Axel Madsen (1930–2007)

Madsen, Axel. William Wyler: The Authorized Biography. 1973. Open Road, 2015.
Axel’s Madsen’s biography of the prolific film director William Wyler brags in its subtitle that it is authorized. But I am not sure what that means in this case. Usually, and authorized biography means that the author is given long-form interviews with his living subject and access to otherwise restricted documents. If Madsen was given such access, he does not often cite it in his notes, nor is there the usual show more introduction or afterword to explain what access he had and did not have. Wyler, who directed such diverse films as Roman Holiday, Ben Hur, Funny Girl, and The Liberation of LB Jones, deserves better. One would like, for example, to know more about his interaction on Roman Holiday with blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. One would also like to know what he and Gregory Peck fought about on the set of The Big Country and why neither one of that film’s lead actresses were happy. One of the common failings of “authorized” biographies is that they are often reticent about the failings of their subjects, and that seems to be the case here. We know from other sources that Wyler was an inveterate tinkerer with his scripts, although he only received three writing credits. One would certainly like to know more about his writing contributions. The best chapter in the book is the one on Ben Hur, but even there, the source cited most often is Charlton Heston, who took notes during the production. Sadly, almost 40 years after Wyler’s death, it is too late to get much more first-hand information about his career, which deserves to be scrutinized as fully as those of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles. show less

A prurient romp... after which you might wonder if there were any heterosexuals in Hollywood or in the arts anywhere else.

The opening sentence of the book is “She made up things.” Some facts about Coco Chanel’s life may vary, depending on which biography you read, or what interview you saw, but Alex Madsen listed close to 100 references for the contents of this book, and does mention, in some cases, several different variations of incidents, conversations, and misc. details. One thing is certain. Coco Chanel was a fascinating woman, and one of the most influential women to ever work in the fashion show more industry.

Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel was born in a “poorhouse hospice”. Her mother died when Coco was 12 years old, and her father abandoned the family, leaving Coco and her siblings to be raised by nuns and extended family. Chanel tells the incredible story of Coco’s meager childhood, her self-discovery of an innate sense of what looks good on women, and her successful career capitalizing on that information: hats, sportswear, the first use of jersey in everyday clothes, the first bathing suit, furs, animal prints, pearls, the “suit”, a crisp white shirt, the little black dress, a revolutionary still popular perfume, and much more. She believed in sophisticated simplicity. In the 1920’s Coco Chanel said, “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only; fashion is something in the air….it’s in the wind…. you feel it coming, you smell it. Fashion is in the sky, in the street; fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”

She mixed with royalty (Churchill and members of the Romanov family), famed artists (Picasso) and musicians (an affair with Igor Stravinsky), and the Hollywood elite. Some of her many acquaintances were models for Proust’s characters in his series In Search of Lost Time.

At the peak of her career, when very few women even had careers, she employed 3000 seamstresses, and was worth over $1,000,000,000 (yes 1 billion) when she died.

This book tells it all. Not just Chanel’s success in the fashion industry, but also her personal triumphs and failures and details about her family, friends, lovers, and rivals. Alex Madsen did a great job of gleaning all the material and composing the facts into a fascinating profile and thorough biography of Gabrielle Chanel. show less

The Sewing Circle was a euphemism used to describe sapphic Hollywood. Offering a long list of sources, Madsen presents a picture of lesbian and gay Hollywood from the twenties until (almost) current times. Everyone is aware of how the big studios controlled the lives of the actors under contract to them, and anyone who was bi-sexual or gay was forced into so called "lavender" marriage to hide that fact.

The book focuses mainly on playwright Mercedes de Acosta, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, show more Tallulah Bankhead and a few other big names. It is an interesting read, but not a compelling one, as it feels more like reading a gossip column that it does a history.
It seems it was meant more to titillate than to inform. show less