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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Predictable 20s Romance,
This review is from: Today is Tonight (Paperback)
Judy and Peter Lansdowne have the perfect marriage. Their love for each other is only enhanced by their extravagant lifestyle; on their wedding anniversary they are surrounded with friends and baubles that prove that their pocketbooks are bloated. After a night of drunkeness and passion, a group is led by Peter on a horseback riding escapade. Things do not go smoothly. He attempts to take his horse on a jump, but it balks and sends him to the ground where another horse stamps on his head. He is alive, but he is blind.Judy is in hysterics, and during the time when Peter is on the brink of life and death, the stock market crashes, leaving them poor. It is up to Judy to keep up Peter's morale, even though their world has changed entirely. The only support she has is the love of their friend Bill, the man that Judy might have married. A mildly amusing book, Today is Tonight hinges on an incredibly melodramatic story filled with stereotypical characters. If you enjoy reading such books, I recommend this one because it isn't terrible. It just doesn't offer anything outside of the predictable. Most likely, the only people that will bother tracking it down will be Jean Harlow fans. Harlow wrote the novel during her short life but it was never published until the 60s. It is interesting to think of Harlow in relation to the Roaring Twenties since she didn't achieve major stardom until the 30s.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bombshell's Brainchild,
By s.ferber (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: TODAY IS TONIGHT. (Hardcover)
I originally sought out "Today Is Tonight" after hearing that it is not a book ABOUT the legendary '30s screen actress Jean Harlow, but rather--and incredibly--a NOVEL written BY her! Indeed, in the book's introduction, Harlow's agent and close friend, Arthur Landau, tells us that the story came to the actress in a dream, and that she wrote her book sometime after 1933 or '34; her heyday. (The novel unfortunately got tied up in a legal battle with Harlow's studio, MGM, and went unpublished for over 30 years, until 1965.) Halfway through reading this entertaining novel, however, I happened to peruse David Stenn's biography of Harlow, "Bombshell," and was disappointed to learn the truth. Yes, the story of "Today Is Tonight" WAS Harlow's, but the book itself, apparently, was penned by Hollywood publicist Tony Beacon, and polished up later by screenwriter Carey Wilson. So the novel doesn't quite give us the glimpse into Harlow's mind that I had been hoping for, but still does reveal much.In the book, we meet a young, attractive couple, Peter and Judy Lansdowne, on the occasion of their third anniversary, in September 1929. With a rich stockbroker husband, a house in Westchester on Long Island Sound, and loads of rich friends to have drunken parties with, life certainly does hold much promise for Judy. Everything changes for the two, however, when Peter is blinded in a freak equestrian accident and the Lansdownes lose everything in the Stock Market crash. Now paupered and living in the relative squalor of Manhattan's East 63rd Street (!), Judy embarks on a doubly duplicitous course of action. She not only decides to keep the knowledge of the crash from her husband, as well as their impecunious state, but also confuses Peter's sense of time, so the blind man will think day is night and vice versa (hence, the novel's title). Thus, she feels free to work nights at a Broadway bawdy club doing a Lady Godiva act, bringing home some bacon to her befuddled hubby. And if this high-wire act of double juggling strikes the reader as being impracticable, imagine what it does to poor Judy, who must also sort out her feelings for the kindly Bill Reynolds, Peter's ex-partner, on top of everything else! It is an interesting story, and the Lansdownes are a bright, witty and likable pair. The book is often racy, never dull, and provides a fascinating glimpse of life amongst the once-rich set in early '30s New York. The book also comes with its share of problems, however, and reveals some of the deficiencies of the tyro novelist. There are numerous instances of fuzzy writing, a tendency to show off with $2 words, and some repetitious turns of phrase (as in "blind, unseeing eyes"). Many characters are introduced in the novel's opening chapters, never to be heard from again. And then there is that doubly preposterous central plot device! Still, despite all, "Today Is Tonight" remains fascinating, for the simple reason that it IS Harlow's brainchild, and because she felt the part of Judy Lansdowne would be the ideal screen role for her, if and when the novel ever made it to the silver screen. (It never did.) Indeed, reading the book, one can very easily picture Harlow in the lead, with someone like Franchot Tone playing Peter, and perhaps Jack Carson or Ralph Bellamy portraying Bill. It certainly would have made for a clever--albeit implausible--dramedy, leavened with a goodly share of sex and romance. If anything, the novel demonstrates that the world lost not only a superbly gifted actress when Harlow died in 1937, at the age of 26, but a promising young writer as well. The book is assuredly recommended to all her fans.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I'm Not Convinced She Wrote It, but I'd Like to Think She Did,
By
This review is from: Today is Tonight (Paperback)
Peter and Judy Landsdowne are in the early years of a blissfully happy marriage in September of 1929. Before the very quick 200+ pages go by, this changes in several ways large and small, with consequences for the young couple and those who love them. I can see this terribly romantic, dramatic book being written by a woman in her early 20s. It encompasses romance that Jean Harlow, in her real life, had problems maintaining. It contains dramatic features that most young writers indulge in when they are jotting down their stories. The novel, according to the foreword, was held for thirty years and released in the mid-1960s (probably to provide a push to the paperback release of Irving Shulman's biography of Harlow and the Carroll Baker film based on it).I would not be surprised if Jean Harlow drafted this piece before her untimely death in 1937. I would be surprised if she wanted anyone else to see it before she herself had had a chance to refine it herself, possibly after she'd grown a bit older and wiser. It is a page-turning read, but it is in an occasionally over-wrought style, one that she might have wanted to polish if she'd lived long enough. There is one other reason that I would buy the premise that Jean Harlow wrote at least the first draft herself. It is written in a very "cinematic" style. As I read it, I could see the scenes as they would play out on a movie screen. As an actress, and a particularly astute one at that, it would be natural for Miss Harlow to structure her story in such a way, perhaps with herself in the leading role (though this book would never have made it past the Hays Code).
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