MEAN...MOODY...MAGNIFICENT!: Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend, more than one way to make it in the world

MEAN...MOODY...MAGNIFICENT!: Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend
CHRISTINA RICE
University Press of Kentucky
$34.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: By the early 1950s, Jane Russell (1921–2011) should have been forgotten. Her career was launched in what is arguably the most notorious advertising campaign in cinema history, which invited filmgoers to see Howard Hughes's The Outlaw (1943) and to "tussle with Russell." Throughout the 1940s, she was nicknamed the "motionless picture actress" and had only three films in theaters. With such an inauspicious, slow start, most aspiring actresses would have given up or faded away. Instead, Russell carved out a place for herself in Hollywood and became a memorable and enduring star.

In Mean... Moody... Magnificent!, Christina Rice offers the first biography of the actress and activist perhaps best known for her role in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Despite the fact that her movie career was stalled for nearly a decade, Russell's filmography is respectable. She worked with some of Hollywood's most talented directors—including Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, Nicholas Ray, and Josef von Sternberg—and held her own alongside costars such as Marilyn Monroe, Robert Mitchum, Clark Gable, Vincent Price, and Bob Hope. She also learned how to fight back against Howard Hughes, her boss for over thirty-five years, and his marketing campaigns that exploited her physical appearance.

Beyond the screen, Rice reveals Russell as a complex and confident woman. She explores the star's years as a spokeswoman for Playtex as well as her deep faith and secondary vocation as a Christian vocalist. Rice also discusses Russell's work in creating and leading the WAIF foundation, which helped unite tens of thousands of orphaned children with adoptive parents. This stunning first biography offers a fresh perspective on a star whose legacy endures not simply because she forged a notable film career, but because she effectively used her celebrity to benefit others.

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My Review: Old Hollywood was an unfriendly place for women in general, buxom beauties in particular. Jane Russell was a very early example of what happens when a very targeted publicity campaign succeeds at one aim and damn near torpedoes a career in the process.

The very young girl Miss Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell
What makes a star? It's a question that most people really don't think much about. In today's world, it's less mysterious than it ever has been. The earlier one goes, the more the alchemy was being codified and made into chemistry...and Jane Russell was a kind of case in point of that moment of change.

Two examples of the advertising stills responsible for the actress being dismissed for a decade as a figure with a face, not a talent
Getting the world to pay attention to a newcomer in any industry is a giant challenge in every era. What Howard Hughes got into his head was to show Russell in the way he, and most men, saw her and women in general...sex objects. He gave her an entirely unfounded image as a sex kitten. It was something the religious, conservative Russell was unhappy to have lumbered on her. That is, until she leaned into it later in life, with her hugely successful Playtex 18-Hour Cross-Your-Heart bra campaigns that funded her old age! Making lemonade from bitter early-life lemons indeed.

In her entire film career, she made fewer than two dozen films, and was famous for only one: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) in which she was decidedly less emphasized than Marilyn Monroe.

It was never her film, no matter what; the roles she played were pretty blah, if I'm at all honest; no one would remember her if not for her role in The Paleface starring Bob Hope:

...which she said saved her career, and which led to a lifelong friendship with the powerful and string-pulling Hope.

Honestly, the reason I cared to read the book, and recommend it to y'all, is simple: Russell the woman was more interesting than Russell the actress. After an abortion, illegal in those days so always unsafe to have, left her unable to bear children, she settled down with one wonderful husband, a football player then famous, and adopted three children. Her struggles to complete international adoptions led her to found Waif, a non-profit that helped people get international adoptions recognized in the US. She was actually pro-life, though unfortunately to me also anti-abortion; she focused her sincere christian belief into making it possible for people to bring otherwise parentless children into their homes to make families. That's walking the pro-life talk.

She married for the last of three times (one divorce, one death) to a real-estate developer whose projects she influenced, while re-starting a glamorous career in nightclubs:

And the image lived into the 2000s!

Her undistinguished Hollywood career, followed by her success as a nightclub entertainer for decades, her tenacity and uncompromising refusal to either quit or be dismissed by the many men who belittled, tried to control, and even ruin her is inspiring.

Film fans, students of fame and its many costs, glamourhounds...plus the feminists who need to see how someone not possessed of a liberal viewpoint could still make a powerful career...are among your giftees this #Booksgiving? Here's a book for them. Maybe you, too, don't front! You'll glom a few pages before wrapping.

SPIKE by SPIKE LEE himself...monograph celebration of a film icon's life and legacy to date

SPIKE
SPIKE LEE
Chronicle Chroma
$50.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A career-spanning monograph, SPIKE is a visual celebration of acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee's life and work to date.

Spike Lee is a world-renowned, Academy Award-winning filmmaker, a cultural icon, and one of the most prominent voices on race and racism for more than three decades. His prolific career has included over 35 films, including his directorial debut She's Gotta Have It (1986), his seminal masterpiece Do the Right Thing (1989), and his Oscar-winning film BlacKkKlansman (2018). Spike Lee's provocative feature films, documentaries, commercials, and music videos have shone the spotlight on significant stories and have made an indelible mark in both cinematic history and in contemporary society.

Featuring hundreds of never-before-seen photographs by David Lee, Spike's brother and long-time still photographer, this comprehensive monograph includes behind-the-scenes, insider images that underscore his creative process and his significant impact on the culture at large. Also included here are his beloved commercials with Michael Jordan for Nike, which helped launch the billion-dollar Jordan brand product empire, as well as his music videos with Prince and Michael Jackson. From earlier films like the critically acclaimed Malcolm X (1992) starring Denzel Washington, to more recent films such as Da 5 Bloods (2020) featuring the late Chadwick Boseman, Spike Lee's work continues to resonate now more than ever.

STRIKING DESIGN: Featuring gold foil deboss on a vibrant fuchsia front cover, SPIKE boasts a bold and beautiful, eye-catching design. The custom blocky, typographic design is inspired by the LOVE/HATE brass rings that Radio Raheem wore in Do the Right Thing and that Spike wore at the 2019 Academy Awards.

GIFT FOR CINEMA LOVERS: This is a must-have collector's item and ideal gift for any cinephile and fan of one of the most prominent and influential filmmakers in history.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: You know and I know that one friend who loves movies, do pardon me films, is the right one to receive this as a #Booksgiving gift.

It is very much worth the price of admission. I happen not to be the biggest fan of Auteur Lee's work, but his impact and his great gift for telling stories are inarguable. The importance of his career, and the strength it took to make that career, make for good reading.

Given to someone whose appreciation is more vivid and intense than my own respectful admiration of the man, this is a Yule-maker. The gift that will be treasured and gloated over and fondled and enjoyed on every aesthetic level for ages.

The beginning was outstandingly fresh. The voice we hadn't heard; the perspective no one like me, an old white guy even then, could look away from or fail to believe was speaking truth.

The reward came in 2019...no one doesn't love to be told how wonderful you are at the career you love doing in front of a global audience. Applause from all corners. The actual success of your life's output validated. I hope that's the moment he relives when his internal highlight reel is unspooling.

The man himself.

MARILYN MONROE: A Photographic Life, a tabloid star's life and legacy...in beautiful photos

MARILYN MONROE: A Photographic Life
JENNA GLATZER
Chartwell Books
$29.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The camera loved Marilyn, and she loved it right back. In this luxurious volume, get to know the enigmatic star through iconic and rare photos, intimate stories, and removable memorabilia.

Everyone knows the classic photographs of Marilyn Monroe: in the dress she wore to John F. Kennedy’s birthday, or leaning out of a balcony over the streets of New York City, or famously standing over the subway grates while shooting The Seven Year Itch. Behind the glamour, we’ve also heard the sad stories: her mother’s institutionalization, her three failed marriages, her own struggles with mental health, her surprising death that still leaves us with questions.

Marilyn Monroe: A Photographic Life delves into the life of the star—before, during, and after she became a “Blonde Bombshell.” Born Norma Jeane Mortenson (the Baker came later), she had a troubled childhood that culminated in her self-described “inferiority complex.” But all the while, she dreamed of something more.

Read the stories behind her first marriage (and why she kept it secret when she started modeling), her early roles with the studios (and the one exec who thought she didn’t have “it”), and her life as a budding actress that include humble anecdotes (at one point, she was so poor that she and a roommate shared one pair of high heels—and whoever had a date that night got to wear them).

Along with the stories are fabulous rare photographs and reproductions of frameable memorabilia, such as:

Birth and marriage certificates

Handwritten letters

Certificate of conversion to Judaism before her marriage to Arthur Miller

Screen Actors Guild membership card

Picture of Marilyn sketched by Jane Russell

Watercolor Marilyn painted for JFK

Childhood photos

Shots and ads from her earliest modeling days

Wedding photos

Images of those who knew her, including Groucho Marx, Ella Fitzgerald, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and so many more Marilyn’s favorite image of herself, taken in 1956

Further chapters cover Marilyn’s marriages to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, her time in England and New York, and her rise as one of Hollywood’s most sought after starlets. Through it all—the self doubts, the illnesses, the isolation—we see Marilyn triumph with the help of friends and confidantes and her own tenacious will of knowing what she wanted.

We see time and again the depths of Marilyn’s heart and her capacity to care for others. “I want to love and be loved more than anything else in the world,” she once said, and with Marilyn Monroe: A Photographic Life, you can’t help but oblige.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I suppose the day will come that Marilyn Monroe is forgotten.

Standards of beauty have changed several times since these were taken, printed, and lusted over by young hormone factories of all genders. The zaftig lady here was out of step with 1980s and 1990s heroin chic, the bleached blonde bouffant out of step with the 1960s Cher-hair...string-straight, natural color...and the kittenish coy look makes modern feminists furious.

Yet we ALL know who this is.

Not so this kid:

...more so this young woman, but not with great confidence:

...which all goes to show you that the thing we see in photos of "Movie Star Marilyn Monroe" is a curated, designed image to project a fantasy of a person that did not...could not...exist outside a studio camera.

It took a lot of effort, and a lot of energy, to maintain this avatar in place of a real person with real needs. The book is careful and respectful of the star's actual personhood and doesn't ignore her enormous price paid in service of the stardom that ate her from the inside.

Whatever standard of beauty one uses, the person Marilyn Monroe was commands the respect of us all for her diligence and her great stregth in building and maintaining a career out of an unpromising start in life. Tragic endings have a way of burnishing a halo on someone. I think this photo essay both shines that halo up a bit for the twenty-first century, and shows the costs of celebrity sought as a career to new audiences.

Plus it's a great way to have a nostalgia-fest! Right, fellow Boomers?

COSPLAY: A HISTORY: The Builders, Fans, and Makers Who Bring Your Favorite Stories to Life, is pretty much the perfect gift for your geek buddy

COSPLAY: A HISTORY: The Builders, Fans, and Makers Who Bring Your Favorite Stories to Life
ANDREW LIPTAK
Saga Press
$24.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A history of the colorful and complex kingdom of cosplay and fandom fashion by Andrew Liptak, journalist, historian, and member of the legendary fan-based Star Wars organization the 501st Legion.

In recent years, cosplay—the practice of dressing up in costume as a character—has exploded, becoming a mainstream cultural phenomenon. But what are the circumstances that made its rise possible?

Andrew Liptak—a member of the legendary 501st Legion, an international fan-based organization dedicated to the dark side of Star Wars—delves into the origins and culture of cosplay to answer this question. Cosplay: A History looks at the practice’s ever-growing fandom and conventions, its roots in 15th-century costuming, the relationship between franchises and the cosplayers they inspire, and the technology that brings even the most intricate details in these costumes to life.

Cosplay veterans and newcomers alike will find much to relish in this rich and comprehensive history.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE AUTHOR. THANK YOU.

My Review: Cosplay, literally a portmanteau of "costume" and "play", is very much part of the science fiction, horror, and fantasy subcultures. Any time you see TV reporters at events like ComicCons in San Diego or New York, they're there to see how many salaciously boob-exposing Sailor Moons or Elvira Mistress of the Dark cosplayers they cen get B-roll from. That is, then, what the normies look at and think of as "cosplay."

Whereas the *actual* field of cosplay is immense. It is multi-gendered. It is inclusive, it is vastly and richly endowed with niches and rivalries and personalities that can't find easy outlets in a world of mundanes. (This is where I'd usually put in "muggles" but Rowling's determined to die on a hill I don't want to climb.)

I blame Jules Verne. He held that dinner party (which Author Liptak tells us about) where guests came as his novel's characters! In the stodgy nineteenth century! Only it was not really so stodgy, just not public in its peculiarity the way we ever-increasingly are giving ourselves permission to be. In fact, cosplay has quite a history and Author Liptak quite a nose for what to look for, where to find it, and how to explain it.

A lifetime spent in the 501st Legion, the greatest and most active cosplaying organization in the Star Wars universe, has given him not only the joys of solidarity and fellowship with his fellow ubergeeks, but a keen grasp of what makes cosplay a Thing. It's an appeal that begins with an IP or "intellectual property"...that's a story, to the rest of us...that fires imaginations all over the spectrum of its genre's fandom. (If I need to explain "fandom" to you, you're reading the wrong review. Flip back a page and go from there.)

The 501st is a charitable organization; it's a profit-spinning offshoot of Star Wars's films and books that isn't completely controlled by the Mauschwitz people; it's a found family for its heading-for-20,000 members. Many people, especially those with the kind of passion and focus that makes cosplay appealing, aren't very comfortable in their families of origin. Many times they've left them whether voluntarily or not. Cosplay organizations are alternative affectional groups centered on a shared vision. Often they're of practical support as well, when crises strike. It's been my own experience that these groups (the Browncoats in my case) will do so much to assist their fellows that it is quite overwhelming and heartening.

After all, when a bunch of folks in the salad days spend the time, the energy, the money, and the social capital to make outfits like these, they're already among Nature's aristocrats. The desire to Do It Right, the get the details exactly as they should be drives many cosplayers to research films and TV shows and comic books and manga and games and...well, everything...for the smallest, least-visible detail that a particular character's presentation requires to be *just*so*. Equally there are interpreters whose idea of character's presentation of self could use some, well, tweaking to be just exactly perfect. The two camps have equal access to the starting imagery, and they share the modern world's astonishing array of personalizable, customizable anything. Technology has afforded the cosplayers 3D printing options that were once the province of the studios who created the films they obsess over. Makeup for special effects? Several generations of Fangoria magazine and its ilk readers have made careers of their obsession and remain in the cosplay community.

Naturally, this being Murruhkuh, we need to acknowledge the cosplay community has a lot of racist and sexist people in it; in fact, there is considerable gatekeeping on multiple fronts. Societal, institutional racism is part and parcel of fandom just like it is of every other aspect of our culture. More prevalent still is sexism's idiocy, and that's a fandom issue going back to the Futurians in the 1930s. Author Liptak doesn't dwell on these unpleasant realities but he doesn't ignore their existence and takes the quietly expressed stance I trust anyone reading my words would: "You do realize how stupid this behavior is, right?"

Unless a character requires one, no one in the cosplay world should be required to wear a mask.

"What to get your geek giftee" is a problem now solved. Twentyish bucks, ordered right now, and you're home free. It will, I can damn near guarantee, hit their fandom. It is likely to amuse, guaranteed to entertain, and just possibly inspire some of those you give it to on a new hobby, habit, obsession even. And that, my friends, is because the author did his job: He brought faces, stories, and his own heart to all his readers. Come and enjoy.