Razzle Dazzle [Mass Market Paperback]

Stella Stevens (Author), William Hegner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2001

In this exploitive era of media manipulation and celebrity super-stardom, a young Southern singer is elevated to the status of a god, and is unable to deal with the consequence. He is driven to and damned to immortality.

Stella Stevens-glamorous celluloid goddess and Playboy centerfold-shared movie screens with Elvis Presley in Girls! Girls! Girls! And Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor early in her career. The blonde bombshell went on to star opposite Glenn Ford, Dean Martin, Bobby Darrin, Jason Robards, and with a dozen more Hollywood hunks. Her crowning glory was the Poseidon Adventure with Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine. She has enchanted audiences with her unique blend of innocents, comedy, and sensuality. Now she reveals, through fiction, all the wanton seductiveness of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Razzle Dazzle is a parallel universe to the way we were during the dazzling decades of the 60's, 70's, and 80's. It tells the story of the phenomenal rise and fall of a rock and roll singer whose sensuous mouth and gyrating hips drove women across the nation to a frenzy of worship.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This collaborative effort by actress and onetime Playboy model Stevens and former PR agent Hegner is most notable for the story behind the roman ? clef. Stevens shared studio and screen with Elvis Presley, costarring in the King's Girls! Girls! Girls!; journalists guessed that they were romantically linked. Sidney Bastion is a Memphis reporter when he first meets Johnny Gault (the Elvis character) and recognizes Gault's potent and marketable combination of voice and pelvic gyrations. Inventing Gault's past so that it reads like something "even Gault's mother wouldn't recognize," Sidney rides the na?ve singer's rocket to the top as he becomes the center of Sidney's PR empire for most of the 1960s and '70s. Johnny's womanizing, drug habit and violence don't fit his public image, of course, and eventually a tell-all biographer threatens to bust the myth to pieces. Even when Johnny dies of an overdose, however, the PR machine keeps grinding along. This behind-the-scenes look at the making of a legend shows more about the mythmakers and the careful construction of celebrity than it does about the presumably more interesting legend himself. The story tries to portray Johnny's paradoxical makeup: "In reality Johnny Gault was more simple than he was complex." But the Johnny we see is little more than a pathetic wraith, obsessed with his dead mother and overshadowed by his manipulators. Unintentionally funny sex scenes pepper the novel, efforts to make dialogue snappily au courant backfire and the narration varies from stiff to limp. None of the characters inspire empathy, and by the time Sidney's jaded conscience pushes him to an act of redemption, it's too late to make him a sympathetic hero. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Movie star and former Playboy centerfold Stevens appeared with Elvis Presley in Girls! Girls! Girls!, so perhaps it's not surprising that her first novel features a Memphis-born singer named Johnny Gault with a sexy voice and gyrating hips. But the real focus of the story is Memphis newspaperman Sidney Bastion, who takes Johnny all the way to Hollywood and then builds a career for himself as the most powerful agent in the business.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (December 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812580052
• ISBN-13: 978-0812580051
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,568,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The worst book I have ever read!, September 11, 2004

By 

MillerD (San Diego) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Razzle Dazzle (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the most amateur attempt at novel writing I have ever seen. I can't even get to the end of the book.

None of the characters are interesting or likeable. The plot is dull. The sex scenes are the MOST unsexy, unerotic and unsensual I have ever read. It is as if a 13 year old wrote them from inexperienced fantasy, not two senior citizens!

The worst thing is the historical inaccuracies. The introduction takes place in 1943 yet "souped up Mustangs and Harleys" are mentioned as well as "shark finned Coupe De Villes" WHAT? ATVs are mentioned in the early 60s. This is a RECENT term.

I bought this because I thought it would be good, fun escapist trash which I enjoy from time to time. It isn't.

I think the most insulting thing is that it is dedicated to Elvis! It is a cheap exaggerated rip off of his life. Note: One of the authors has done nothing but TRASH Elvis over the past 40 years anyway.

If the authors had been successful in their original careers, this book wouldn't have to have been written. I can't believe it was published!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great vacation read, July 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Razzle Dazzle (Hardcover)

I bought this book just before leaving on vacation. It proved to be the best of the 3 books I read on this trip and is a good read for anybody. I think the main character is based on Elvis and makes me much more interested in finding out what parts might be true and which were fictionalized. The writing is crisp and the book held me throughout. I would definitely recommend it.

5.0 out of 5 stars Sultry Stella does it again!, September 4, 2001

By 

Nelson Aspen "Author/Journalist" (Los Angeles & NYC, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Razzle Dazzle (Hardcover)

Under rated, vivacious Stella Stevens proves she's still got all the right moves...even as an author! It's a hoot in the style of Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins...and is especially fun in its thinly veiled characterizations of some of the famous folks the author, herself, has known over her long and interesting career!