[.ca] Drama Queens (ISBN 1573241369)

lots of fun!:
This book reviews the lives and careers of many classic movie actresses--including Marilyn Monroe, Hedy Lamarr, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and many silent film stars you may not have heard of. It includes all the juicy gossip you could wish for, but not much detail about the films produced by these women. A fair number of pictures, and many "interesting fact" boxes. I really enjoyed this book, and I think classic film buffs or gossip-lovers would probably find it a good read.

Queens of the tantrum:
Okay, actresses have an automatic reputation as divas, even if it's sometimes undeserved. But "Drama Queens: Wild Women of the Silver Screen" casts an entirely new light on actresses all through film history -- and it can be a not-so-pretty picture, with tantrums, weird affairs and feuds that lasted... well, forever. Autumn Stephens weaves in the actresses by personality rather than chronologically. At the beginning things were just as wild, with silent star Theda Bara (whose entire past was fabricated) and hedonistic Alla Nazimova (whose niece was Nancy Reagan). Later she handles stars that we still know of, such as "Mommy Dearest" Crawford, Bette Davis, aggressively sexpottish Mae West, the tragic Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly, and the Gabor sisters. Stephens doesn't neglect the lesser-known stars as well, such as those that many people don't know of: Hattie McDaniel, the gutsy lady who played Mammy in "Gone With The Wind"; Mary Minter, the faux virgin whose reputation (and career) went south when her lover died; the two nightmare wives of Rudy Valentino; and Lupe Velez, a sexy spitfire who committed suicide to avoid being an unwed mother. Yeah, that's a lot better. All thoroughly naughty, and pretty much the stuff of tabloid articles -- Stephens even sprinkles it with a few modern actresses, like Kim Basinger, Sharon Stone and Julia Roberts. Weirdly enough, these ladies seem relatively tame compared to their predecessors -- maybe it's because the standards were higher then (such as Ingrid Bergman's scandalous pregnancy), but somehow I don't think so. You can't really compete with garden orgies, slave bracelets and negative comments about Clark Gable's naughty bits. The only thing that keeps this from being pure fun is that it sort of putters off, into a part about female directors and producers. I don't know about you, but "wild women" doesn't really describe a lot of them. Better to focus on the salacious stuff -- that is the best material, and Stephens seems to have had fun compiling it all. As an added bonus -- and presumably to keep the book from being hundreds of pages long -- she sprinkles in some short tidbits about breast size in movies, odd reactions to the Oscars, how famous sexpots kept sexy, critics who incorrectly criticized some of the actresses, and their best lines ("I am a marvelous housekeeper," Zsa Zsa Gabor said. "Every time I leave a man, I keep his house"). Don't expect a lot of movie history or examination of how these ladies changed (or didn't change) Hollywood. For rumors, naughty revelations and some obscure scandals of long ago, this is a great source.

Almost loved it...:
This was a gift for a friend's birthday. She really loved all the quotes from classic movie actresses but felt a little annoyed when actresses like JULIA ROBERTS were included in a collection that seems to be about the old time movie actresses. However, she got a lot of entertainment out of the book and in fact read the entire thing in one night.