Book Review By Jody Stump/Special to The Malibu Times
HOLLYWOODLAND /David Wallace, St. Martin’s Press
Several years ago, David Wallace amused and titillated thousands of star-seekers with his first tell-all-the-tall-tales book of Golden Age secrets, “Lost Hollywood.” With “Hollywoodland,” his new book, Wallace picks up the dangling threads of hidden truths about celebrities whose names we all know even if their lives have been obscured by the mists of time. As Wallace demonstrates, much of the obscurity came at the intentional misdirection of studio hacks and a local press that held a princely stake in creating and maintaining the legends.
The book launches readers into a swift current of myths and secrets by starting with this telling quote from Martin Scorsese: “When the legends start becoming reality, print the legend.” Wallace chooses the obverse. He prints reality by disinterring what lies beneath. An accomplished journalist, he scoured newspaper morgues for contemporary coverage of events that became film’s most famous legends and interviewed dozens of stars and industry notables from the first half of the last century. In the book, we learn that Faulkner churned out 35 pages of finished script a day just to earn enough petty cash to turn the lights back on in his humble studio flat. We discover that one of Hollywood’s “dumbest” blonde bombshells had an IQ of 163, and was smart enough to win her first break by sending this message after her screen test: “40-22-34.” The reigning Miss Tomato, she got her callback in 30 seconds.
Wallace provides fascinating peeks behind the bedroom doors of “twilight guys,” as gays were then known, and startling disclosures about ladies who wear trousers-starting with the diva who broke the code-Marlene Dietrich. And then, there’s lingerie. I find that I’m still musing over this tidbit, casually tossed in a chapter on other diversions: Howard Hughes designed the bra that made Jane Russell famous.
For those of us who live in modern Tinseltown and daily pass the carefully delineated landmarks, “Hollywoodland” is a delightful guidebook filled with insider whispers about who did what where. Malibu features prominently, especially in its early days of May Rindge and the railroad. In fact, the book would make a wonderful holiday gift for anyone with a car and a passion for Turner Classic Movies. Armed with Wallace’s book, they can enjoy a local adventure back in time, touring the Adamson House, Santa Monica’s Friendship Bar, Musso and Frank’s in Hollywood, the Hotel Del Coronado or Santa Barbara’s San Ysidro Ranch and tread where celluloid giants, kings and would-be queens played half a century ago.
The book is as wicked as a good dessert-tart and light as a lemon mousse-and as easily digested. It’s a quick read, at once funny, wise and a bit sardonic, as though hindsight might save us from the follies of an age with darker secrets. Today, Hollywood’s stories are every bit as salacious and outside the law, but the art of suppression has been lost. It has been Wallace’s great gift to dig up and disclose the realities.
Hollywoodland is a charming discursion into the lives and mores of an age gone by and, at the end, I found myself yearning to hear more. Perhaps there’s a sequel in the works.