FICTION:  THE MISSING PERSON/Doris Grumbach – G.P. Putnam’s Sons – 1981

This is a finely crafted, raw, emotional book, chronicling the unfortunate life of a Marilyn Monroe-like character.  Grumbach has a long, distinguished career in fiction and non-fiction, especially writing about gays and lesbians.

Starting in the 1930s, we become intimately involved with the details of a child and young woman (Fanny Marker) starting out in Utica, New York.  Her mother is resentful of her very existence and treats her harshly.  Mom has a long series of unsavory boyfriends living in their squalid apartment.  Fanny retreats to the movies and fan magazines, creating an alternate universe for herself.  Knowing that she is unusually beautiful, she pictures herself as a screen goddess.  One day, while her mother is at work, she is savagely raped by her mother’s current boyfriend.  Fanny goes inside herself to her protective fantasy life.  Eventually she runs away.  Working in a Utica hotel, she hangs around the lobby and starts to pick up men for sex.  She experiences no pleasure from the act, but it reinforces her only commody, as a beautiful sex object.

Fanny winds up in New York, finds an agent and Fanny has emerged as Franny Fuller.  It doesn’t take long for this newly packaged silver screen goddess to become the object of every male fantasy.  Somehow, people notice that this vulnerable, beautiful creature with her dazzling smile, sexy whisper of a voice and platinum hair is a mass of contradictions.  She marries a famous football player, retreats into her secret world, and becomes very clingy and needy.  The young, unsophisticated jock is being eaten alive by Franny’s neediness.  They divorce.  Franny has become a blank slate, ripe for whatever a devouring public would like her to be.  She starts to disappear, running off to seedy Hollywood bars, dressed in ragged, dirty clothing, needing badly to bathe.  Then she resurfaces as the screen goddess.  Her emotional episodes are overtaking her.  She is considered undependable and difficult in her studio commitments.  But driven by her box office potential she is put up with and has achieved superstar status.

She meets Arnold Franklin, the poet and playwright in New York.  The Jewish intellectual falls instantly for the goddess.  He proposes and they marry.  Now in a world of very educated literary heavyweights and skilled actors, she continues to question her self worth.  Beauty only goes so far.  She thinks she needs acting lessons, but never follows through.  The couple moves to Los Angeles where Franklin is totally miserable.  He can’t deal with everything Hollywood and is at a loss to keep looking for Franny after each disappearance.  He files for divorce.

This book is very insightful and gives us a glimpse of how ‘idols’ are manufactured and disgarded.  We see what becomes of a silent film star who is thrown overboard because is speaking voice is too squeaky for the ‘talkies.’  We find out what drives a Hollywood gossip columnist who fuels the insane machine.  Most of all, we learn how a fragile, tormented child is tossed into the ’star’ process, gets mangled by it and her only mechanism is to smile and disappear.

This thoughtful, mature, revealing book is worth reading.  I hope you can find it.

extract from email with polymath, Pedro T.:

Niagara in all its color glory arrived. This was a film that I’ve always come in on in Act 2, about when Joseph Cotten stalks her in the bell tower and chokes her to death. Right out of pulp fiction covers, graphically speaking. So I got to see MM in her Act 1 slinky dresses, her hip twanging walk and her in bed scenes. Apparently Nabokov was smitten by MM when he met her in Hollywood years later in the making of Lolita by Kubrick. He was quite impressed by her beauty and brains. I know Vlad’s wife Vera was right at his side throughout the meetings. She was really a quite small woman. Some guy recently on Antiques Roadshow got an appraisal for one of her tight dresses in Some Like It Hot for a cool $300k. Damn. Now there’s a nest egg pepper-upper. My B-actress Aunt M.E. was in Hollywood in the 50s and like many other aspirants converted to the peroxide blonde look and the bright red lipstick vagina lip look. Fetching. But I digress into shadowy libido areas and Mailer and a herd of other slavering slaves to MM have worn this trail bare. Historically, mythically, the life of a love goddess is not untroubled with all that yang energy focused on her every wiggle and wink. Back to the film itself, it was a sleazy kind of pulp novel of the 50s with the blonde draped over the cover, Niagara Falls in the background…something probably about doomed honeymoons…This was the age of paperback novels edging on the erotic/pornographic. Back then a fast typing, hard drinking, heavy smoking novelist with a run time of 60,000 words could knock out a torrid affair/crime caper in a couple of months. I know an agent from those days who had a “stable” of such writers. One guy in particular he recalled, not his name, but that his technique was to come to Chicago and rent a suite at the Drake Hotel and order a case of his favorite booze. He’s sit down at the typewriter and knock out a novel in about two or three weeks while consuming the firewater. Then he’d drop off the ms. and disappear into Main Street anonymity. The agent said  he sold everything he ever wrote. Ah, tales from the dark side of the creative world. Another odd reaction I had to Niagara. In 1952 when they were shooting the Falls area, which is structurally for obvious reasons much the same tody, I was struck by the paucity of people. There were just fewer people back then, probably half the population of today. I was about six when this shot and part of its attraction to me is to remind me visually of the stuff in the film, the cars, buildings, signage, clothing of “ordinary people.”
Anyway, old bud, I feel underneath this torrid love/murder plot something deeper…but here is not the place to go into it. Something tragic and troubling not only about an American icon of the screen, but something about America post Korea, and all the rest to come (including the love goddess’ death)…maybe it was the lie about love and marriage, about Niagara as a love renewal backdrop and Mecca? Divorce rates were about to take off like a rocket, an unheard of practice prior to this decade (a family shame); something was eating into the old standards of faith and loyalty and long term commitment. Here was a pulp story that actually emerged from the currency of the times and revealed the hollowness of the war and commercial culture (the Cutler’s & Shredded Wheat). zzzzzzzzzzzz….
Sorry, narcolepsy is my current malady! I must move on as I know you must to…but just wanting you to know I dearly love these old films. I love the hermeneutics of the visual text in my act 3 decrepitude. One more observation…from DOA with Edmund OBrien…you know I watched it recently and realized how physically gifted EO was…quite good on  his feet. In fact after watching him run and dodge bullets and death itself within…I gradually saw a correspondence to today’s bullet solid body type action guy…Bruce Willis.
No, I haven’t been drinking…not yet anyway. It’s morning in America, and god bless us, it’s actually raining in the desert! Exit Stage Obama Left:
gracias, amigo…
Jaime

PS. Difficult People may or may not reappear here. Currently the story book of 172 flash fictions is being prepped for publication as a paperback and e-book. Publication dates, etc. forthcoming…many thanks for readership! Huzzah! Turn off that TV! Bless the fiction reader!

oh YOU TOUCH MY TRA-LA-LA!!!

This July 13, another grandslam pageant will be won! After Riyo Mori surprising crowned as Miss Universe 2007, there will be another surprising event in Miss Universe 2008!!! Live in Vietnam!!!

New Crown for Miss Universe 2008

The Miss Universe Organization announced today that CAO Fine Jewelry (a line of the renowned Phu Nhuan Jewelry (PNJ) company in Vietnam) has created the coveted 2008 Miss Universe crown.  The winner of the 2008 Miss Universe® Pageant, which will broadcast live on NBC July 13th from the Crown Convention Center in Nha Trang, Vietnam, will be crowned with the masterpiece which was designed by Rosalina Tran Lydster of Jewelry by Rosalina and Ms. Dang Thi Kim Lien of CAO Fine Jewelry.

The crown, valued at $120 thousand dollars, is made of 18K white and yellow gold. It is comprised of over 1,000 precious stones; including 555 white diamonds (30 carats), 375 cognac diamonds (14 carats), 10 smoky quartz crystals (20 carats) and 19 morganite gemstones (60 carats). The colors of the jewels chosen for the crown have great significance. The yellow luster of the gold represents the prosperous thriving economy in Vietnam. White, light pink and cognac are the main hues in the crown which represent inspiration and feeling.

TOP PREDICTIONS

MISS UNIVERSE 2008

Eliza Najera

(Mexico)

Siyeeet! I was mesmerized with this woman! Too seductive. I’m tempted to kiss her especially in her lips. Eliza Najera maybe compared to Lupita Jones, Miss Universe 1991! So lupeeeeeeeeeeet!

1ST RUNNER-UP

Dayana Mendoza

(Venezuela)

Venezuela did it again! Dayana is a good catch to represent Venezuela. She has the body and face to become Miss Universe 2008 1st Runner-up. I like her eyes. It makes her beautiful.

2ND RUNNER-UP

Ingrid Rivera

(Puerto Rico)

God! I’m burning! Ingrid Rivera put me into fire! This beauty from Puerto Rico already proved her beauty during Miss World 2005, won as 2nd runner-up. Now, I think she will take again the 3rd place due to her beauty and charisma. I like her!!! Puerto Rico is also a good catch.

3RD RUNNER-UP

Crystle Stewart

(USA)

Wooooow!!! Tantalizing Crystle Stewart is also a good catch! She has the potential to become beauty queen. Her perfect body makes her above from others. I love her!!!

4TH RUNNER-UP

Simran Kaur Mundi

(India)

Totally hottie! Simran is India’s one of the beautiful delegates since Lara Dutta, Miss Universe 2000. Her eyes, lips and perfect curves earned her points. Super delicious!

FINALISTS

Jennifer Barrientos

Philippines

Laura Dundovic

(Australia)

Zana Krasniqi

(Kosovo)

Laura Tanguy

(France)

Samantha Tajik

(Canada)

feast your eyes!!!

photo credits: Miss Universe Official Website