Gavin Lambert (1924–2005)

This was a superb biography of acting legend Norma Shearer. Everything is covered. We discover her origins and her pathway to Hollywood, her marriage to industry titan Irving Thalberg and her rise as the biggest star at MGM. We also read of her retirement from movies and the decline into the twilight of her life that she so feared.

Lambert had the good fortune to meet with Norma on several occasions, and his work is the richer for it. I particularly enjoyed reading of Norma's life after she show more retired from films and eventually went into seclusion. All in all, this was a very interesting book about a major player in the Golden Age of Hollywood. show less

it's interesting, this book never feels rough around the edges, but there's something naive about the craft — a great novel it is not, but propulsive? absolutely. the prose is simple, clear, and gorgeous. the ideas and themes are watertight. absolutely inhaled it.

Gavin Lambert knew Natalie Wood, but he manages to refer to himself very rarely in this biography of the famous actress who drowned mysteriously one night on the family yacht. Nor does he manage to shed much light on the peculiar events of that sad ending, although he clears away the debris of gossip and hearsay spread by unscrupulous people who were out to make a buck. (POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW)

What he does do is present his subject first and foremost as an actress, shedding considerable show more light on the “studio system” of the time, which consciously compromised her sincere attempts to be an actress, rather than simply a movie star. He also explains her lifelong fear of dark water, the result of an unscrupulous director and her stage mother, who conspired to trick her in a movie scene where a bridge collapses. Their purpose was for the child to register genuine fear – which she did -- but she almost drowned, and never got over the trauma. Her mother observed no limits in promoting Wood’s career, even turning a blind eye to her daughter’s affair at 16 with Nick Ray, a man in his forties and the director of Rebel without a Cause, although she put a stop to Natalie’s simultaneous affair with the young Dennis Hopper, who could offer her daughter no career opportunities. (END OF SPOILERS)

Lambert lets us see how these beginnings guided Wood’s life, but all along the way he shows genuine sympathy for a woman who never got past a few excellent roles, and suffered the humiliation of so many terrible ones in which she was over made-up and under directed. His final chapter outlines again the progress of her career on a purely professional basis, carefully describing each scene in which she achieved real acting skill and artistic brilliance. Natalie would have appreciated that. I came away with more respect for the writer than the subject, who in the final analysis was a very pretty woman whose talent was never fully realized. show less

I love love love this book about the making of one of my favorite movies. As a kid I loved to page through the pictures and now it's fun to actually read it lol. The writing is so-so and very gossipy but it's a fun quick read and full of information about what went on behind the scenes. If you love Gone with the Wind, you have to track down a copy.