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The Hollywood Beauties
1978, oversize hardcover edition, Arlington House, New Rochelle, NY, 476 pages. Includes filmographies, vital stats, 294 b&w photos / stills. Profiled Dolores Del Rio, Kay Francis, Ava Gardner, Jean Harlow, Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, and Lana Turner.
- GenresFilm
476 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1978
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About the author
James Robert Parish
115 books16 followersJames Robert Parish, a former entertainment reporter, publicist, and book series editor, is the author of many published major biographies and reference books on the entertainment industry including Whitney Houston: We Will Always Love You; The Hollywood Book of Extravagance; It’s Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks; The Hollywood Book of Breakups; Fiascos: Hollywood’s Iconic Flops; The Hollywood Book of Love; Jet Li; The Encyclopedia of Ethnic Groups in Hollywood; The Hollywood Book of Death; Gus Van Sant; Whoopi Goldberg; Rosie O’Donnell’s Story; The Unofficial “Murder, She Wrote” Casebook; Today’s Black Hollywood; Let’s Talk! America’s Favorite TV Talk Show Hosts; Prison Pictures from Hollywood; Prostitution in Hollywood Films; The Great Cop Pictures; Ghosts and Angels in Hollywood Films; Pirates and Seafaring Swashbucklers on the Hollywood Screen; Gays and Lesbians in Mainstream Cinema; Hollywood’s Great Love Teams; and The Fox Girls. Mr. Parish is a frequent oncamera interviewee on cable and network TV for documentaries on the performing arts. The author resides in Studio City, California.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 21, 2013
James Robert Parish has put his astounding research qualities
to the test and come up with "Hollywood Beauties" - a lovely
valentine to seven of the screen's most alluring sirens. There
is not a lot that is new and in the case of Grace Kelly, a lot
of questions are unanswered - why did she suddenly decide to
marry Prince Rainier and give up what would have been an
outstanding career? She was the most enigmatic of them all. She
was originally a model but from the start determined to make it
as an actress and, according to people in the know, had the
talent to be the best.
The other beauties - Dolores Del Rio was ravishing but extremely
ambitious (the callousness toward her first husband and his ill
health was, I thought, shocking) and was not above using her
beauty as a flirtatious way to further her career. Parish claims
everything was "above board" but why was she given such star
treatment at Warners during the making of "Wonder Bar" when Kay
Francis, at the time Warner's biggest star, was left out in the
cold.
Kay Francis - to me the most beautiful and alluring but was really
in movies for the money and the nice holidays she could afford. She
didn't think about career longevity and her career suffered when
more astute actresses like Bette Davis and Olivia DeHavilland came
along. Jean Harlow - the most beloved but the most exploited,
especially by her mother, her step father and her awful agent.
Ava Gardner - sensual and down to earth but in Humphrey Bogart's
words "the most self centred actress he had ever met"!! She had
a fear of her face being marked, so what did she do - she got drunk,
rode a horse (which she had never ridden before) and charged a
bull which then kicked her!! She later became a recluse. Elizabeth
Taylor was another who I thought needed a deeper appraisal. So
beautiful and supposedly so intelligent and with an Oscar for her
no holds barred portrayal in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (she also
won another for "Butterfield 8", a film she was not proud of) she
seemed to become a victim of her own wealth and beauty, with self
indulgent performances in "Reflections in a Golden Eye", "Boom"
and "Doctor Faustus". Lana Turner, perhaps the saddest of all, whose
erratic childhood must have been the cause of her undisciplined
life. At the end of her chapter she went on a "Legendary Ladies"
tour and among the inevitable questions were "would she change her
life", her answer was "No! No! No!". I immediately thought of her
poor little daughter and that awful murder, it seems Lana must
have forgotten about that!!
More insight would have been nice instead of a "and then she
starred in" but the book was written in the late 1970s when most
of the beauties and their friends and relatives were still alive
so people had to be considered.
to the test and come up with "Hollywood Beauties" - a lovely
valentine to seven of the screen's most alluring sirens. There
is not a lot that is new and in the case of Grace Kelly, a lot
of questions are unanswered - why did she suddenly decide to
marry Prince Rainier and give up what would have been an
outstanding career? She was the most enigmatic of them all. She
was originally a model but from the start determined to make it
as an actress and, according to people in the know, had the
talent to be the best.
The other beauties - Dolores Del Rio was ravishing but extremely
ambitious (the callousness toward her first husband and his ill
health was, I thought, shocking) and was not above using her
beauty as a flirtatious way to further her career. Parish claims
everything was "above board" but why was she given such star
treatment at Warners during the making of "Wonder Bar" when Kay
Francis, at the time Warner's biggest star, was left out in the
cold.
Kay Francis - to me the most beautiful and alluring but was really
in movies for the money and the nice holidays she could afford. She
didn't think about career longevity and her career suffered when
more astute actresses like Bette Davis and Olivia DeHavilland came
along. Jean Harlow - the most beloved but the most exploited,
especially by her mother, her step father and her awful agent.
Ava Gardner - sensual and down to earth but in Humphrey Bogart's
words "the most self centred actress he had ever met"!! She had
a fear of her face being marked, so what did she do - she got drunk,
rode a horse (which she had never ridden before) and charged a
bull which then kicked her!! She later became a recluse. Elizabeth
Taylor was another who I thought needed a deeper appraisal. So
beautiful and supposedly so intelligent and with an Oscar for her
no holds barred portrayal in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (she also
won another for "Butterfield 8", a film she was not proud of) she
seemed to become a victim of her own wealth and beauty, with self
indulgent performances in "Reflections in a Golden Eye", "Boom"
and "Doctor Faustus". Lana Turner, perhaps the saddest of all, whose
erratic childhood must have been the cause of her undisciplined
life. At the end of her chapter she went on a "Legendary Ladies"
tour and among the inevitable questions were "would she change her
life", her answer was "No! No! No!". I immediately thought of her
poor little daughter and that awful murder, it seems Lana must
have forgotten about that!!
More insight would have been nice instead of a "and then she
starred in" but the book was written in the late 1970s when most
of the beauties and their friends and relatives were still alive
so people had to be considered.
Displaying 1 of 1 review