All That Glitters HC Thomas Tryon Knopf 1986

Description

All That Glitters Hardcover
by Thomas Tryon (Author)

In Hollywood, a cynical writer recalls five faded beauties of the silver screen

Charlie Caine has been to too many Hollywood funerals. The studio system is long gone, and its stars—some forgotten, some preserved for display on a late-night show—are beginning to pass on, as well. Only a few turn out for the final performance of Babe Austrian, a peroxide-blond beauty whose red-hot talkies changed the way America thought about sex. As he gazes into her coffin, Caine remembers Babe as she was: a dynamite beauty with secrets that could have burned Hollywood to the ground.

In Babe and four other interlocking novellas, Caine recalls the leading ladies of long-lost Hollywood: Belinda, whose daughter was as cruel as she was lovely; Claire, who would do anything to stay in the public eye; April, fragile, beautiful, and mad; and Maude, Hollywood’s most respected matron, whose happy marriage had a lie at its heart. Charlie Caine knows where cinema’s bodies are buried, and he’s anxious to start digging.

The author of the bestselling Crowned Heads and The Other depicts a tarnished Hollywood dream in these interrelated novellas chronicling the overlapping lives of five glamorous movie stars, four of whom are bound together by their love for the bedhopping agent who pushed them to the top. The narrator is Charlie Caine, an actor turned writer who ticks off the blur of unhappy events that befall these women as their careers soar and stall. There’s Babe, a blowsy, cut-rate Mae West; Belinda, whose bad seed daughter ruins more than one life; fragile April, who crumbles into madness under the weight of constant tragedy; Maude, the gracious doyenne of American film whose happy marriage may have been an illusion; and the supremely bitchy Claire, a scrabbling, grasping survivor. Famous names and recognizable situations are sprinkled throughout for flavor.

Hardcover: 479 pages
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

In the same vein as his other Hollywood novel. “Crowned Heads”, Tryon gives us 5 novellas about 5 glamorous Hollywood actresses. They all have a legendary agent in common which nicely connects all the novellas. But all is not glamour to their stories–there is also much grime that is a by-product of Hollywood excess. Tryon, who was a Hollywood actor for 15 years, shows us that there is a price to pay to be successful in Hollywood. This is Old Hollywood, so don’t expect familiarity with today’s Hollywood. It’s fun to guess on which real-life actresses Tryon is basing the book’s fictitious actresses.

This novel is narrated by a writer who weaves in and out of the lives of the actresses. I suspect some of the book is autobiographical even though Tryon has never stated this, As with all his books, Tryon has such a marvelous way with words that it’s as if we are watching a movie.

Partial remains of sticker on cover. Small tear in dust jacket at bottom of spine. First edition. 0-394-55023-4.

A special-edition comic booklet which sets the scene for the game Perfect Dark Zero called “Hong Kong Sunrise”. Written by Eric Trautmann and illustrated by Cold FuZion Studios.

It’s a slightly different Joanna than we’ve seen thus far; her Dad is still alive, she’s still reckless and thinks she – and those closest to her are indestructible – so it’s a somewhat less complicated character to write at that point in her life. She doesn’t really start to sharpen up until the events of Perfect Dark Zero.

Near mint condition.Near mint condition.