Read instead…in print #42: Veronica

photo: Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake in “Sullivan’s a Travels”, 1941 | Paramount Pictures

Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake had been out-of-print, rare and sought-after for many decades, and was reissued 5 years ago by Dean Street Press. It is a good memoir. Veronica Lake was a star, “professionally conceived through Hollywood’s search for box office”, but she didn’t play the Hollywood game very much, she said what she thought and she certainly resented that her box office climbing came with her giving up “something in return. I had obliterated any inroads I’d made as an actress in Sullivan’s Travels. I was right back in the low-cut gowns and wearing the sexy hair.”

Her book is not pretentious. It gives you a little taste of fame, more bitter than sweet, and a lot more taste of real life, with spurs to success, sour disappointments, limelight moments, gritty reality checks. It’s less of a pretty sight of Hollywood and more of a slice of hard-earned and hard-lived life. She doesn’t pretend to be someone she’s not and I wish all the adepts of the celebrity culture that’s riding so high right now could see behind the glitter. Veronica Lake tells her life simply, with no flourishes and no lingering over her successful Hollywood years, but her satirical touch enriches it beautifully. “They gave me a job wrapping packages, a dull routine except for the little bell I had at my disposal. I could ring it – ding-ding – and a teenage runner would appear to run errands for me. He would get me more wrapping paper or twine or Christmas stickers and the like. I was drunk with power.” I thought of Sullivan’s Travels when I read this, how good a comedienne she was.

Read instead… in print is about a good book about cinema or filmmakers. No discursive, pretentious analyses, no verbose scrutiny. Because the idea is to invite you to read the book, not read about it here. But instead of using social media, I use my journal. Back to basics. Take it as a wish to break free of over-reliance on social media (even if it’s just for posting a photo of a good book) for presenting my work, cultural finds and interests. These are things to be enjoyed as stand-alone pieces in a more substantial and meaningful way than showing them in the black hole of Instagram thronged with an audience with a short attention span. This is also a look through my voluminous collection of books about film that I use as research in my adamant decision to rely less and less on the online and more on more on print materials.