Rainbow Reviews

BOOK BLURB:
A new and different look at legendary actress and near-mythical figure Joan Crawford, in her 1953 "comeback" at MGM. This is book 2 of the Tinseltown Trilogy.

BOOK REVIEW:
A unique approach to the legendary actress and almost mythical individual, Joan Crawford, this novel is an eye-opener for those who don’t know either her filmography or her personal history. Joan has always been larger-than-life, on the silver screen, and in “real life,” but readers will find in this story a particularly skewed angle on Joan Crawford as she lived “behind-the-scenes.”

By 1953, filmmakers and producers know Joan needs a comeback movie. That’s not how she of course sees it. She returns to MGM insisting she’ll turn her former studio right side up and make up for all its many mistakes (such as not casting her as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, and for “abusing” Judy Garland.) Joan is deep into a constant daily ration of vodka, popping diet pills to lose weight, abusing her body with exercise and momentary sexual encounters.

Meanwhile, the “cult” of Joan Crawford and of Joan impersonators forms a definitive backdrop for the serial killer stalking Joan “look-a-likes.” Joan is portrayed here as spiraling down into paranoia at an frightening rate, and places herself in danger from both her self-abuses and from the stalking killer. Throughout, this amazing woman is portrayed as a legendary figure, even with all her foibles and failings.

From reading this story, this reviewer is of the opinion that much of Joan's madness, multiplicity of substance abuses, and rampant sex life stemmed not just from the sexual, physical, and psychological abuse in her childhood, adolescence, and young adult life (which she dwells on at great length) but also from the submerged consciousness of her transgendered nature striving to break out from the dam behind which she had repressed any thought of such.

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