel lets the reader know she is lying, so the game is how Greg will be able to prove it and in doing it capture the district attorney and the environmental polluter.

But along the way, Barry Siegel, like Preston Sturges' "Sullivan's Travels", makes you aware how easy it could be to become entrapped when you are innocent.

BEV HILLS #17

Ten years in the making JEWISH WOMEN LIVING THE CHALLENGE edited by Carol Diament(Hadassah $20.00) is a compendium of all facets of a woman's life. I told Carol that under the chapter on The Beauty Myth I had never heard of the tradition that says "God Himself braidedEve's hair before He presente her to Adam". Does that mean God is the ultimate hairdresser or is this the origin of the Jewish Mother?

The book is divided into units of Self, Family and Home, Women And the Workplace, Social Action and Spirituality. Each unit is subdivided into chapters and within those chapters there are suggestions for Torah Table Talk at home and for Group Meetings.

Under the section called A Time To Mourn, A Time To Dance, Gail Katz Meller has written the most brilliant blank verse poem about her husband's sudden death in 1989 which left her a widow at 31 with four children. If for no other reason , read this book for this. There is a postscript written in 1997 in which she recounts her meeting Milt and her writing,"So this is the next chapter. This was supposed to happen now.Like this. And each day enfolds as it needs to."

The book addresses subjects such as fidelity in marriage, divorce and the "agunah", a woman who remains married according to Jewish law, but in actuality she has no marriage, and intermarriage. Carol said that there was disagreement over the inclusion of certain authors and their ideas but then that's what makes a democracy. One discussion had to do with a short story in the section on Women In Israel,"Apples From The Desert" by Savyon Liebrecht. Again, well worth getting the book for this story.

Since it's that time of year, Zell Schulman has written LET MY PEOPLE EAT! Passover Seders Made Simple(Macmillan $27.50). Zell writes that two of her children are intermarried and so she has had to answer questions on what is needed besides the Seder plate, how to buy Haggadahs for children, and does the wine have to be kosher. So she lists what is forbidden and what is required for ceremonial items. Depending on the family's origin, she gives both Sephardic and Ashkenazic recipes for roasted egg and fish as well as a guide to Sephardic spices. Actually her recipe for Roast Lamb with Garlic Rosemary Sauce is great year round.

We thought of her as ours. Whatever restaurant Ruth Reichl recommended in the Los Angeles Times, we knew it would be good; but then she left us for the New York Times and the Big Apple. Evidently it gave her more time, because she has written TENDER AT THE BONE Growing Up At The Table(Random House $23.00).

It is an American story as written by Tennessee Williams. Reichl writes,"Most mornings I got out of bed and went to the refrigerator to see how my mother was feeling. You could tell instantly just by opening the door. ...the more odd and interesting things there were in the refrigerator, the happier my mother was likely to be." Her mother was as likely to poison you with her cooking as not. Ruth was saved by her wonderful Aunt Birdie.

Ruth opened a restaurant in Berkeley in the 70's so she knew the other side of the table. It is in San Francisco that her role as a restaurant critic began writing for a new magazine. Her life takes her to France where she meets Marion Cunningham who takes Reichl under her wing and helps her to release the fears that had been running and ruining her life. Mixed into the book are some very excellent recipes. Food for the mind and the body.

If you take a young person to theatre, very quickly they want to know how the magic was done. Christian Thee has done the next best thing to taking a child backstage. He has written BEHIND THE CURTAIN Your Own Backstage Tour in Look-Through and Pull-Up Panels(Workman Publishing $17.95)with text by Robert Levine. It is beautifully illustrated and the play being performed is Hansel and Gretel.

Mimi Latt, who practiced law, has turned her legal experience to good use as a novelist. She has just published her second novel PURSUIT OF JUSTICE(Simon & Schuster $23.00). It is a definite page turner and edge of the chair thriller. Rebecca Moreland and her husband, Ryan, both attorneys, she with a community law firm, he with a high power political firm, are invited on a political fund raising event on a yacht for a dinner cruise. When Rebecca goes to the Ladies Room, Ryan goes to smoke at the back of the boat. When Rebecca returns Ryan is not there, nor is he anywhere to be found. Who wanted to see him dead and why? No one will help Rebecca, including the police. It will make everyone's life easy if Rebecca will accept the decision that Ryan committed suicide. She is determined that he was murdered. His firm accuses him of embezzling money and the police note that he had life insurance that will not payout for a suicide. Still Rebecca is adamant. Sure enough, the truth lies in that well-known phrase, that one cannot be a little pregnant nor a little dishonest.

BEV HILLS #18

In sunny Orange County there must be something in the water, there live two of the most successful authors for scaring the life out of you. One is Dean Koontz, the other is T.Jefferson Parker. Jeff Parker achieved success with his last book "Trigger Man"; but it will be nothing compared to his latest WHERE SERPENTS LIE(Hyperion $23.95).

Jeff Parker combines the ability to write complex plots, interesting characters and bizarre situations. His main character Terry Naughton is head of Orange County's Crimes Against Youth division. The book opens with his being undercover to stop a childporn and prostitution ring which Parker told me was based on an actual Orange County newspaper story. Parker develops the story with the ability to make it both salacious and threatening.

But that incident is not the major story. Terry is searching for a serial criminal who identifies himself as the Horridus. He has been kidnapping little girls from their beds and two days later setting them free weaing white gauze and a black hood with silver tape over their mouths. Terry must find out what these children have in common. A hint is that they have young attractive divorced mothers who have signed up at dating services. So far Horridus has not killed or raped but according to the FBI profile, it is just a matter of time. He also leaves a calling card of dead snake skin on the beds. It is fascinating to read an FBI profile, which Jeff told me he had researched back in Washington. A good deal of research went into this book especially about herpetology, snakes to you and me, and those that are carnivores.

Again, that is not the only plot line because someone has sent photos of Terry with a young girl in sexual contact. According to the photo lab these are untouched photos. How Jeff clears himself and captures the killer, is riveting writing and storytelling.

Jeff says that he dreamt the book and the subject matter made him write it. As he is writing his dreams give him more and more material. Like another thriller writer, James Patterson, Jeff was married last summer and will be a first time dad this July.

Jeff's book came up that night at the Twelth Annual PEN Hemingway Dinner at Harry's Bar in Century City when I talked with Barnaby Conrad of Matador fame and the Santa Barbara Writers' Conference. Barney is in the middle of reading it and can't put it down. That's high praise from one of the best. Barney has just written a memoir of his friend Herb Caen which is published by Chronicle Books. At the dinner Ray Bradbury noted that Hemingway's injuries from his second plane crash in Africa never left him free of pain and he felt that this was a prime cause for his suicide.

Game shows have been his professional career, but in between Beverly Hills resident Robert Noah has been writing. A play and a previous book but now he has written THE MAN WHO STOLE THE MONA LISA(St. Martin's Press $22.95). The book is based on a true incident in 1911 the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, masterminded by Marquis de Valfierno according to a story by Carl Decker which was published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1932. Decker had been sworn to secrecy until the Marquis was dead.

How do you sell a stolen masterpiece? There is always someone with enough money who needs to control and there is always someone who will know how to con them. The Marquis arranges for the Mona Lisa to be stolen while he is out of Paris. All he needs to know is that it has been stolen. He has arranged for five Marks to pay him a million dollars each for the painting that none can boast of owning. In his employ is a master forger who uses aged wood to replicate the painting.

Up to this point the Marquis would have Chaudron, the forger, paint a replica of the art work. At the museum he would pretend to be a student copying a painting and would attach his copy to the back of the original. The Marquis would have the Mark put or cut a corner so when it was delivered the canvas would be the same that the buyer has ostensibly marked.

Noah takes you step by step on how the Mona Lisa was stolen, including the closet with a bathroom where the men hid for the weekend until Monday when they came out wearing the white smocks of the cleaning men. For two days the Museum did not know it had been stolen. It was finally returned in Italy in 1913 by one of the conspirators named Perugina. He expected a hero's greeting, instead he was arrested and a grateful France received its stolen jewel.

Robert Noah has fleshed out the story and characters with graceful writing that resembles a Mozart opera. It is a delight to read.

When I saw the title of the book I had to read it. Nancy Krikorian has written a novel based on her paternal grandmother called ZABELLE (Atlantic Monthly Press $23.00). Zabelle Chahasbanian was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide under Ottoman Turkey in 1915. She sees her father killed, her mother and syblings die of starvation and she is left to die in the Syrian desert.

Zabelle is hired by a Turkish family. Her name is changed and she is required to speak only Turkish. At the local baths, she is recognized as Armenian and is adopted by a wealthy Armenian family in Constantinople. As she reaches puberty her chances of a good marriage are limited but she is chosen by Vartanoush,a visiting American-Armenian, for her son in Boston.

Vartanoush is the Mother-in-law from Hell. Unfortunately, she is not unique. Zabelle's friend,Arsinee, who had survived the starvation and the Syrian desert with her, reunites in Boston and has equal horror stories to tell of her Mother-in-law. They will be friends and will live to an old age where they call eachother twice a day. Based on a real friend of her grandmother, Nancy told me that her Arsinee had been able to read the book before she died. She would tell Nancy that"you grandmother wouldn't have survived a day without me on the desert".

The book will take us through Zabelle's life and her three children. The eldest, Moses, goes to an evangelic college called Moody Bible Institute in Illinois where he hears a calling to change his name to Moses Charles and to have his nose fixed. He becomes a televangelist who negates his family. I mentioned to Nancy Krikorian that he was an Armenian Sammy Glick. She laughed as she said that he was not meant to be a villain, it was his way of assimilation.

Growing up in Boston the Armenian population was noted for the atrocities they had survived which had been documented in Franz Werfel's "Forty Days of Mussadaigha". At Girls' Latin School my mother's best friend was Zabelle Tamasian, who would later be my English teach at Latin School. Our Zabelle was a woman who taught her students to love literature. Nancy's Zabelle is a tribute to all the Armenian grandmothers and what they survived in Europe and endured as newcomers to America.

BEV HILLS #19

It's that time of year when readers' thoughts turn to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA. Free and open to the public, it is a glorious public service to the authors and the readers. And, on a less altruistic plane, there are books for sale to be autographed by that author. Every one benefits.

Having said that, if you ever wanted to meet Sidney Sheldon I will be interviewing Sidney at 10AM in Wooden Center:Collins Court. One of the nicest men and one who supports libraries, Sidney is the most translated author in the world.

Sidney's latest,THE BEST LAID PLANS (Morrow $25.00) captures the ambition of a rising political star,Oliver Russel, who will send a "Dear John" letter to the woman,Leslie Stewart, he is to marry the next day. He will do anything to save the financial support of his political backer. Oliver marries the backer's daughter and eventually moves into the White House. As always with Sidney, the bomb is lit in the first sentence of the book that predicts Leslie's revenge. Sidney Sheldon has the ability to make life imitate his books, as there is also a murder and a sex scandal in Washington.

Hugh Gallagher has written a unique novel TEETH (Pocket Books $22.00). Neil is twenty-two, a writer in New York City for a Zine called "Dusted". He is living with the pain of broken teeth from a fall from a window at a highschool party. When he did not go to the college his parents wanted for him they refused to pay the dental bill. Neil comes out to Los Angeles with the intent to complete his "Manifesto", parts of which have appeared in print and developed a following for his writing. He is having a problem completing it.

Bad teeth and all he goes to Java to write and to get away from his friend,Flash, whom he knows is "fading"him. Hugh Gallagher's writing and expressions are brilliant. The whole concept of the teeth and trying to stop the pain for brief periods while he romances women in Java, covers punk riots at a Chockapolacka in London, writes about the inferior dental work in England and finds himself back in the dental chair of Dr. Deal in New York City, is extraordinary and unique. . He writes,"In his steady hands, the gleaming metal instruments hovered, waiting for entry. I felt my tongue slowly working over the shattered molars, feeling them softly, lingering as if to remember the ruin for the last time." Hugh, who is in his twenties. is an incredible talent.

Peter Hedges has written the novel AN OCEAN IN IOWA(Hyperion $22.95). The Ocean in the title refers to the Ocean family. Scotty Ocean is turning seven as the book begins. He knows that seven is going to be the best year ever. He is going into the second grade with Mrs. Boyden as his tteacher and desks with a shelf. It looks like an idyllic world. Mother,Joan, and father,the Judge, two girls, Claire and Maggie, and a son, Scotty. Hedges writes,"In the summer of 1969, if you had asked the then six-year-old Scotty Ocean what a judge actually did, he couldn't have told you-and why his parents never hugged or kissed, he would have been at a loss - and why his sisters kept whispering about girl matters, he would've had no idea, Scotty Ocean was not in possession of all the facts."

Joan is an artist who has a showing of her nude self-portrait oils. She is an unhappy woman, who drinks too much and eroticises her relationship with Scotty. One day she takes off. The Judge who is a decent human tries to be both father and mother to the kids, learning to cook with their help. But it is Scotty who feels that if he had been good his mother would not have left.

In talking with Peter Hedges, he told me that his parents had divorced when he was seven. His father was a minister and his mother a social worker. He took his remembered emotions and wrote different details but similar feelings. Hedges is a very funny writer as well as lyrical. Scotty has a crush on a friend's mother. The night he is invited for a sleepover, he wakes up and prowls through the house, first sleeping on the floor of the mother's room, then crawling into bed with her and scaring the hell out of her.

Meanwhile, Joan has gone to a hospital to dry out. She will go back and forth in their lives, always slipping back into drinking. Yet, her love for her children will break the reader's heart, because she can't help herself. The one thing Scotty fights is turning eight, and yet seven has not turned out to be his year in the way he thought.

Anyone who remembers the big kids in the fourth grade who picked on you in the second, or the art teacher who demanded realism but was shocked at real realism,i.e the naked body, or who said that mountains couldn't be purple but then why did we sing"America, the Beautiful"? Or who remembers the older kid next door who taught you about the facts of life and wanted to get close to your sister? You will love this book. Peter, who wrote "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" is a wonderful new voice.

He writes like a novelist, but Bruce Feiler has written DREAMING OUT LOUD Garth Brooks, Wynona Judd, Wade Hayes, and the Changing Face of Nashville(Avon Books$24.00). Bruce ,an expatriate from the South, who graduated from Yale, went to Japan where he wrote "Learning to Bow", has gone back to his Southern roots and newly discovered love of Country Music. He lived with these stars through their recordings, their business meetings. and their performances. Garth Brooks is the college graduate, who formulates his "myth", and whom Bruce told me has many similarities to Bill Clinton. He has the two personnas, the man in the black hat and the guy in the "freebee" sweat suit. A businessman through and through, Bruce told me that Garth did not blink when he asked him if it was true that he is worth three hundred million.

Wynona Judd and her mother, Naiomi, and her sister, Ashley are straight out of a Sidney Sheldon novel. But Bruce has caught the sounds of the people whose income depends upon these stars. The colorful Hazel Smith who does a radio gossip program on Country Music in Nashville. And Becky Goode, a writer for the Globe, who crashed Wynona's wedding party with three cameras and ten thousand dollars cash to buy pictures and/or stories for her paper. She had no luck so she wrote a negative story for the Globe.

But the story that surprised me was the late Minnie Pearl,who was born Sarah Colley from an old wealthy Nashville family from the right side of the tracks. Two other things that Bruce told me surprised me. In the beginning the old families of Nashville wanted nothing to do with Country Music performers whom they considered "trash". And his explanation of the lack of black performers in Country Music.

DREAMING OUT LOUD combines the economics of the music industry, the personalities that change with success and failure with the qualities of "All About Eve". The hungry newcomer, Shainia Twain, whom Bruce called the "Belly button kid" who threatens the ranking of a Wynona or the shy young Wade Hayes who looks to be another Garth. The Kings and Queens are not dead nor do they want to give way to the next generation, yet.

BEV HILLS #20

A love note to the Los Angeles Times for the once again superb Festival of Books. From the panels of authors who represented all facets of the written word, to the orderly display of booths, to the continuing panorama of events for children; it was the best of Los Angeles.

The participants, who were invited to the hear the winners of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, heard some very elegant introductions to the recipients, especially from Narda Zacchino, Kenneth Turan and Steve Wasserman. The Robert Kirsch Award was presented to Ray Bradbury by Richard Eder. When he mentioned Ray's name, there was such a rousing cheer that Eder's speech was stillborn.

Ray Bradbury stood at the podium as Eder tried to finish his introduction to no avail. Bradbury took the microphone. He gave a wonderful acceptance speech giving credit to the Los Angeles Library and to UCLA's Library with the ten cents an hour typewriters where he wrote "Fahrenheit 415" in nine days. He was witty as he declared in his derision of computers,"I don't do Windows".

And, then, either an alien creature or Banquo's ghost slipped into his mouth. He began by saying that infamous line of "not biting the hand that feeds you" to decry the Times' Book Review section. He accused it of being "weak, poor and bad". He challenged the Book Section to improve in eight weeks and he would write an article for it. To quote, what Gay Talese said to Robert Lipsyte who were standing at the back of the auditorium, "Don't count on it!". There was such a shocked silence, it was fortunate that it was the culmination of the evening. Narda Zacchino closed the evening by taking exception to those remarks and standing up for the Book Review to heavy applause.

George Lang, who is known for his restaurant Cafe des Artistes in New York, has written his autobiography NOBODY KNOWS THE TRUFFLES I'VE SEEN (Knopf $28.95). Subtitled "Restauranter-Raconteur Extraordinaire". I can verify for the last, as we talked I found him charming and sincere. He has lived three lives and then some. He was born in Szekesfehervar, Hungary, the only child of a Jewish tailor. He wanted to be a geat violinist. His father insisted that he spend a year learning to be a tailor, that he would always be able to earn a living. Little did he know it would also save his son's life in the Concentration camp where the officers wanted a tailor to fit their uniforms.

On Sunday, February 6,1944, in the middle of a snowstorm, he walked to the train station to report to the forced labor camp. This was the last time he would see his mother and father. He was sent to a Russian camp from which he escaped with his friend, Satyu. They returned to Budapest where the infamous Arrowcross thugs were rounding up Jews. If you can't fight them, join them. George and Satyu said that they had escaped from the clutches of the Russian army and wanted to join Arrowcross. It was the only way to get food. In that role they were able to protect Jewish families who were in hiding. When the Naziis were defeated, he was arrested for being an Arrowcross member. After months in prison and two trials, where the families he had helped, testified for him; he was released. Lest you doubt him, he has included pages from the court record of his second trial, indicating his acquital.

That, in itself, would have been enough for a lifetime; but George was able to come to America with his cousin Evi and her husband, Victor , on the S.S. Marine Flasher. George pursued his violin career, even receiving a scholarship to play at Tanglewood. But it was at a Jascha Heifitz concert, that he realized he would never be a great violinist. Thus was born, the great restauranteur.

He had always loved to cook for his friends, so the kitchen was a natural fit. After a number of steps he was hired by Jerry Brody and Joe Baum of Restaurant Associates. His first assignment, the Tower Suite of the Time-Life Building in 1960. From there it was the Indonesian Pavilion at the 1964 World.s Fair, to the Four Seasons. He opened his own consulting firm in 1975 with a logo of asparagus designed by Milton Glaser.

The delightful part of George Lang is that he's not ashamed to tell you what didn't work. This included Porto Carras, La Folie which was wild, the King Cole Room and the Citicorp Center. He gives the reasons in the book. So, beware if you want to open a restaurant. Then comes his association with Ronald S. Lauder and their resuscitation of the Gundel restaurant in Hungary. It's not easy doing business in a Communist country. But, never undersell George. It opened and has served the Queen of England and catered to the Pope.

Today, George is married for the third time, he is a friend to leaders of the world and he is reopening Cafe des Artistes, after a devastating fire, this spring. The reasons for his restaurants' success are in the recipes at the back of the book. But, it is also in the great charm and warmth of this incredible man and his many lives, that would fill a novel, that hold you enthralled.

If this has whet your appetite for living, there is a magnificent book called THE BORDEAUX ATLAS AND ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CHATEAUX by Hubrecht Duijker and Michael Broadbent(St. Martin's Press $50.00). It is a perfect book for the oenologist and the traveler. It tells you about the soil and the weather conditions that produce the best Bordeaux wines, which include not just its name sake but white wines as well, this has led to a stockmarket in wines. The book, which is coffee table size, carries photographs of the Chateaux in each region with the classification and rank of their wines printed below the Chateau name. They give the phone number of the Chateau though they do not mention which ones take guests. Michael Broadbent has been the head of the wine department at Christie's since 1966.

BEV HILLS #21

Massive in size, magnificent in execution, Martin Gilbert has written "ISRAEL" A HISTORY(Wm Morrow $30.00). It is a monumental testimony to the fiftieth anniversary of the State of Israel; at the same time he has written a most readable book. Gilbert was in California for the Claremont Institute, scholar in residence.

On the book cover are photos of the fourteen decision making leaders who contributed to the forming and preservation of the State of Israel. They are like blocks of a Safdie building, that will last for generations.

It was Theodore Herzl, a jounalist in Paris the year of the Dreyfus Trial, who breathed life into the idea of Zionism. In 1896 he wrote"The Jewish State" and in 1897 the First World Zionist Congress was held in Basle, Switzerland.

By 1893 when Herzl spoke in London, 10,000 Jews gathered to hear him speak. Imbued with his dream he met with the Kaiser Willhelm II searching for recognition of the future homeland for the Jews. In December 1901 at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basle, a special fund was set up to buy land in Palestine. It is year by year, step by step that Martin Gilbert has written this history, always adding that human touch to the incidents.

He takes the reader through the years of the Balfour Declaration, the British Mandate and, because Martin Gilbert is the official Winston Churchill biographer, he establishes the aid that Churchill gave to the burgeoning Israel, as well as the aid of Orde Wingate to the Jewish defense.

He touches with the story of Col. David Marcus, West Point graduate, who was known by the code name, Mickey Stone. He could not speak Hebrew and one night when he was staying with the Palmach battalion he went out to relieve himself.When the sentry called out for the password he could not give the password to the sentry on guard , who took no chances and shot the man covered in a white sheet.

He ends the book on the anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin with a quote from the speech by Shimon Peres. We talked about the Oslo agreements and his thoughts about it. He does quote President Weizman who was a critic , that the government negotiated "too quickly and without sleep". Gilbert feels it can work if Arafat keeps his part of the bargain;but, again, he told of the incident in Egypt where, after agreeing with the terms, Arafat made a big deal out of refusing to sign the maps. Gilbert says, " By the Cairo Agreement Arafat assumed the title of Chairman of the Palestinian Authority. He chose, however for himself, the title of 'President', creating the aura of Head of State".

Since we last spoke, Martin was knighted by the Queen in 1995. I confess to enjoying calling him, Sir Martin. It goes along with a story told by S.Lee Pgostin who was working with Laurence Olivier and Lee's refusing Sir Laurence's request to call him,"Larry". This is a perfect gift for Mother's Day, Father's Day or anyone who likes history and superb writing.

Since it is Mother's Day this sunday, some last minute suggestions. For the gardner, Margaret Roach has written A WAY TO GARDEN A Hands On Primer For Every Season(Potter $30.00) with a time table for when to plant and how to plan a garden. The book is infused with beautiful photographs by Kit Latham.

There are Mother's Day cards for sisters, why not add the book by Emily Gwathmey and Ellen Stern SISTER SETS,Sisters whose Togetherness Sets Them Apart(Morrow $20.00). There is a lovely section on Michelle and Maude Bouvier and the painting of them by the artist, Albert Hecter. There are the Gish sisters, the Gumm sisters, one of whom became Judy Garland, and a wonderful picture by Mathew Brady of the Bunker sisters in 1843.

For the mother who never finds a room finished and likes to do it herself or at least supervise, Julian Cassell & Peter Parham have written THE ULTIMATE BOOK OF DECORATING HINTS & TIPS (DK Publishing $19.95). It is full of wonderful advise and pictures from wallpapering awkward areas to applying decoupage, which, those of us less elegant , call stenciling. There are suggestions for how to remove dry paint from a brush to preparing floors and carpeting floors. It is conveniently sized to refer to on the job. Also conveniently sized and from DK Publishing is ULTIMATE VISUAL DICTIONARY($14.95). This is a book that covers from carnivorous plants to parts of the body to symphony orchestras. If you know a mother who loves architecture, they have pages on Medieval castles and houses, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and neoclassical, identifying the parts which define those terms. This is a book that everyone who has seen it, wants.

If that mother is going to Europe, a very new and easy to take along book is Barbara Freed's ARTISTS AND THEIR MUSEUMS ON THE RIVIERA (Abrams $19.95). Here is the Matisse Museum in Nice, and The National Marc Chagall Biblical Message Museum in Nice. The book gives the actual French title to these museums, their addresses and telephone numbers. One place, not to miss, is the Jean Cocteau's Marriage Hall in Menton, as well as the Jean Cocteau Museum in Menton. It is such a delicious book, you'll want to pack your bags and book your flight.

If mother loves horses, Michael Rosen will fill the stall, with HORSE PEOPLE, Writers and Artists on the Horses They Love(Artisan $30.00). From Janet Biggs'photos from her video of "horsey girl" to Michael Plank's superb paintings for "city horses" and Jane Smiley's story "puiSsance" who came back to riding at age forty-four. Jo-Ann Mapson equates "loving the older horse" riding with a bad period in her life when marriage and writing were not working out and her horse was her only friend.

And to make mother's year a happier year, there is Margorie Engel's WEDDINGS A FAMILY AFFAIR, The New Etiquette For Second Marriages and Couples With Divorced Parents(Wilshire Publications $17.95). So have a wonderful time and a happy Mother's Day to you all.

BEV HILLS #22

Learning how to practice what you preach can be the most daunting experience of all. Such was the case for Wayne Dosick when his home burnt to the ground in the fall of 1996 in the Harmony Grove fire. He and his wife were flying to San Diego when the fire occurred. His assistant met the plane and told them that the fire had demolished their home; the only things she had been able to save were the Torah scroll, their hard drives and the dog.

Wayne Dosick, a Rabbi and Adjunct Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of San Diego, was forced to live through the traumas for which he had counseled others. From that experience he has written WHEN LIFE HURTS: A Book Of Hope (Harper San Francisco $19.00). Despite the fire, Wayne had come to Los Angeles to tape a show on his previous book,"Dancing With God". This was a different person than the man whom I had talked with over "Living Judaism" and "Golden Rules". He was in shock. During the year when we met he told me that he was digesting what had happened to him. This is the book.

How do you begin when everything is gone? I should mention that his wife, who is a psychologist lost all her files. He told me that he and his wife faced their loss from totally different points of view. He wanted time to hibernate and heal; she wanted to replace, regroup and get on with living. Friends who performed actual deeds were more valuable than those who constantly asked,"What can I do?" There were strangers who showed up with food and shovels and helped them sift through the rubble. Wire gates were put around the rubble because the home owners were still responsible if anyone tripped.

Wayne admits that, like anything in life, it could be worse. No one died or was injured; but it was a loss none the less. It is a book that can offer comfort to anyone who has suffered a loss. Don't be ashamed to grieve and give yourself time to heal. Don't forget to laugh and take care of your health. Remember this too will pass.

Richard de Mille grew up in the lap of Hollywood luxury as the son, albeit the adopted son of Cecil B. deMille and his wife,Constance. The deMilles had a natural daughter, Cecilia, and two other adopted children, Katherine and John. When Richard was thirty-three, Cecil called him into his study and told him that his biological father was Cecil's brother, William deMille whom Richard had known as an uncle, and his mother was a woman named Lorna Moon. Thus begins his quest to find this unique woman in MY SECRET MOTHER LORNA MOON (Farrar Straus and Giroux $25.00).

Richard had come down from Santa Barbara where he lives for the taping. Slightly diffident, he described his mother, Constance deMille by saying that she would have been a good nun, was distant and ran an excellent house. As he delves into his biological mother, Lorna Moon, he reveals a woman driven for a career as a writer. Born Nora Low in Scotland, she married to get out of her home. She went to Canada where she had her first son whom she deserted. She ran away with Walter Moon, whose name she took and by whom she had a daughter, Mary Moon. Mary was also deserted by Lorna.

Lorna, who was no shrinking violet, wrote to Cecil B. deMille after seeing one of his films and claimed she could do better than that screenplay. He wrote back that if she thought that she should come to Hollywood. And come she did. Richard has included Lorna's filmography which included writing credits on "The Affairs of Anatol","Don't Tell Everything" with Gloria Swanson; "Upstage" with Norma Shearer at MGM;"Love" with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert and "Min and Bill" which had the credit "Based on Lorna Moon's novel 'Dark Star"".

By the time Richard was told by Cecil, both Lorna and William were dead. But Richard does a roots search of both the deMilles and the Lows. It is when he meets his half- sister, Mary Moon, and when he faces the wrath of William's daughter, Agnes deMille, on discovering that her cousin is her half-brother, that the book comes alive. When Cecil died, his will left the majority of his estate to Cecilia, the next to Richard because he had deMille blood, and tokens to the other siblings.

I did ask Richard from whom did he learn to love if the house was so sterile? He answered that it was from nurses and nannies and girls when he was sixteen. Then he looked over at his wife, Margaret, and said simply,"It was thanks to her". One more book to add to the Hollywood legends shelf.

Last year Brad Meltzer rocked the publishing world with his advance for "The Tenth Justice" which is now out in paperback. This year he has written another legal thriller called DEAD EVEN (Weisbach Morrow $25.00). The plot revolves around a young married couple, both of whom are lawyers.

Sara Tate has just been hired as a Manhattan assistant DA as budget cuts have come down from City Hall, and her husband, Jared, is working for a high profile law firm who are insistant on his bringing in new business. Both are carrying law school debts of over $80,000. Desperate, Sara steals a case from a senior DA which appears to be a simple burglary but turns out to be masterminded by an evil tycoon, Oscar Rafferty. Oscar hires Jared to defend the burglar,Kozlow. He warns Jared that if he doesn't get Kozlow off Sara will be killed. Meanwhile, Sara is given the opposite instructions with Jared's life at stake. Some how it reads better on the page.

When I talked with Brad, he talked about success and trying to meet the same standards in his second book without repeating the first story. Since he likes to write about jeopardy, he pondered what he would do if his wife was threatened. She is a lawyer but in a private firm. He investigated the district attorney's office in New York and claims that all the details and dialogue are accurate.

Today with Court TV it's easier for the writer who is not a lawyer to write with accuracy. One man who is in favor is Ronald L.Goldfarb, author of TV OR NOT TV, Television, Justice and the Courts( New York University Press ). Ron traces outstanding trials that had enormous press coverage such as the Hauptmann trial, the Dr.Sam Sheppard trial and of course, O.J. Simpson. Ron says that technology is such that cameras are unobtrusive in the courtroom; it is the media circus outside that incites the mass hysteria.

Forty eight states allow cameras at the discretion of the judge. He takes exception to the attitude of the US Supreme Court which refuses to allow cameras pointing out the Washington State Supreme Court which has functioned very well with them. I did say that his discussion of Steve Brill and the history of Court TV could cause one to worry about a network turning to ratings and salacious material. He agreed the jury is out.

BEV HILLS #25

No institution is sacrosanct, even West Point and its Honor Code. Ry Slaight, the hero of Lucian K. Truscott IV's "Dress Gray" in 1969, thirty years later returns as a Lieutenant General and the newly appointed Superintendant of West Point in FULL DRESS GRAY(Wm. Morrow $25.00). But the hero of this book is his daughter Jacey, a West Point cadet, in her final year and the commander of her division. Truscott told me that as he wrote the book she ran away with the action.

During the full academy parade to welcome the new Superintendant on the hottest day of the year cadets are fainting on the field. One of those is Dorothy Hamner who was one of Jacey's division. When the medics come to pick her up she is dead. After Major Vernon, the West Point doctor, announces that Dorothy did not die from heat exhaustion but notes that she showed vaginal abrasions from what appeared to be multi-rapes and DNA analysis of seminal fluid produced three separate profiles. The weekend before there had been a cadet party at a local motel which she had attended.

Jacey is determined to find out who killed Dorothy, even at the risk to her life and her father's career. It seems there are men in the army who feel that West Point has lost its strength when they allowed women in West Point. Truscott old me the scene where Ry appears before a Congressional committee and defends the role of women and the West Point standards are all based on actual statistics. Yes, it is tougher than when he was a cadet, the women do more push-ups and physical training than he did.

The book is a factual study of West Point as both Lucian and his father are graduates. I did not know that the army has DNA's on all the cadets and how this information may be used is still in formation though it is pivotal to the plot. Also pivotal is the role politics plays in appointments and in army budgets. And in any co-educational institution, sex is there for cadets and horny officers and their wives.

I asked Lucian, whose love of West Point and its Honor Code are so evident in this book, why he had left the army. He told me he resigned at age 22. When he was at Fort Bragg, he had written an expose of the use of heroine and drugs in the army. The army brass had, up to that point and for a few years more, denied the existence of a drug problem and called him up before a review board for his revelations. Truscott had always been a writer, but the army was to be his career. When he could see that there was no future for a truth teller, he resigned but he has kept his connections to the Academy. I asked him how his father reacted to the situation. He said,"He was furious - at the army". The suspence in the book comes because the Academy has certain rules for legal revelations otherwise the case can be thrown out of court and the guilty go free. Fascinating.

Doris Mortman's OUT OF NOWHERE (Kensington $23.95) is another novel that will appeal to men as well as to women. In 1978 Cynthia Baird has given testimony in a drug money laundering trial in Miami. Cynthia and her nine year old daughter Ricki had moved to Miami to be near her family, after her divorce in New York from Lionel, her investment banker husband.

Cynthia's brother is murdered, there are threats on her daughter's life and the government offers them protection under the Witness Protection program which I had thought was used only by criminals who testified. Doris said that it is used for the innocent as well. It removes the participants from everything that had defined their emotional security. It cuts their ties to relatives, friends and even animal pets. The genesis for the book was the question,"What does this do to children who must assume a new name, never refer to the past and never trust a stranger?" It seems the drug cartel has both long arms and a very long memory for revenge. There is a fire bombing and a car explosion that kills Cynthia and Ricki Baird for all the world to see and the newspapers to headline, and it is the birth of Beth Maxwell and her daughter Amanda who will spend the nest twenty years roaming the mid West under assumed names and the protection of Marshall Sam Bates who is in love with Cynthia/Beth.

Despite the warnings of no longer being under the protection of the U.S. Marshall when she moves to New York City, Ricki who is now Amanda Maxwell, becomes a forensic photographer for the New York Police. She is still looking over her shoulder and is paranoid over trusting new acquaintances. But proximity to her father, Lionel, who is still grieving over his daughter's death, is too much for Amanda to deny. She gets in touch with him and through various memories that only she could know convinces him of her identity.

In any thriller, and this is definitely one, there are red herrings, threats, deaths and more threats, after all there are big bucks involved in drug laundering and Doris Mortman has her ideas of why the laundering is allowed to continue.

Some local authors have new books. Lionel Rolfe, who has written obout his mother's family and her brother, violinist Yehudi Menuhin, and about Literary LA, has collected his essays in a collection called,FAT MAN ON THE LEFT: FOUR DECADES IN THE UNDERGROUND(California Calssics Books $14.95). It ranges from the Menuhin family who were from San Francisco to his visiting the Rebbe's office in Brooklyn since his family are descendents of the Schneersohns. He did not get to meet the Rebbe. He does write about two hospital visits, one at County and the other at Cedars. Although he has worked as an editor and a free lance writer, currently Lionel is covering the Police Beat for City News Service.

To me she is an unsung treasure, I'm talking about the writer/poet Wanda Coleman who has just writter her tenth book BATH WATER WINE (Black Sparrow Press $15.00). The first section,"Dreamwalk"is about growing up and going to highschool in LA, then there is "Disclosures" followed by , as Wanda told me, her stretching her style of writing and paying tribute to other writers.. In her poem "Morning Widow's Song" she ends with the lines,"memories return to lay my sorrow i makes my bed today and my blues tomorrow". I asked Wanda to read some of her work and it was like hearing a mello cello when she reads.

Needless to say, it is the other side of the economic experience and yet it is a beautiful book and definitely a work of art. Carolyn Mary Kleefield has combined her paintings, her thoughts and her poems inTHE ALCHEMY OF POSSIBLITY(Merrill West $24.95) Tarot and I Ching symbols are her catalyst for her writings and her poems that are illustrated by her paintings. I say the other side of the LA experience because Carolyn is the daughter of the late Mark Taper. In one section she bewails her coming of age in Beverly Hills where she decries the materialism, in another quite beautiful section she talks about death and her father as a dying old elephant who had been the dynamic home builder and philanthropist and the death of William Melamed who had been "A dear friend, lover and catalyst of poetic passion". Her poem ends with the stanza:
Perhaps it is I
Who is dying
In Your leaving,
Not you, who is
Entering a new life."

BEV HILLS #10

It's been nine years since Taylor Branch won a Pulitzer Prize for the first of his trilogy on Martin Luther King called "PARTING THE WATERS" (Simon & Schuster $24.95). Now he was in town to talk about his second book "PILLAR OF FIRE"(Simon & Schuster $30.00). As well written as the first, it too will be a prize winning contender.

The book is subtitled "America In the King Years 1963-65. I mentioned to Taylor that the crux of those years was captured in his quote of Fannie Lou Hamer to Senator Hubert Humphrey at the Democratic Convention of 1964 when the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was refused convention seats. She said,"... you're a good man. The trouble is you're afraid to do what you know is right."

It was at that same convention that Lyndon Baines Johnson became obsessed with quitting the presidency over Civil Rights. He knew that he had lost the Southern states for his stand on Civil Rights but Lady Bird wrote him a note that if he quit, his enemies would jeer and he would be a shame to his followers and supporters.

The book opens on April 27, 1962 at Muhammad's Temple No.27 in South Central Los Angeles on an evening that culminated in the police shooting Ronald Stokes and the emergence of Malcolm X as a leader of violence. The book, despite being called the King Years, revolves a good deal on Malcolm X to the evening when he was murdered at the Audabon Ballroom.

But 1963 was the year that John F. Kennedy would waiver about dignifying Martin Luther King by inviting him to the White House alone. He would ask him with 200 other ministers but not as a respected leader. He did call Corette when Martin was jailed in Birmingham.

After JFK's assassination, it was LBJ who not only invited him but when the phone rang mentioned that he was sitting and talking with his friend Martin. To read this book is to remind oneself what a true democrat Johnson was and what a tragedy Vietnam was to all his plans for The Great Society.

There are other figures who loom large in this panorama of history. There is J.Edgar Hoover who is apoplectic that Martin Luther King has been awarded the Nobel Peace prize. He had been taping and bugging King's conversations with the approval of Robert Kennedy. He threatened to turn them over to the newspapers. But Hoover goes off the walls when he learns that the Pope is going to receive King at the Vatican, which he tried to stop by enlisting the influence of Cardinal Spellman. This conflict would make a great play. Taylor agreed that the book can be equated with Greek tragedies and with Shakespearian dramas.

This is also the period of the 1964 anti-poverty bill, the Voting Rights Bill and the Freedom Summer that saw the murders of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney. There are names that will evoke memories of that period: Allard Lowenstein, Hosea Williams,Andrew Young, Mary Peabody, the mother of the Governor of Massachusetts, Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld, Rabbi Abraham Heschel,SNCC leader Bob Moses and Governor George Wallace. It is truly a monumental work that Tayor Branch has written.

As we sat talking Branch mentioned that his wife, Christy, to whom the book is dedicated has gone to work for Hillary Clinton. I laughed and told Taylor that he was the Forrest Gump of writers. I saw him mentioned in John Dean's book, I saw him mentioned in a book on the McGovern campaign and now I read that he was speechwriting for President Clinton. It would be funny except that sadly he mentioned that on his book tour people did not want to know about Martin Luther King, all they wanted to know was about Bill and Hillary.

Lest I sound holier than thou, so did I. He considers Bill Clinton one of the most brilliant and historically knowledgeable persons in government. They hadn't seen eachother in twenty years when Clinton called to ask him about preserving Presidential papers. They have since met over fifty times for indepth historical discussions. Taylor feels that we are in a Constitutional crisis since there is nothing in the Constitution about an Independent Counsel nor how to get rid of one. He fears that this could become another J. Edgar Hoover case where no president had the courage to fire him because of the secrets he knew.

Happy Valentine's Day! For the youngsters in your family, think about giving them a membership in the new California Science Museum and then the NEANDERTHAL BOOK & SKELETON(Workman $16.95) which they can assemble and then read the book which will tell them that just this year 1997 scientists were able to extract DNA from a Neanderthal bone and have discovered that it does not match modern humans. Maybe they will be the ones to discover the missing link.

For the Valentine gift for kids that keeps coming, there is a delightful newsletter book from Jan Brett who writes and draws a four page letter that tells "All About Armadillo Rodeo" or All About Comet's Nine Lives" on Nantucket Island"which includes information about sea shells and a page to draw on. There is also Berlioz's Bear, which was inspired by her husband who is a musician in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She writes that if you want to receive her "All About"letters which includes a teacher's packet write to her:Jan Brett, 132 Pleasant Street, Norwell MA 02061

BEV HILLS #16

Someone someday will turn this story into a novel. The two little boys who are friends in a small city, Woldowice, in Poland. One is Jewish from a well to do family whose father is a lawyer; the other is from a respected but financially poorer Catholic family who lives alone with his widowed father. Their friendship grows stronger through the years of schooling and athletics until it is time for University and the year is 1939.

The two boys were Karol Wojtyla who became Pope John Paul II and Jerzy Kluger. The book (THE HIDDEN POPE:The Untold Story of a Lifelong Friendship That Is changing The Relationship Between Catholics and Jews (Rodale Books $25.00) written by Darcy O'Brien,who, tragically, died as the book was being released. But, I had an opportunity to talk with Jerzy Kluger.

The book divides to tell each of their stories during World War II. Jerzy joins the Polish army with his father, they are sent to a Russian work camp, When they are freed they rejoin the Polish army joined with the British. He went to Cairo where he met his wife Renee who is Irish and Catholic. Jerzy is very proud of the Polish soldiers and himself under the command of General Anders who fought at Monte Cassino. During this time Jerzy did not know that his mother and sister,Tesia, had been sent to Auschwitz, never to return.

Meanwhile Karol is active in the underground Univesity and theatre groups. Until 1944 Karol or Lolek as Jerzy refers to him, worked at a chemical plant at night and studied secretly during the day for the priesthood. For Poland there was no VE Day as the Russians marched in. Karol was ordained on the Feast of All Saints in 1946. According to their friend Halina whose baby he baptised, they never lost their friend Karol "Lolek" but gained a new "Lolek" who would guide them to a new spiritual force. His career in the Catholic Church grows, in 1965 he is the Archbishop from Krakow who has just made an outstanding speech at Vatican Council.

It is at this point that Jerzy ,living in Rome, reunites with his childhood friend. It was as if they had never been apart. On his election to the papacy in 1976, Jerzy and his wife were invited to a special reception at the Vatican. The first name called to speak privately with the Pope was Jerzy Kluger and family.

I asked Jerzy how the lunches and dinners were arranged. Monsignor Stanslaw Dziwisz would call him and invite him for lunch or dinner. When I asked him if he and the Pope ever talked about antisemitism and the Poles? He seemed hesitant to discuss it ; but he took a moment as if to ponder if he was revealing something he shouldn't, and told me of the time he was asked to dinner at Castel Gandolfo at 3PM which was unusual. The Pope took him for a two hour stroll where he talked chapter and verse on the history of the Jews and the acts of inhumanity that they suffered.

As people knew of his closeness to Pope John Paul II, he became an opportunity for Israel to gain recognition by the Vatican. Jerzy told me about Dr. Meir Mendes of Israel and Dr.Lichten of the ADL which is in the book. All of this was going on at the same time as the Auschwitz - Carmelite convent debacle and there were Vatican members who were still anti-semites. They were the ones who opposed Pope John Paul II's visit to the Great Temple in Rome in 1982 ; Pope John Paul had visited a synagogue as a young man in Wadowice as a guest of Jerzy's father to hear a great tenor sing Hebrew hymns. But it was that night in 1982 that is memorable. The Pope said to the congregation,"You are our dearly beloved brothers and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers".

For Catholics, Jerzy's family has had the most gracious and religeous blessings accorded to them. Pope John Paul II performed one of his few baptisms on Jerzy's granddaughter Stephania, named for his dead sister Tesia, and he also performed her wedding mass at Castel Gondolfo. It was painful for Jerzy to question his feelings as a Jew and the end of the line of a proud Jewish family. Although he quickly mentioned a first cousin who lives in Israel.

I asked how Pope John Paul is feeling and Jerzy shrugged. They last spoke on the Pope's return from Nigeria. I do want to mention the superb writing and investigative work that Darcy O'Brien did. It is a book that reveals the steps of diplomacy that must occur before any agreement between countries. O'Brien also discusses the writings of the French philosopher, Jules Isaac, whose writings had a great influence on Pope John Paul II. O'Brien's death is a great loss to the world of literature.

Sunday, April 19th at 2PM I will be moderating the Annual Friends of the Brentwood Kaufman Library for the tenth year. It is always a wonderful event. This year the writers are Susann Pari, whose book THE FORTUNE CATCHER on Iran was wonderful, Patricia Medina Cotton whose autobiography LAID BACK IN HOLLYWOOD is an addition to any history of film, and Lisa See who is superb in non-fiction ON GOLD MOUNTAIN about her Chinese family history and in mystery fiction FLOWER NET. And on Thursday April 30th at 10AM I am honored to be moderating the Brandeis Luncheon at the Olympic Collection. The authors are Barbara Goldsmith OTHER POWERS and Bebe Moore Campbell SINGING IN THE COMEBACK CHOIR. Both authors are incomparable in their fields. For more information call 310-475-7790 or 310-659-8883.

BEV HILL 21

It is the novelist as a creator who, by his or her art, breathes life into characters in such a way that complex political situations become feasible. There may be no resolution but there is a glimmer of understanding for the reader. Such is the case in Robert Stone's DAMASCUS GATE (Houghton Mifflin$26.00). One of America's finest writers who won the National Book Award for "Dog Soldiers" has written a brilliant novel that is not only blends history with the present political situation in Jerusalem and Israel, but a thriller/adventure that keeps the reader on edge.

Robert Stone told me that when he first saw Jerusalem and the golden light he knew that he would one day write a book about the city. He has lived in various parts of the city so that when he writes of the odors and the entrances to homes and secret passages, he has been there.

It is Passover/ Easter in 1992. His existential hero, Christopher Lukas, is an expatriate American writer, whose parents never married. His father, a professor at Columbia University, was Jewish and his mother, an opera singer, was Catholic. He is questing in this city of absolutes ,"Who am I?"and to find his "tikkun".

Lukas has agreed to write a book with an Israeli Jungian psychiatrist, Dr. Obermann, who is known for his skill with patients suffering from The Jerusalem Syndrome. The Jerusalem Syndrome, the subject of their book, is the malady that causes neurotics to believe that they are messiahs, prophets, apostles, and the annointed ones called to save or destroy the world. Pick your choice.

At Dr. Obermann's office Raziel, the son of a former American Ambassador and congressman, is a recovering drug addict who had been a Jews for Jesus member, meets Adam De Kuff, an older wealthy American whom Raziel will convince that he, De Kuff, is the messiah returned. They will plot to blow up the Temple Mount in order to rebuild the Second Temple. Among their followers will be the African American woman Lukas loves, Sonia Barnes, a Sufi convert and a nightclub singer.

I asked Stone about the manipulation between the Shin Bet and the Palestinian militias, like the Black Falcons or the Communist faction. He said it was well known about the exchange of drugs for guns. Lukas becomes involved in a visit to the Palestinian camps that will result in a harrowing chase at night with Palestinians beating a young Jewish man to death and then turning their anger on Lukas who will literally run for his life in the dark, sliding under barbed wire to reach safety in the settlements.

Robert Stone peoples this novel with a kaleidoscope of believers, from the Evangelicals who use telemarketing for their funds to the PLO and the camps in the Gaza strip to the Haredim in the Old City, not to mention the United Nations and Human Rights representatives. All of whom believe they are the ones with the annointed answers. Stone, who had told me last year when we spoke of his mangled and unhappy childhood, told me that he has become a student of Kabbala which gives him great satisfaction. DAMASCUS GATE is one of the best books of the year.

Joseph Siegman has written JEWISH SPORTS LEGENDS(Brassey's) The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, Second Edition with a foreword by Mark Spitz. It opened my eyes to the names of Daniel Mendoza who was the first Jewish prize fighter to become a champion in 1790 ; Lipman Pike, the baseball player in 1871 who was the first home run champion; Senda Berenson who introduced women's basketball in America and was the first Director of Physical Education at Smith College; and Ben Helfgott, the only known survivor of a Nazi concentration camp to compete in the Olympics , who captained the British Olympic Weightlifting Team of 1956 and 1960. Helfgott's family were killed at Buchenwald.

I told Joseph Siegman, when we taped, that I was surprised to see that there were Jewish champions in figure skating such as Louis Rubenstein from Canada who won the first World Figure Skating Championship in 1890; and Emilia Rotter and her partner, Laszlo Szollas of Hungary who won the ice dancing figure skating championship four times in five years,1931 through 1935. In Boston and New York and most eastern cities Jews were not allowed to join figure skating clubs, and if you did not belong to a club you count not win in judged competition. Only during World War II were Jews given temporary memberships if they were in the armed services. He said that this applied to football as well when colleges had a quota system.

Joseph has competed in the Maccabiah Games in two categories, cricket and lawnbowling. He told me he was in Israel at the last games when the bridge collapsed and it was by a fluke that his group had been assigned at the last minute to march in at the end of the line. Somethings are beshert.

Dorothy Rice has painted Manhattan, Los Angeles and Israel always With Love. Now she has turned her artist's eye and paintbrush on BEVERLY HILLS WITH LOVE(Glen House Communications $60.00) It is an incredible book with 230 paintings which she painted in one year. I say, as I've said in the past to Dorothy when we taped, that someone should take her paintings of the overall map of the place she is painting and put them on scarves. I would love to have one of her Beverly Hill from above. It is a joyous book. She has caught the way people move and sit whether in their office or at the sidewalk cafe. And she has written the text that accompany the paintings.

There is not an inch of Beverly Hills that she has not painted from the rooftops of the houses across from Roxbury Park , the Friars' Club, the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, Finney's in the Alley, the Farmers' Market, the auction at Christie's of Hollywood memorabilia to Wolfgang Puck and Barbara Lazaroff at Spago. If you look at page 168 you will see Julian Okwu ,author of "Fast Forward: Young African-American Men at a Critical Age". Oh yes, he's being interviewed by Connie Martinson. Dorothy had come to the house when I was working, she observed and took some snapshots and went back to her studio. I'm really honored to be included in this wonderful and beautiful book.

Susan Casey has documented in WOMEN INVENT : TWO CENTURIES OF DISCOVERIES THAT HAVE SHAPED OUR WORLD(Chicago Review Press $14.95) the resulting products of the expression "necessity is the mother of invention". The book is written for the young adult 9 -13; but did you know that in order to receive a patent an invention with the U.S. Patent office you must answer the questions: is it new? is it useful? and is it unobvious? Some of the inventors are Harriet Irwin who designed a six sided house in 1869 with a heating device that provided heat for all the rooms at once. In 1971 ten year old Rebecca Schroeder invented the Glo sheet when there was no light in the car to do her homework. She painted a wooder board with phosphorescent paint, let it dry, and put sheets of paper over it and light shone through the paper in the dark. Today, her invention is used by nurses in hospitals. There is Bette Nesmith Graham who used white paint to cover over her typing mistakes and voila! it became Liquid Paper correction fluid. If you have a young inventor in your house there are Invention camps in Akron, Ohio. As well as Casy lists competitions and internet sites.

Who better than Dr. Ruth to tell young kids,"Take it from me, grandparents are the most unselfish people in the world when it comes to their grandchildren", in her book DR. RUTH TALKS ABOUT GRANDPARENTS Advice for Kids On Making The Most Of A Special Relationship(Farrar Staus Giroux $15.00). Her advice is to chart a family tree with your grandparent, learn how to knit and give them the best gift of all that doesn't cost a penny. Help them wash windows, do the shopping, and teach them how to use a computer. Be patient, they never learned how to type.

If you don't have a grandparent, volunteer at your local house of worship by offerring to baby-sit during services, stuffing envelopes,etc. You may be spending a lot more time with your grandprents if your parents are divorced or you may find yourself with a new set of step-grandparents. Dr. Ruth gives advice on how to handle these situaions as well as when a grandparent dies.

On a lighter note Carol Abrams and Ferne Margulies have written and photographed GRANDPARENTS & GRANDCHILDREN, SHARED MEMORIES (General Publ. Group $24.95). When I talked with Ferne about the book, she told me that she and Carol had been introduced by a mutual friend who thought they would be good collaborators for films. At lunch as they got to know eachother, it turned out that their topic of interest was grandparents and grandchildren and the unconditional love that they share.

The book consists of photographs and interiews with the families, who are representative of all races and ethnic groups. Love is universal. There are some local names, such as Gloria and Jerry Lushing and their eleven grandchildren, Elizabeth An and her grandmother Diane An, and tennis great Dorothy Bundy Cheney and Andrew Cheney, who talks about his grandmother instilling the ethics of "good sportsmanship" in his life. Carol Burnett with Zachary Carlson, her grandson, reminisces about Mae White with whom she lived as a child and for whom she tugged at her ear. There is a wonderful woman., Esther Coulter. She is a foster grandparent to Dasha Emerick who was born in Siberia and was brought to America at age four. Ferne told me that there is now a "Grandparents Day"in September.

Dorothy Rice's BEVERLY HILLS WITH LOVE (Glen House Communications $60.00) is an amazing creation of the artist's view of every street and view of Beverly Hills. Truly, lovingly painted Rice has captured a joyous vision of life, from Rodeo Drive to the hotels and pools and the people who live here. She has covered the auctions at Christie's to the group at Finney's In The Alley. And a year ago, she stopped in at a taping of my program. She came,she saw, she painted , so look at page 168.

There's one in every family. A Civil War buff. Tony Horwitz' grandfather ,Papa Isaac, a refugee from the Czar's army, had purchased a ten volume" The Photographs, History of the Civil War" which Tony's father read to him. If that buff can't get to Shiloh personally, get them Tony Horwitz's CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC,Dispatches From The Unfinished Civil War (Pantheon $27.50). Tony who is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, bought a house in the Blue Ridge Mounains of Virginia to get away from the wars he had covered in Bosnia, Iraq and Belfast.

One morning he looked out to see a bedraggled group in battle outside his home. It was a time warp. They were the men who relive the Civil War Battles. One of them, Robert Lee Hodge, whose photo is on the cover, invited Tony to join them on a weekend.

Little knowing the demands of hardcore re-enacters, Tony wore old jeans and brought along a sleeping bag. This made him guilty of being a "Farb", a reenacter who approached the past with a lack of versimilitude. Hodge's group, the Southern Guard, had an "authenticity committee". Before he knew it Tony was sleeping with them on the hard ground in spoon position for body warmth.

Thus, begins a year in Tony's life covering the War Between The States on weekends. It takes him all through the South. He meets blacks and whites who view the past and the present with different points of view. At a Lee-Jackson birthday party,he meets Sue Curtis who formed and organizes the Children of the Confederacy in Raleigh, North Carolina. He will visit Gettysburg and relive Pickett's charge. Perhaps the most interesting meeting is the one he has with Shelby Foote. It is worth reading the book for this alone.

He goes to Montgomery, Alabama, where his first sight is of prisoners shackled at the ankle working on the roads, and where the welcoming sign informs that this city is the first confederate capitol. Yet, it is at the state capitol, that an African-American woman, Sandy, is the guide for Tony and a group of home-schoolers from Southern Alabama on a field trip. Tony records with a seasoned reporter's ear the dialogue of the chaperones telling the kids that "slavery wasn't that big a deal in causing the War". Sandy tells Tony it's the black groups from up North who are the most unsettled at meeting her and want to know what in the world she is doing there. She said,"I like to think those dead white guys are looking back at me and rolling in their graves. This is the 1990's. Understand?"

It is a disturbing book. Emotions are as ripe as if the war was ten years ago. The book does not shrink away from discussing the race issues of today and the activities of the KKK. I did ask about Northern buffs. There are not as many. But then the North won.

Another book that opens up today's South is THE CORRESPONDENCE OF SHELBY FOOTE & WALKER PERCY,Edited by Jay Tolson(W.W. Norton $14.00). They became friends as teenagers in Mississippi. Foote encouraged Percy's literary ventures; but it is the mastery of the English language that mesmerizes the reader. As for Foote on the novel,"The novel will bear all kinds of strain; you can wrench the time sequence and gain from the effect, you can throw out grammar, leave the book without beginning,middle or end, you can do any number of such things and gain from the effect." It is a treat to be able to sit on their shoulders as they write to each other through the years.

If you are planning to take the family back East for a trip, do not miss getting Diane Bair and Pamela Wright's FUN PLACES TO GO WITH CHILDREN IN NEW ENGLAND and FUN PLACES TO GO WITH CHILDREN IN NEW YORK by Randi Millman-Brown(both are from Chronicle Books $11.95 each). Both books suggest off the beaten track places, age related attractions and restaurants that are kid friendly.

BEV HILLS 12----------------------

It's not your usual autobiography, but that may be the influence of his current love of jazz. Joseph Heller has written NOW AND THEN, From?

Coney Island To Here (Knopf $24.00). It is written as if it were an autobiographical emotional strip tease, now you see why I hurt, now you see why I built a moat around my feelings.

Heller's father died when he was five. He ran away from the funeral insisting, to this day, that he ran thinking he was playing a game. His sister,Sylvia, to whom he didicates the book, was seven years older, and his brother Lee, originally Eli, was fourteen years older. He told me that he was in shock at his brother's wedding to discover that they were his half siblings from his late father's first marriage. Their mother had died and his mother had raised them as her own and he had never been told. Their reaction was that there was nothing to be told. To this day, Joe does not know where his father is buried.

In his teens, like most boys during the depression, he worked after school. In his case he worked for Western Union. As he writes about Coney Island Heller jumps ahead to a day he and Mario Puzo and George Mandel spent with their children at the roller coaster. It is just before each of them achieved success. Iwanted to know more but it was only one paragraph.

Having met and talked with Joe Heller previously, I was interested to learn of the extent of his education. After his sixty missions in the war, he returned to New York and at his first vacation in his life, he went to the Catskills where he met Shirley. Her mother suggested he ask shirley to marry him by underwriting his engagement ring. Shirley's parents were a help financially when they moved to Los Angeles when Joe went to USC. He did most of his undergraduate work in english there. they returned to New York University where he received his B.A. in English. He received his Masters Degree from Columbia University and he was a Fullbright Scholar at Oxford for a year. After two years teaching college English, he went to work for TIME magazine.

It was not till 1961 that "Catch 22" was published. Joe gives you the antecedents of the memorable characters in the book, the guys in the air force who became immortal. He did laugh about the incident in the book when he was given family leave because his mother was in the hospital. He got there and for some reason began to think he wouldn't recognize her. As he reached the ward, an old woman met his eyes, he met hers, sat down on her bed and realized, as he heard his mother's voice yell at him,"I'm over here", that he did not know this woman. Joe like many comedy writers uses humor to cover that strip tease of deep emotions.

We talked about his analysis where he was not to change anything in his life. Not Joe, he got a divorce, he changed agents , editors and lawyers. I mentioned that I felt it had been a world where people did not hug or give body comfort. He laughed and said he was a hugger not only to his kids but to women. Proof of that, Valerie Heller, was back at the hotel still sleeping after a warm hug. I look forward to another memoir from Joseph Heller in the future.

Earl Mindell has been a futurist about vitamins. He was such a futurist that when we first talked I thought he was a guru. Now I call his a futurist. He has written EARL MINDELL'S SUPPLEMENT BIBLE(Simon & Schuster $12.00). Not only does he write of the new supplements but he tells you how much he himself is taking, under the title Personal Advice. After describing the vitamin, he lists Possible Benefits and The Right Amount.

I asked him about Glucosamine which had been recommended in The Arthritis Cure. He said that was last year, he now recommends Zinoxin. I was interested to read that for older people whose immune system may not be as strong that in a study done at Tufts University, vitamin E helped elderly people process vacinations. Another important mineral is Selenium, which he calls a Cancer fighter.

Many of the supplements that Mindell advises taking are from Japan and China. Since we were in the midst of watching the Olympics and hearing about the athletes who were succumbing to the flu, I questioned why they weren't giving them these supplements. Earl Mindell said that his personal advice at the first sign of a cold is to take a zinc lozenge, Vitamin C, propolis, echinacea and goldenseal. If you don't know what some of those things are, look them up in his book.

Food glorious food. I'm still waiting to go to the Culinary Institute of America outside New York City. Raves, only raves have I heard. If you know someone who loves to cook or read recipes, Chronicle Books have published "MORE COOKING SECRETS OF THE C.I.A." ($14.95). These are not simple recipes, but they are salivating recipes to read. You know that when a recipe is entitled Stuffed Baby Pumpkins with a Vegetable Ragout that the cook is going to be doing more than just defrosting, that goes for the Tagine of Halibut with preserved Lemons and Caperberries. On the other hand the photographs of the finished dish make it all seem worth while to eat at someone's home,to whom you have given the book, who has cooked for you.

Reading groups are the "in" thing. Bookstores and libraries are full of groups sharing their enjoyment. But, if you are interested in starting your own and need some advice. Rollene Saal has written THE NEW YOKR PUBLIC LIBRARY GUIDE TO READING GROUPS (Crown $20.00). It in an invaluable book for finding compatible people who are willing to listen to others even if they don't agree. It also answers the questions of "Who's the Boss?" and where to find a leader if you feel the need. After a few years, should a group take on new members? Saal notes that when a new member joins that the dynamics will often change to the detriment of the group. Her advice is for the new member to start a new group. She lists suggested reading lists for different focused groups.

BEV HILLS 14-----------------------

It was his love of jazz that brought Steven Isoardi with a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA to write from the UCLA Oral History Program the astounding CENTRAL AVENUE SOUNDS Jazz In Los Angeles (University of California Press $32.95). Isoardi is also a teacher at the Oakwood School in North Hollywood.
The book is divided into four parts; the recollections of musicians in the late 1920's and 30's who were performing on Central Avenue, the musicians who spent their formative years in Watts area during the 30's and 40's ; the musicians who emerged from the main Central Avenue known as the East side; and the last part profiles the musicians who came as adults in the'40's and who already had a career in music. As much as the book is about jazz and music, it is also a history of the African American in Los Angeles and during World War II when the Armed Services were still segregated.
It was a colorful era of the Hotel Dunbar and the nightclubs such as the Apex Club which later became the Club Alabam. There was the Cotton Club in Culver City and as talkies took over films there was a great need for musicians; but it was the era of restrictive housing covenants and block restrictions, as well as exclusion from public beaches, pools and restaurants.
The first musician interviewed was Marshal Royal, who was one of the foremost lead alto saxophonists of the big band era. He was born in 1912 in Oklahoma and came to Los Angeles when he was five. His father had a band and his mother was a piano teacher. Marshal told about going to the Wadsworth School which was a mixed school and as he says "we were called 'colored' then". In those days, his father's band would be hired to play in Beverly Hills by Marco Hellman, president of the Hellman Bank, for $150.00 a night which was an enormous sum in those days. Most musicians in Los Angeles were able to make a fairly good living playing in studio orchestras during the day and playing nightclubs or party dates at night. Marshal's father used to play at the Breakfast Club and the Beverly Hills Riding Club. After Jefferson Highschool he went with Les Hite's band.
All the musicians of that era talked about belonging to the American Federation of Musicians Local 767 which was for black musicians and being paid less than the white musicians who belonged to Local 47. Lee Young who was Nat King Cole's conductor, talked about teaching Mickey Rooney to play drums. He asked Mickey if he could do a timestep, then he told him to do it with his hands, then he put sticks in his hands and said that he could teach him.
] Buddy Collette was born in Los Angeles in 1921 He went to Jordan High, studying with Louis Lippi and Verne Martin. As I spoke with Steven Isoardi, we talked about the superb music teachers who were teaching in public schools and what a difference they made in their students' lives. After the war, thanks to the G.I. Bill, Buddy went to the LA Conservatory of Music and Art. It was here that Buddy met Bill Green when they were both studying the flute. It is amazing how many instruments each of these musicians could play, and that they never stopped studying or taking lessons.
As I said it was his love of jazz that got Steve into this project; but it was also the influence of the late Bill Green who became his music teacher,while he was going to college. Buddy Collette recalls the amalgamation of Local 767 and Local 47 and the start of integrated orchestras and the Community Symphony Orchestra which did both classical and jazz sessions. He credits Jerry Fielding for hiring him for the Groucho Marx show,"You Bet Your Life". It was the era of the House Un-American Activities that eventually forced Fielding to leave the Groucho show and served to open Buddy's eyes to the world. He became friends with Paul Robeson who,he feels. inspired the black leaders to stand up.
There are stories from Horace Tapscott and Gerald Wiggins. And Clora Bryant played with Count Basie, Louis Armstrong,Duke ellington and Charlie Parker. She has recorded an album "Gal With a Horn".
If you love jazz, every year the Los Angeles Jazz Society honors one of the greats at a dinner, usually in October. It begins at four in the afternoon on a Sunday and the music doesn't stop.
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Yvonne Brunhammer has edited a magnificent book ,THE JEWELS OF LALIQUE(Flammarion $50.00). Rene Lalique was born 1860 and died in 1945. He was the true artist of Art Nouveau jewelry and glass. It was Sarah Bernhardt who raised Lalique to star status by having him design the jewelry for her role as Gismunda in 1894, as well as wearing his pieces out and about in Paris.
He used the butterfly motif in many pieces often with the nude female form. In 1895 he sent an important piece to the Salon de la Societe des Artistes Francais in the applied arts division of two foliated scrolls set with amethysts and diamonds from which emerges, chased into the gold a naked woman without arms . In 1906 he was using silver and pressed glass with etchings worthy of Picasso on brooches. It was an era of the value of art in the jewelry worn more than just the size of a big stone.
There are incredible pendants of swans on water created out of gold,opaque enamel on gold, glass and diamonds. Lalique's work with glass is well recognized but the exquisite work with chased gold on enamel makes him a worthy competitor to Faberge, for art that is timeless. In Los Angeles, the work of the late Sascha Brastoff bears a strong debt to the influence of Lalique. The exhibit of Lalique's work will be touring American museums this year.

BEV HILLS 16------------------------

Who is Victoria Woodhull, you may ask, and what makes her so important that two books have been written about her this year? Well, she was a spiritualist, an actress, a part time whore, a founder of the first stock brokerage firm for women, a supporter of free love, and a candidate for the presidency with Frederick Douglass as her running-mate. She literally jumps from the pages of Barbara Goldsmith's OTHER POWERS The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull(Knopf $30.00).
Victoria was born in 1838 in Homer Ohio to Roxy and Buck Claflin, eight years later her sister, Tennessee Claflin was born. Both girls would be set out on the Revival Circuit to preach to the crowds , to reveal what the spirits were telling them and to shill for Buck's medicinal remedies. Buck was one of the more evil fathers of history. At fifteen Victoria maried Dr. Woodhull to get away from Buck.
The book is not just about Victoria, it is a book that goes behind the curtain of hypocrisy that covered the truth about society. Here is Horace Greeley, of "Go West, Young Man" fame, who keeps his slightly mad wife, Mary Cheney Greeley, pregnant year in and year out. She believed in the regimen of Dr. Sylvester Graham which was based on bran bread, overcooked rice and beans. He was the person who gave his name to that cracker called,Graham.
Goldsmith has fleshed out the book with the years of research that went into this book. She told me that she had over 400 pages on her computer for where each person was when an event occurred. The time frame of the book is from 1838 to 1927 when Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic and Victoria, an old woman, in England had offered a reward to the first person to fly the Atlantic.
Most historians will focus on one part of the historical pie, this book combines all the elements to explain the how and why of the event. So that when Barbara Goldsmith writes about the strength and growth of spiritualism in the church and among educated people, the reader understands in light of the enormity of deaths in the Civil War, the demand for Women's rights and suffrage that menaced the family structure of male dominance, and the invention of Mr. Morse's telegraph that could send and receive messages from the apparent air.
And then there was Henry Ward Beecher of the famed Beecher family, who preached at the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. Charismatic, he was adored by men and women, whom he, unfortunately, loved only too well. He and Victoria meet in a collision course when he constantly referred to her in his sermons as "Mrs. Satan" and she in her weekly,"Woodhull, Claflin Weekly" threatened to expose his affair with Lib Tilton, the wife of his great follower and the fervent abolitionist, Theodore Tilton. Victoria and Henry meet in court in the famous law suit.
It was Victoria who advised Commodore Vanderbilt when to sell his stocks. He said,"Do what I do, listen to Mrs. Woodhull" Their firm became known as "the Queens of Finance". Throughout the book, there are photos and cartoons from the papers of the day which help to humanize and make visible the people and events. This book is a cornucopia of electric characters including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who wanted the vote for women at the expense of freed slaves, Susan B. Anthony, Andrew Johnson, who favored the South and did not want either women or freed slaves to vote. And then there was Anthony Comstock,special agent of the Post Office and the Society for the Suppresion of Vice, who arrested Victoria and Tennessee for sending their weekly which contained contraceptive advice through the mails. As we talked, Barbara told me that only in the past year the Supreme Court ruled that the Comstock Laws which were still on the books and a threat to the Internet, were unconstitutional.
Someone is sure to want to make a film or a series of this book. In the light of today's news from Washington, the only thing that changes where human nature is concerned are the clothes the participants wear or don't wear. While in New York City where I taped the interview with Barbara Goldsmith, I went to a "book party" for her at the New York Public Library in the Celeste Bartos Forum given by Mrs. Vincent Astor, Marshall Rose, Paul LeClerc and Sonny Mehta. It was a fitting place to hold a party in Barbara's honor. Singlehandedly she has lobbied to change the paper that books are printed upon from acid based to non-acid based, and testified in Washington to get the funds to preserve the books by processing those that would have died which means that for generations to come those books will be there. So, if she had only written "Little Gloria Happy At Last" or Johnson v. Johnson" or saved the books from destruction, it all would have been enough; but to add to that feat she has written a book that will be a nominee for awards and a contribution to historical literature.

BEV HILLS 17---------------------

Show time! No two roads that lead to Broadway and Hollywood are the same. Karl Malden, a first-generation son of Serbian parents in Gary, Indiana, began as Mladen George Sekulovich singing with his father in the Karageorge Choir. Karl has written with his daughter, Carla Malden, WHEN DO I START? (Simon & Schuster $25.00).
Karl's career covers the Golden Age of theatre. Coming from the Goodman Theatre in Chicago where he met his wife of fifty-nine years, Mona Greenberg, to New York where he was hired by the Group Theatre to act in "Golden Boy", "Truckline Cafe", "All My Sons" ,to the great "Streetcar Named Desire". This is just the tip of all the plays Karl was in on Broadway. He remembers the periods of no work as well, which is why he uses the title he does. He claims he never asked what he was being paid nor how large the part, just "When Do I start?"
As we talked he sang for me Serbian songs his father sang to him as Karl accompanied him on his milk delivery rounds. He remembered going to theatre with his father at age eight to see Shakespeare and his father telling him to take off his cap because theatre was like going to church.
I asked him about the differences in "Streetcar" on Broadway and on film. And the difference between Jessica Tandy's performance and Vivian Leigh? He told me that on Broadway Marlon Brando was so magnetic that when he was on stage, the action stopped and all attention focused on him; where in film the director could fill the screen with Vivan's face or eyes and the attention went to her.
The book is a fabulous resource for actors. Karl discusses his method for researching a character and finding motivation to make it real. Again, he uses some realistic advice from his father who came to see him in a play. He writes about being elected President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the accomplishments of the library, remodeling the theatre and making the award ceremony worldwide during his tenure. All of this is written with great modesty.
As a long time fan of Karl, I was delighted when I met him at a surprise party for Harry Lewis at Kate Mantilini. Karl, whose book I had received and whom I had wanted to interview, came over to me and told me how much he enjoyed the program and column. I told him I had wanted to talk to him about his book. Without any pretense he gave me his number, we made a date and the program will air in the near future.
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Still an extraordinary beauty, Patricia Medina Cotten has written LAID BACK IN HOLLYWOOD (Belle Publ. $24.95). Born to a well-to-do family in England, Patricia was sent off to Tolmers Park boarding school with her older sister,Piti. A beauty at a young age, she was given a screen test at Rock Studios where she met her first husband, Richard Greene. From her writing, they were both babes in the woods sexually speaking when they were married. After the divorce and her remarriage to Joseph Cotten they stayed friends, and she told me of Jo Cotten's generosity to Richard Greene when he fell on hard times in England.
She came to Los Angeles under contract to MGM. She writes of Sam Goldwyn advising her to become a blonde. When we talked I asked her about that. She said that he probably was correct as she had the talent for comedy but with her dark hair and eyes he predicted only villainesses would be offerred to her.
The book is essentially a love story. It is her great love marriage to the brilliant actor Joseph Cotten that is the focus of the book. As the great Joshua Loth Liebman once wrote in his book,"Peace of Mind", she still has a "toothache in her heart" . But, what a glorious life they led and how magnificent a marriage, that they never spent but one day apart when she was in "The Killing of sister George" in all the years. Jennifer Jones and David O. Selznick gave them their wedding. She has glowing words about her physical and spiritual life with Jo.
There comes the day when it starts to crumble. It is June 8.1981 Patricia comes back to the apartment, Jo had fallen in the shower and sufferred a stroke. He had to learn to speak again, this was followed by a diagnosis of cancer of the larynx and a partial laryngetomy. He needed a Blom-Singer prothesis inserted in his throat in order for him to speak. Patricia learned to insert it.
I have only skimmed the surface of the operations, the seeking other consultations, and the other acts of devotion this woman performed. She has nothing but words of praise for the Norris Center at USC. Joseph Cotten may have departed this world February 6,1994 but he and that unforgettable voice live on in the films he made, the book he wrote, in Patricia's heart and now this book. Patricia will be at the Friends of the Brentwood Library this Sunday at 2PM which is open to the public.
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What book did everyone on the crew want? Didi Conn's FRENCHY'S GREASE SCRAPBOOK "We'll Always Be Together"(Hyperion $15.95). It is delightful and refreshing to read this book. Didi takes you through the steps by having Allan Carr write about "How it All Began" in 1974 seeing the play and two years later calling Jim Hacobs and Warren Casey to buy the rights to their show but with the stipulation that he had the right to add other songs to the film. Without which there would not have been "Hopelessly Devoted" nor "Grease"!
Didi with words and pictures goes through the process of how Olivia and John (Newton-John and Travolta, which is obvious to anyone alive then or since)were cast. Didi told me how she sat on the floor of the Paramount Gate reading the full script before her first audition. Talk about actor's stress. These kids kept getting call backs for singing, dancing, reading against other actors before learning if they got the part.
It's twenty years later, Didi raved about the contributions that the other actors gave her with photos from their scrapbooks and their stories of their lives since. Frankie Avalon even gave her a recipe for spaghetti sauce. One of the most interesting is John Travolta talking about the way he works. "I need to be sure that no one will be made to feel wrong or foolish because of ideas they may have. I like it to be fun-literally fun-lots of laughs, because it keeps my spirits up and makes me better in a scene, whether it's dramatic or comedic."
Didi has kept up with Olivia Newton-John through the years and Olvia talks about her new country music album and the dark years of recovery from breast cancer. Didi also asked the actors what they thought their characters would be doing twenty years later. Olivia said "Sandy" would have developed her own cosmetic line called "Sandra Dee" as for "Danny", you'll have to read the book. There is a page of In Memoriam to Eve Arden, Joan Blondell, etc. Didi has done a remarkable job in combining photos and essays of Then and Now. A scholarship fund is being established with a portion of the royalties for the Therapeutic Nursery at the J.C.C. on the Palisades in Tenafly, NJ