Anne Edwards (1) (1927–2024)

Long before Meghan Markle delighted the tabloids and infuriated England’s Royal Family by setting her cap for a prince, there was Wallis Warfield Simpson – an American of humble beginnings, living in England with her second husband, who insinuated herself into high social circles and ended up the mistress of the heir to England’s throne.

Anne Edwards, whose Road to Tara was an exquisitely researched and informative look at the life of the author of Gone With the Wind, has, for some show more reason, chosen to present the Simpson biography as a novel. The reader is left constantly wondering which of the scenes and dialogue are made up whole cloth and which are quite likely true but cannot, for whatever reason, be substantiated to the degree demanded in a scholarly biography.

The overall story was front-page news in much of the world in the tumultuous years leading up to World War II – how the heir to the throne of England abdicated in order to marry the by-then twice-divorced Simpson. Edwards goes back much farther – to the early days of the 20th century and to a little girl shuffled between a loving but extremely proper grandmother and a feckless merry-widow mother whose impulsive but often unwise choices led to financial insecurity and even borderline homelessness for much of Bessie Wallis Warfield’s youth. Edwards uses this live-by-your-wits childhood to create a young woman determined to have everything she feels the world has denied her, and to get it by any means possible. This Scarlett O’Hara / Becky Sharp / Eve Harrington uses everyone she meets – her wealthy uncle Sol, her school friends, her extended family – to claw her way up the social ladder. At no time do we see Wallis (who dumped her inelegant first name in favor of her unique middle name as an adolescent) consider preparing herself for any career except that of wife, preferably to a man who can keep her in the style to which she would like to become accustomed. More than half the book follows Wallis through her first 20-some years and first two husbands before she finally meets Prince Edward and connives her way into his good graces.

Perhaps the most difficult thing for the American reader to accept is the widely-held notion that men of power and prestige have every right to keep a mistress. Marriage is business; sex is entertainment. And, within certain circles of upper-class British society, it was rather considered an honor to be cuckolded by a Royal. At any rate, that is how Edwards chooses to write the relationship between Wallis and the man who shared his wife with a Prince.

As the book draws to a conclusion, with Edward being pressured at the highest levels to give up his American mistress and take a royal bride, while he remains utterly adamant that he will have Wallis as his bride and queen, there’s an eerily prescient scene in which Wallis is riding in a car being pursued by reporters and photographers, and her bodyguard urges the driver to flee at high speeds. It’s almost the mirror image of a night half a century later when the Princess of Wales’ driver took a similar tactic, but which ended in tragedy.

Wallis: The Novel is a near-miss that will send many readers looking for either a genuine biography or a no-holds-barred roman a clef which needn’t be bothered with fussy historical accuracy. show less

Sad, fascinating. For a brief improbable moment the greatest star in the world but really a second-ranker. How unlikely that a prim well-brought up English convent girl got cast as these larger-than-life American viragos. Her descent into mani-depressive madness is touchingly told, including her writing exquisitely polite letters of apology to the friends she had attacked and shocked when in her manic fits. She clearly had great beauty and star quality, always wanted to be the legit show more classical actor and didn't quite have the skills. Olivier was her great love, idol and competitor, whose shadow she could not escape. A hint of hagiography in the writing but she does still captivate. show less

Before reading this biography I read a smattering of reviews and was surprised at a consistent theme that the author was too forgiving of Garland. I don't see that. She calls Judy a naïve addict, gullible and usine self-abuse and attempted suicide as attention-getting schemes. This is hardly flattering. Garland is responsible for her actions as an adult, but what responsible does a child vaudevillian have for early habits of go- and no-go pills? Judy was obviously surrounded by sycophants show more and handlers that profited from her exertions enabled by chemical dependency. The second visitation of ex-husband Luft as an instigator of transforming her career into indentured servitude with a contract containg hair-trigger harsh penalties is particularly galling. show less

Reading about the life of Judy Garland makes one hope that there really is a hell, so people like Louis B. Mayer can rot there for eternity. If there were any justice in the world, her mother would be there, keeping him company, and many others, including her husbands, would pop in for visits. Despite (or, perhaps because of) her enormous talent, Judy Garland’s life was a living hell, thanks to the many people who should have cared for her, but saw her as nothing but a cash cow. Anne show more Edwards’ Judy Garland: A biography, serves up all of the betrayals, large and small, for our reading pleasure.

Unfortunately, it’s not much of a pleasure. Whether it’s the sheer agony of Garland’s life, or the presentation of the events, peppered with the author’s impromptu exclamations and digressions, this is not a fun, smooth read. The book, which was first published in 1974, feels like it’s missing something: there are few interviews with those who knew Garland, and those that show up, are with peripheral characters, giving secondhand information. The publisher also needs to update some of the references. One section refers to writer Norman Mailer in the present tense. Another discusses Sid Luft’s career, referring to it as being ongoing (he died in 2005). These mistakes are small, but distracting.

Overall, I didn’t feel as if I’d learned much about Judy at all – the book felt more like a series of vignettes, loosely strung together by an author who is much better than that! show less