Customer Reviews

Suicide Blonde: The Life of Gloria Grahame

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This is, as far as I know the only biography of Gloria Grahame, and once you start reading it you can't put it down! Her life and film career are explored in depth, using eyewitness accounts as well as Gloria's own words. Gloria Grahame is best remembered today for her awesome femme fatale roles in such classic noirs as "Crossfire", "In a Lonely Place", "Macao", "Sudden Fear", "The Big Heat", "Human Desire", "The Naked Alibi", and "Odds Against Tomorrow". In short, she was THE female icon of 1950s film noir, with a wonderful combination of sensuality and vulnerability in her screen characters.

While reading this book, I was very surprised to learn of Gloria's lifelong obsession with improving her appearance, and I had no idea about her many operations on her face (which was beautiful to begin with!). Obviously she suffered heavily from a lack of self-esteem, although she (usually) didn't let that interfere with her acting. Her troubled and often controversial marriages are explored in depth, although not in a degrading, National Enquirer-like manner. Much of the book covers Gloria's tough but ultimately futile fight against cancer, and I am simply amazed by the courage with which this talented actress faced this final battle of her often tragic life.

Gloria Grahame left this world far too early, but thanks to the popularity of film noir as well as her underated performances she will never be forgotten. She was a great actress and a very friendly person, and this book pays fitting tribute to her. My only complaint is that there is no filmography listed at the end of the book (although all her films ARE discussed in the book). Overall, I highly recommend this outstanding biography to any Gloria Grahame fan.

Gloria Grahame was an extraordinarily talented woman and actress. She lived a very interesting life, both on and off the screen. Her performances are as good or better than some of the most famous actresses of her time, and I think she deserves the same respect and recognition they have received.

Suicide Blonde is the only biography of Gloria Grahame that I have found. The back and forth style of writing, e.g. career life to home life, then back again, is not the kind of writing style that I normally enjoy. I got a little confused from time to time as to what films she was in at the time so and so happened in her life and then had to go back to try and figure it out. However, even with that said I can't find fault with either the content, which was very interesting to say the least, or how well written it was, especially the ending, which I found to be a beautifully written and moving piece.

All in all it was a great biography and I hope she is never forgotten.

Gloria Grahame was an actress whose life was bizarre even by Hollywood standards. A queen of `50s film noir, she also ventured outside that genre, and earned critical respect for playing sultry, vixenish women that literally oozed sex. A B-movie mainstay usually cast in secondary roles, she shone so brightly here that she often upstaged her lead actors. Her big year was 1952, when she appeared in four films and won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress in "The Bad and the Beautiful" (she later gave her statuette to her 5-year-old son as a playtoy). By the '60s, Grahame had, like so many other actresses of her generation, virtually dropped off the Hollywood map. The next twenty years found her grasping for minor TV appearances and work in exploitation films. When she died of cancer in 1981, she was doing parochial theatre and appearing in cameo film roles.

Though Grahame was secretive and will probably forever be an enigma, this book helps clear up a lot of her mystery. It was published in 1989 when many of Grahame's acting associates were still alive. Author Curcio had the enviable opportunity to interview them. This included actors Robert Mitchum and John Ireland, producer John Houseman (who called the actress "loony"), director Edward Dmytryck (who directed Grahame in "Crossfire"), and many others. Though Gloria's eccentricities eventually alienated many who knew her, her sister Joy Mitchum (married to Robert's brother) remained close until the end, and her remembrances and insights flesh out the biography.

Curcio has a stage background and actually worked with Grahame not long before her death. While he treats his subject with reverence and respect, he's also honest, unafraid to include quotes from people critical of the actress. And while he discusses her controversial marriage to Tony Ray - fifteen years younger and the son of her second husband, director Nicholas Ray - he avoids sensationalism. The easy route would've been to merely depict Grahame as obsessed with youth and sex. Instead, Curcio probes beneath her surface, revealing a profoundly insecure woman who internalized everything and underwent 4 bitter marriages and divorces. It all led to vanity surgery that carved up her lower face, permanently paralyzing her upper lip, and culminated in a nervous breakdown in 1965. Needless to say, film roles after this became exceedingly scarce.

There are some flaws with the book: Curcio occasionally goes overboard with his psychoanalyzing. He also has a weakness for pretentious words ("inchoate") and Latin ("Gloria Grahame's annus mirabilis was 1952"). Occasionally, especially early in the book, he becomes nonsensical ("...she didn't understand (the play's) capacity for immutable consequences; but it engaged her destiny, through graduations of velocity that eventually became precipitate and headlong..."). Editor, please? He also namedrops obscure acting people, and uses insider stage terms that mean nothing to a non-actor. And there are quite a few errors that are inexcusable. For example, Grahame's name in her Oscar-winning role was Rosemary BARTLOW, not Rosemary Lee.

But despite the mistakes it's still a good biography, built on firsthand research. Curcio obviously had a great fondness for the "loony" actress, which gives the book warmth. Despite her tawdry life, there are numerous humorous moments, particularly toward the end when she was dazzling much younger actors on stage with her energy, diligence, and lovable, spacey behavior. It was a final flowering for her. And don't let the title mislead you. "Suicide Blonde" refers to dyeing one's hair "by one's own hand." Grahame was not suicidal. On the contrary, she fought hard against her cancer, downplaying its seriousness and willing herself to appear on stage despite her pain. Though her final moments were sad, Curcio conveys them with poignancy.

As her one-time costar and next-door-neighbor Humphrey Bogart might've said: "She was one helluva dame."

This biography should be subtitled "The Life and Times of Gloria Grahame's Lips," as first-time biographer Vincent Curcio spends the majority of the first 200 pages of this disjointed volume describing the movie actress's ever-changing lips more than her life, art, or career.

Even so, the author could have used Ms. Grahame's constant (and unnecessary) plastic surgery as a springboard to an insightful investigation into the woman's psychological make-up. Instead, Curcio simply glosses over this and other alarmingly bizarre behaviors with star-struck excuses.

While Ms. Grahame appears to be a fascinating figure, Curcio's book simply fails to illuminate. Written in a disconcerting train-of-thought style, it is nearly impossible to follow Grahame's personal and professional development. Quotations at times go on for pages - I found myself backtracking several times just to remind myself who was being quoted.

Overall one of the worst biographies I've ever read and definitely not worth the $30+ it is currently fetching.

This book is a book that keeps you turning pages. It is the most ravishing book. To tell you the contents is to tell you the story. It is a story of life love and pain. Something we all live with on a day to day basis. It will inspire you yet you will see yourself. A book that should be read over and over till your brain works no more.