Who doesn’t enjoy reading the dirt on a messy Hollywood break-up? I mean, hell, the entertainment media machine would come to a standstill if all romances were happily-ever-after storybook affairs. Leave it to Jim Parish, then, to put together a book that highlights the “best” of the bunch. Parish, whose last book tackled the life and times of some of Hollywood’s biggest flops (“Fiasco“), tackles the Tinseltown relationships that went belly-up, getting as current as Pitt-Aniston and Hawke-Thurman, but going as far as back as Hollywood’s glory days.
It’s an educational ride through cinematic history. You hear loads about Bogie and Bacall, but the tale of Humphrey Bogart’s third wife – Lauren Bacall was his fourth – is fascinating…if tragic. Mayo Methot was a substance abuser, but she also was the victim of paranoia and schizophrenia, resulting in her stabbing Bogie in the small of the back with a butcher knife and slamming his head against a concrete sidewalk. Yikes. There are also the tales of famed romances like Joe Dimaggio and Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra, and Orson Welles and Lana Turner.
Well worth checking out.
