Books (Marcia, Rebecca, Ava and C.I.)

 

As we did in 2021 and 2023, we're attempting to again increase book coverage in the community. After a review posts, we try to do a discussion with the reviewer.  This go round, we're talking with  Rebecca and Marcia about their  "Boze Hadleigh's Hollywood Lesbians: from Garbo to Foster" and "'hollywood lesbians: from garbo to foster' by boze hadleigh" So you both enjoyed the book.

Marcia: Yes.

Rebecca: Absolutely.

Marcia: In our summer read, we try to go for something fun and dishy that, if you were taking a vacation during summer on the coast, you'd carry with you to the beach.

Rebecca: Or poolside!  And we like to read books about the world we live in.  So many are in denial and they're just idiots.  What's her name, Jennifer Grant.  She's staring down sixty, claiming to be an actress -- ha ha, yeah right, it didn't happen, it's not happening -- and she goes around insisting Daddy wasn't gay.  The gayness was the best thing about Cary Grant.  You don't want us talking about his politics, trust me. Most of the media, including VANITY FAIR got to the reality about Cary Grant's sexuality decades ago.  But there's Jennifer rushing around lying constantly.  

Marcia: Boze's first book had an interview with Cary Grant.  Cary was a closet case.  In this one, he's looking at lesbians.  Boze is a journalist and he did interviews with many actresses and director Dorothy Azner.  The agreement was that the interviews couldn't be published until after their deaths -- or the parts about same-sex affairs couldn't be.  

Rebecca: So he interviews Nancy Kulp, Marjorie Main, Sandy Dennis, Patsy Kelly, Agnes Moorhead, Capucine, Judith Anderson and others.  He also writes about some that he didn't interview such as Jodie Foster and Greta Garbo.

Marcia: As i note in my review, the section on Jodie Foster was deeply depressing.  I had no idea she was such a conservative and so rejecting of humanity.  Her comments about what she'd do if she saw a wounded bird -- comments made in an interview with THE LOS ANGLES TIMES -- were horrifying. 

 Until the book, you had no idea how non-left her views were?

 

Marcia: No.  Boze made connections I missed.

 

She ran off support in the industry when she spent years trying to make a film where she would play -- and redeem -- Nazi figure Leni Riefenstahl.  It was a film people didn't want to see.  And a film that the industry didn't want to see made.  It would have to note the Nazi's trip to American which began in New York and found the New York papers charmed with and her printing her praise of Hitler.  She was less well received on the west coast.  Among other things, The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League took out ads noting, "There is no room in Hollywood for Leni Reifenstahl.  In this moment when hundreds of thousands of our brethren await certain death, close your doors to all Nazi agents."  

Marcia: I was honestly not aware of that.

Yeah, she spent years trying to get that crap made.  Early on, she was seduced by the warped thinking of Nietzsche.  It's why she's often not much of an actress and why she's a lousy director in everything.  She over intellectualizes everything and that can really harm a performance.  It absolutely destroys film because a good film tells a story, it's not setting aside a story in an attempt  to be an intellectual exercise.  Rebecca?

Rebecca: I found Ann B. Davis repugnant.  She plays dumb in her interview at times then will talk about this or that -- especially other closeted actresses -- and when Boze wants to center on her own love life, she panics and just has to get off the phone, has to, has to.  She's a real bitch too.  I have no idea wht Robert Reed did to her -- if anything -- but her desire to promote his career ending when the sitcom THE BRADY BUNCH went off the air in 1974 is not only at odds with all the Brady revivals -- the TV films, the variety show, the 90s sitcom -- it's also at odds with the fact that no one in the cast got an Emmy nomination after the show was cancelled  -- except Robert Reed who got three Emmy nominations -- for MEDICAL CENTER, for RICH MAN POOR MAN and for ROOTS.  In fact, ROOTS was one of the biggest TV events of the 20th century.  Closeted Ann B. Davis obviously couldn't deal with reality.  But Patsy Kelly, Nancy Culp, Sandy Dennis, Judith Anderson, etc were great.  I really enjoyed the book and look forward to a time when books like this aren't necessary because actors and actresses no longer feel they have to be forced into the closet.  

Marcia?

Marica: Rebecca's right.  That would be a better world, a much better world.  This was a good summer read and the book will make you think.

 

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Previous book discussions: 

"Books (Kat, Ava and C.I.)"

"Books (Ruth, Jim, Ava and C.I.)"

"Books (Ty, Ava and C.I.)" 

 "Books (Kat, Ava and C.I.)"

"Books (Ann, Ava and C.I.)"

"Book Talk (Stan, Ava and C.I.)"

"Book Talk (Dona, Ava and C.I.)"

"Book Talk (Ty, Ava and C.I.)" 

 "Book Talk (Mike, Ava and C.I.)"

"Book Talk (Stan, Rebecca, Ava and C.I.)"

"Book Talk (Mike, Ava and C.I.)"

"Book Talk (Ann, Marcia, Trina, Ava and C.I.)"

"Book Talk (Elaine, Ava and C.I.)"