ANYTHING YOUR LITTLE HEART DESIRES: An American Family Story [Hardcover]

Patricia Bosworth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 22, 1997

An intimate and tragic portrait of Bartley Crum, a prominent activist lawyer of the 1930s and 1940s, who fell victim to McCarthyism and committed suicide during that era, comes to life in the words of his daughter, a well-known biographer. 25,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The author profiles her relatives with the same sensitivity she brought to biographies of Montgomery Clift and Diane Arbus. She pays tribute to the liberal idealism that led her father, Bartley C. Crum, to defend unpopular leftists at home and Jewish refugees desperate to get into Palestine abroad, even as she depicts his lengthy absences and financial carelessness wreaking havoc on his wife and children. Patricia Bosworth's portraits of her unhappy, adulterous mother and withdrawn, suicidal brother are equally nuanced. The subtitle says it all: "An American Family Story."

From Library Journal

Writers of familial reminiscences often reveal a taste for treacly superlatives and insincere endearments. No such charge can be leveled here against Bosworth (e.g., Diane Arbus, LJ 6/1/84), the daughter of Bartley C. Crum. Crum was perhaps best known as one of the six lawyers who defended the Hollywood Ten when the House Un-American Activities Committee was pursuing its investigations of the "Communist peril" at the start of the Cold War in 1947. In presenting the story of Crum's remarkable career as lawyer to such notables as Rita Hayworth, adviser to President Truman, publisher of a liberal tabloid, and champion of the First Amendment, Bosworth maintains an admirable combination of sympathetic understanding and never-cold detachment. One feels that she has accomplished what she evidently set out to do: come to terms with her brother's and her father's suicides and reconcile herself to her father's having named names to prove his own loyalty. An engrossing study of personalities and motivations; strongly recommended.?A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1St Edition edition (April 22, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684808099
• ISBN-13: 978-0684808093
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,938,644 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Painful Times, February 22, 2010

By 

Emilie Debrigard - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Anything Your Little Heart Desires: An American Family Story (Paperback)

I was looking for context for the Hollywood Blacklist. Although Bosworth's father, Bart Crum, played a fairly minor role in the Blacklist affair, as he defended only two of the accused screenwriters, nonetheless his involvement was crucial. He was a liberal Republican in a crowd of New Dealers, fellow travelers, and Communists. In the end he wasn't able to get off scot free. Bosworth lets the reader draw conclusions about what led to Crum's suicide. It's a horrible story and bears repeating, over and over again.

Bosworth is also good at delineating the personality and actions of her mother, a charming hostess who was also capable of drowning puppies in the bathtub.

Finally, the description of 1940's upper-middle-class milieu is superbly done.