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I, An Actress: The Autobiography of Karen Jamey
 
 
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I, An Actress: The Autobiography of Karen Jamey [Paperback]

Jeffrey Dinsmore (Contributor)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)


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Book Description

November 9, 2005
Dark, slapstick comedy rules in the hilarious I, An Actress. As a teen, Karen Hitler dreams of escaping her surname and her small town roots to become a real Hollywood starlet. When Karen's mother runs off to become a hobo, she and her father change their names and drive to Los Angeles. The young actress gets her start in a traveling minstrel show where she has an affair with the washed-up Fletcher Bisque and acquires a taste for sordid love. From there it's on to mobster Tony Tarantella, but when he catches Karen with another man, she gets shipped off Guatemalan revolutionary Juan Banana. Karen eventually returns to the United States and becomes a star long enough for Senator Joe McCarthy to haul her up before the House Un-American Activities Committee for Communist sympathies. After her fall, Karen bounces from one drug habit to the next until an improbable transformation makes her the star she always knew she was. Relentlessly doling out morbid humor and mercilessly skewering Hollywood clichés, I, An Actress is a rabid romp through the dark side of Hollywood fame.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dinsmore takes a cheeky look at the life and times of a tawdry B-movie actress in his entertaining pulp debut, written as the autobiography of Karen Jamey Hitler, a nonstarlet of the 1930s. A precocious, gorgeous German girl whose immigrant parents worked the minstrel circuit, Jamey drops her surname and injures a competitor to get her first significant part. Her career takes off in earnest once she moves from Baltimore to L.A. with her father, overcomes a corrupt agent and hooks up with Tony Tarantella. The seedy gangster introduces Jamey to the "big" names, gives her a job as a stripper and becomes her lover. When he catches her in bed with Fletcher Bisque and kills Fletcher, Jamey flees to Guatemala, where she quickly becomes a local celebrity and gets involved in revolution (and romantic intrigue with a pair of political rivals). A return to America to rebuild her career leads to monster movies, alcoholism and a breakdown. Dinsmore cobbles together a nice blend of Hollywood shtick and bloated narcissism for Jamey's voice, and the result is a light diversion: dirty, low, funny and stylish. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 250 pages
  • Publisher: Contemporary Press (November 9, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0974461490
  • ISBN-13: 978-0974461496
  • Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,787,372 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jeffrey Dinsmore is a boring snob who writes stupid stories and looks like a real jerk all the time. His glasses make him look like a jerk and he is a pointy jerk. He eats like a million donuts for breakfast and every time he opens his mouth he says something stupid about how stupid his face is. When asked in an interview what he would most like to be doing he said, "pooping all over myself," because he is such a jerk and that's probably what he likes to do all the time.

Love,
an 8-year old girl who hates that rat Jeffrey Dinsmore

 

Customer Reviews

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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars SUNSET BOULEVARD ON PCP, December 15, 2005
This review is from: I, An Actress: The Autobiography of Karen Jamey (Paperback)
This is quite an unclassifiable book. It is very out of time - this is a good thing - and Dinsmores dead pan delivery underscores the humour in this outrageous faux autobiography. Relentelessly skewing Hollywood cliches, US race relations and and the culture of celebrity I An Actress delivers plenty of laughs per page. The clever part is that you actually find yourself emotionionally involved with the minstrel turned stripper turned communist turned trash movie icon Karen Jamey.

Why is this book not outselling The Da Vinci Code? Lemmie giive you a clue : Da Vinci dies at the end! And Jesus was Batman.

Now go buy this book, goddamnit.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars It's Cheeky, Charming, Clever, and other good things that don't start with a "C", November 20, 2005
This review is from: I, An Actress: The Autobiography of Karen Jamey (Paperback)
Dinsmore delivers the goods with his sophomore novel, from Brooklyn-based neo-pulp publishing company Contemporary Press (you should really check out their other stuff too; it's all great). Once you get started with I AN ACTRESS, you can't put it down. I tore through it in one sitting -- it's cheeky, charming, and clever, with a great mix of razor-sharp satire and well-wrought plotting. Awesome.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Grandma and the roses, December 25, 2005
By 
Georgia Judy (Dunwoody, Georgia United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: I, An Actress: The Autobiography of Karen Jamey (Paperback)
I read this book on an airplane trip to Flint, Michigan and loved it!! The part where the grandma never got to smell the roses was my favorite. Buy it and read it.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
The ceilings are what I remember most of all. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
other actress
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Karen Jamey, Von Growler, Los Angeles, Juan Banana, Fletcher Bisque, Jack Scallinger, Slippery Girls, Namsy Brooks, United States, Col Weissberger, Pauly Auskie, Uncle Peter, United Fruit, Countess D'arger, Hot Money, Handy Peters, Miss Davis, Tuckered Trucker, Bette Davis, Mister Mary, Queenie Thompson, State Room, The New Soul Revue, Clark Gable, Monster Lake
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