Playland [Hardcover]

John Gregory Dunne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 1996

Playland is a tough, mordantly funny, splendidly layered novel about Hollywood in the 1940s and America in the 1990s, about fame and its excesses, honor and personal betrayal, and a fifty-year search for what may or may not be the truth. At its center is Blue Tyler, a spoiled, untamed child star who disappeared from Hollywood in disgrace when she was twenty and reappeared forty-five years and eleven marriages later as a mysterious bag lady in a trailer park outside Detroit. "Everyone living or dead seemed to have an opinion about Blue Tyler, " observes Jack Broderick, the screenwriter-narrator of Playland. "Genius. Whore. Iconoclast. Madwoman. Liar. Free spirit." Winner of an Academy Award at ten, and the sole survivor of the 1942 plane crash that took the life of Carole Lombard, she had seemed blessed with luck and accountable to no one. It was her willfulness that attracted the gangster Jacob King, whose murderous history and volcanic furies satisfied Blue's every need to flout convention. Jack Broderick accidentally rediscovers Blue Tyler and begins seeking answers to questions unasked for decades. The clues lead him to a vibrant assortment of characters: Maury Ahearne, a sinister Detroit homicide cop; Schlomo Buchalter, an eighty-four-pound retired hit man dying of cancer; Morris Lefkowitz, the furrier king of organized crime; Meta Dierdorf, Blue's childhood friend whose murder is still unsolved fifty years after the fact; the mogul J. F. French; and the two caretakers of Blue's reputation, J. F.'s son, Arthur, and Chuckie O'Hara, a homosexual film director, war hero, ex-communist, and namer of names before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Together they hold the key to the mystery of Blue Tyler. Where had she been in the half century since she vanished? Who would profit from her past and her uncertain future? How much of what she, Arthur French, and Chuckie O'Hara remembered could be believed? These questions and their harsh and often conflicting

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This is the story of a 1940s Hollywood child star who resurfaces in the '90s as bag lady in Detroit, and of the screenwriter who accidentally rediscovers her.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

YA?A terrific read. Screen writer Jack Broderick finds himself in several awkward situations even before he winds up sharing a late-night cab ride with Blue Tyler. Tyler, a former child star 40 years removed from Hollywood, is now Autumn Breeze Trailer Park's answer to Norma Desmond. Sensing a story with a big payoff, Broderick tries to answer the questions surrounding her long hiatus. Young adults will be swept away as Jack Broderick tries to piece together the wild story of Blue Tyler. Dunne's vibrant characters and true-to-life dialogue make Playland impossible to put down.?Philip Clark, R.E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Random House Value Publishing (October 2, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517171430
• ISBN-13: 978-0517171431
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,666,465 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The child star and the gangster, September 9, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Playland (Hardcover)

Digging up the glittering myths of Hollywood to find long-buried truths is a task for a desperate man. The wealthy narrator, screenwriter Jack Broderick, is running from himself after the death of his wife, killed in a car accident while they were discussing divorce and he was driving.

By pure serendipity, Broderick runs into a child star who disappeared from Hollywood 45 years before at the pinnacle of her career. Blue Tyler now lives a rather hand-to-mouth existence in a trailer park and Broderick siezes the opportunity to immerse himself in her life - a possible movie or book.

Tyler, born Melba Mae Toolate to a woman who sold her for a bus ticket, became a star at age 4, grew up in the movies and was abandoned by Hollywood during the Red Scare of the '50s.

A product of adulation and attention but little love, she became both predator and prey. Broderick focuses on the circumstances that led to her disappearance - particularly her dangerous liason with Chicago gangster Jacob King and her relationships with studio head J.F. French who controlled her life and his son, Arthur, who she was intended to marry.

Piecing events together through interviews with Melba Mae (she reverted to the birth name she hated), Arthur French and Chuckie O'Hara, gay war hero and Blue Tyler's director, Dunne skillfully creates the schizo feel of life lived on two planes - the small percentage that is truly private and the greater part played for effect, exaggerated and glossed over. Blue, a used and protected child of the movies, never learned any other way to live. Broderick delves beneath the layers of self-deceit and polished scenes to find "truth."

Dunne's explorations of the magic of serendipity (and how lucky is it?), the effects of ego and the requirements of a "good story" on truth give the novel layers of wit and irony, but it's robbed of real depth by the focus on gangsterism and the rehashing of the Bugsy Seigel story. Blue Tyler is a character who arouses sympathy and impatience, but the heavy handed thugs at the center of the plot distract from her complex pathos.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars HUMOR ABOUNDS, ALTHOUGH OFTEN IT'S DARK, April 10, 2004

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Playland (Hardcover)

Whether its due to his Celtic blood or wary eye, John Gregory Dunne brought an inimitable comic cynicism to his work. He did so again con mucho brio in Playland. With Hollywood, New York City and Detroit as backdrops Dunne spun a tale spiced with enough reality to make the reader believe and relish every word.

Jack Broderick, Playland's narrator, is a rich screenwriter who was the protagonist in Dunne's successful The Red, White and Blue. Through his observations the plot spins around Blue Tyler, an impossibly demanding and impossible to satisfy child star who disappeared amid scandal when she was twenty. Her next appearance is some 11 marriages and 45 years later - she is a bag lady whose shelter is a trailer park near Detroit.

After Broderick finds Blue again, he digs into a series of mysteries. Now, add a New York mobster who is building a spectacular gambling casino named "Playland," from which the book derives its title, a sly homocide detective, and Blue's childhood friend whose murder remains unsolved 50 years after the fact, and you have an unforgettable cast of characters.

As always with this author, humor abounds (albeit the humor is often dark). "Playland" is prime Dunne.

3.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Prose, Weak on Story, December 21, 2010

By 

Mark "Markus" (Hanover, IN, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Playland (Paperback)

Dunne had writing talent dripping off his finger tips, but here he seems stuck. He seems not to be able to get on with telling an interesting story, as if doubting himself.

So: it's a long book, but has inadequate plot. He does not get me to care about a central character and that character does not accomplish anything significant. The long passages of interviews with Blue Tyler become tedious and feel pointless. Despite the stylish writing, which I continue to admire, I had trouble getting through it due to lack of story.