Who is Charlotte Chandler?
Not the Girl Next Door is a biography of Joan Crawford by New York-based Charlotte Chandler. It's a quick read, laid out essentially as a conversation between the author and various individuals she's interviewed: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Vincent Sherman, and of course Joan herself. Or, is it? After finishing the book, which was only published a couple years ago, I couldn't help but be curious when the interviews were conducted - and who, if anyone, was still alive? Crawford died thirty-three years ago; other subjects could plausibly have been alive until recently...
Chandler is the author of a series of biographies of Hollywood stars. When her 1978 bio on Groucho Marx Hello, I Must Be Going hit the shelves, it received a middling review from the New York Times. "One of the problems," wrote Joe Flaherty, "...is that Miss Chandler, like the studio heads, seems bent on taming her subject." A year later the Times reported that the book was so wildly popular around the world that the UCLA Film Archive was making an effort to preserve the hand-painted billboard advertising the book - which literally stopped traffic on Sunset Boulevard!
Other biographies followed: Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini. It is claimed in a few places online that Chandler is a pen name for Lyn Erhard (which looks amusingly like an anagram). The publisher, Applause Theatre and Cinema, books provides us no information on the author. The wikipedia entry on the Chandler (for whatever it matters) implies that she is a big fake: "her work often features loquacious, unfamiliar quotations by deceased celebrities whom Chandler claims to have personally interviewed, although the statements occasionally contradict those already in print." A stronger reaction appears in a blog post on the fan-based component of the TCM website. Titled "Charlotte Chandler's Body of Lies," author "macktheblack" completely disputes the veracity of Chandler's claim that she personally interviewed Marlene Dietrich, known to be reclusive. This point of view is supported by quotations from another Dietrich biographer. "I bought this book excited to learn," Mack writes, believing he was the victim of a hoax. "I finished this book delighted to have learned. But the aftermath of it has proven the most educational. A smack in the face that left harsh reality ringing in my ears."
I wonder, do classic movie fans really want the truth about studio stars? Or, are their perfectly lit and luxuriously dressed black and white bodies basically just fodder for our fantasies? Do these biographies not just give us more details to fantasize to? There are only so many films to watch, and others are have been lost to history since the nitrate deteriorated.
I find it mildly amusing that out there somewhere a classic movie fan is outraged (outraged!) that they were given a possibly fabricated narrative of a fabricated character, a studio creation known by a name suggested by magazine readers. Is there anything that can eclipse (or correct) the scathing depiction of her in her adopted daughter's own book, Mommy Dearest? Sure, some readers may want a more solidly researched biography, one drawing on properly footnoted archival papers. But I think it is the mystery that infuriates these angry readers yet in some ways, this is what they seek onscreen in the first place from classic movies: an idealized, constructed and heavenly glowing being. This book is strangely silent on what it does purport, which that it is a conversation. "Told me," and "Told us," are used frequently, but we don't know when or where. (It begs the question whether "Chandler" is still alive, and if not, who is capitalizing). It's strange to me that the original Groucho biography was never questioned as being untrue; at worst it was described as a bit sloppy. My theory is that someone has Chandler's notes and tapes and is finishing the work, with or without her help. (At worst, all this speculation would mean we are all doubting some poor older woman who has done some very interesting interviews.) Whoever is writing is good - the book flows smoothly and small details are dropped in that characterize the subject in a memorable way. Joan's first home is condescendingly described as having "a kind of yard-sale elegance." Now, that's just something you'd expect Douglas Fairbanks Jr. to say, isn't it?
The Girl Next Door gives readers exactly what they might want to hear. Joan was the same girl that she was in her pictures - born into poor circumstances, she clawed her way to respectability and then some. Joan wasn't a well-informed parent but did her best and certainly was never cruel. It was Christopher and Christina, Joan's adopted children, who were dysfunctional and profited off the Crawford name. For a book mainly tempered in tone, the chapter "told by" Vincent Sherman is somewhat shocking, describing Joan Crawford becoming sexually excited watching herself onscreen during a private viewing with Sherman. Yet it all fits together nicely. I agree with macktheblack - I had fun reading the book. Of course I will never know what of it is "true."
I am waiting for the 2015 personal biography of Bette Davis!
Chandler is the author of a series of biographies of Hollywood stars. When her 1978 bio on Groucho Marx Hello, I Must Be Going hit the shelves, it received a middling review from the New York Times. "One of the problems," wrote Joe Flaherty, "...is that Miss Chandler, like the studio heads, seems bent on taming her subject." A year later the Times reported that the book was so wildly popular around the world that the UCLA Film Archive was making an effort to preserve the hand-painted billboard advertising the book - which literally stopped traffic on Sunset Boulevard!
Other biographies followed: Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini. It is claimed in a few places online that Chandler is a pen name for Lyn Erhard (which looks amusingly like an anagram). The publisher, Applause Theatre and Cinema, books provides us no information on the author. The wikipedia entry on the Chandler (for whatever it matters) implies that she is a big fake: "her work often features loquacious, unfamiliar quotations by deceased celebrities whom Chandler claims to have personally interviewed, although the statements occasionally contradict those already in print." A stronger reaction appears in a blog post on the fan-based component of the TCM website. Titled "Charlotte Chandler's Body of Lies," author "macktheblack" completely disputes the veracity of Chandler's claim that she personally interviewed Marlene Dietrich, known to be reclusive. This point of view is supported by quotations from another Dietrich biographer. "I bought this book excited to learn," Mack writes, believing he was the victim of a hoax. "I finished this book delighted to have learned. But the aftermath of it has proven the most educational. A smack in the face that left harsh reality ringing in my ears."
I wonder, do classic movie fans really want the truth about studio stars? Or, are their perfectly lit and luxuriously dressed black and white bodies basically just fodder for our fantasies? Do these biographies not just give us more details to fantasize to? There are only so many films to watch, and others are have been lost to history since the nitrate deteriorated.
I find it mildly amusing that out there somewhere a classic movie fan is outraged (outraged!) that they were given a possibly fabricated narrative of a fabricated character, a studio creation known by a name suggested by magazine readers. Is there anything that can eclipse (or correct) the scathing depiction of her in her adopted daughter's own book, Mommy Dearest? Sure, some readers may want a more solidly researched biography, one drawing on properly footnoted archival papers. But I think it is the mystery that infuriates these angry readers yet in some ways, this is what they seek onscreen in the first place from classic movies: an idealized, constructed and heavenly glowing being. This book is strangely silent on what it does purport, which that it is a conversation. "Told me," and "Told us," are used frequently, but we don't know when or where. (It begs the question whether "Chandler" is still alive, and if not, who is capitalizing). It's strange to me that the original Groucho biography was never questioned as being untrue; at worst it was described as a bit sloppy. My theory is that someone has Chandler's notes and tapes and is finishing the work, with or without her help. (At worst, all this speculation would mean we are all doubting some poor older woman who has done some very interesting interviews.) Whoever is writing is good - the book flows smoothly and small details are dropped in that characterize the subject in a memorable way. Joan's first home is condescendingly described as having "a kind of yard-sale elegance." Now, that's just something you'd expect Douglas Fairbanks Jr. to say, isn't it?
The Girl Next Door gives readers exactly what they might want to hear. Joan was the same girl that she was in her pictures - born into poor circumstances, she clawed her way to respectability and then some. Joan wasn't a well-informed parent but did her best and certainly was never cruel. It was Christopher and Christina, Joan's adopted children, who were dysfunctional and profited off the Crawford name. For a book mainly tempered in tone, the chapter "told by" Vincent Sherman is somewhat shocking, describing Joan Crawford becoming sexually excited watching herself onscreen during a private viewing with Sherman. Yet it all fits together nicely. I agree with macktheblack - I had fun reading the book. Of course I will never know what of it is "true."
I am waiting for the 2015 personal biography of Bette Davis!
