Word: selznick
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NONFICTION: Eleni, Nicholas Gage The Forties, Edmund Wilson ∙The Last Lion, Winston Spencer Churchill, William Manchester Lectures on Don Quixote, Vladimir Nabokov ∙A Private View, Irene Mayer Selznick ∙White Mischief, James...
Sometimes it is hard to take Irene Selznick too seriously-but only sometimes. A Private View is the story of how a bright, spunky tomboy from a beach-front house in Santa Monica surmounted advantages and an insufferable marriage to become independent and a successful Broadway producer. Only a hopeless churl could fail to see that behind the privilege and luxury is a woman of uncommon perseverance and good sense...
...author married Selznick in 1930 and assures us that until then, David's father put him to bed nightly. The Mayers and Selznicks were among Hollywood's pilgrim families, and to judge from Irene Selznick's recollection, her father was its Cotton Mather. He preached the doctrine of sound business practices, quality without ostentation and respectability. The best parts of A Private View deal with the '20s, when moguls were old-fashioned family men who made sure that their values got into their pictures. Selznick gracefully catches the small-town quality about the Hollywood...
Scores of famous names flutter effortlessly from Selznick's pages: Anita Loos, Irving Thalberg, Sam Goldwyn, Janet Gaynor, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo and Uncle William, known at the office as Mr. Hearst. Banker-Politician Averell Harriman coached her in bridge and croquet, and Howard Hughes wanted her to be his "woman friend" because, as Go-Between Gary Grant suggested, she was a "tested product...
...tests are not specified, though Selznick surely could have passed trials in patience, level-headedness and dependability. These attributes were severely stretched during her life with David, notably just after his father's death when he departed for a lively wake while Irene was left with the funeral arrangements...