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— David DeWitt
Archive for January, 2008
Arno O'Thames reviews Satan's Angel by David Bret…
23
Jan
PLEASE, MR. BRET, WRITE NO MORE BOOKS!!!, | By | Arno O'Thames (Dublin, Ireland) – See all my reviews |
I hated this book. Hated it, hated it, hated it. It's a textbook example of how not to write a biography. The author's modus operandi appears to be as follows: do no real independent research, write at home and travel nowhere, quote only from other people's books and fan magazines, interview nobody who ever knew Errol Flynn, and, above all, make up as many salacious sexual quotes, allegedly spoken by Flynn and his associates, out of thin air as you possibly can. And do it all in the name of making money!
I thought Charles Higham's notorious treatment of Errol Flynn was the worst book I had ever read; however, this may give it some serious competition. And let's face it, at least Higham knows how to write. Bret must have been playing hooky, or was ill, the day his teachers taught basic English grammar in his school. And what's with the obsession with homosexuality? I was amazed at the sheer number of men the so-called bisexual Flynn is said to have sampled: Ross Alexander, Helmut Dantine, Bill Meade, Bruce Cabot, William Lundigan, Edmund Goulding, Tyrone Power, Truman Capote, and many others. Even poor Basil Rathbone is thrown into the mix – he was supposedly one who relished intimate oral contact with the male organ. Oh, right, Sherlock!
As many other reviewers point out, Bret provides no documentation at all for his lurid claims. Where in God's name did all this dialogue come from? As for accuracy, I started to make a list of all the factual errors in the book, but they became so many I had to give up when I ran out of room on both sides of an 8 x 10 sheet of paper. Where were the editors? Does this publisher even HAVE editors? And there are so many spelling blunders it is almost hilarious. This looks like a very hasty first draft of somebody's idea of a bad joke that nobody bothered to read. But there is nothing funny about this.
I doubt if anyone who ever actually knew or met Errol Flynn will recognize the central figure of this mess. I see from the list of Bret's other works that he has performed similar hack jobs on such celebrities as Valentino, Joan Crawford, Morrissey, and Clark Gable. This is so sad. I mean sad for everyone.
I saw David Bret interviewed on TV once, and I felt very sorry for him. From his appearance I suspect he has had a very rough life. But that's no excuse to take his hurt and anger out on Mr. Flynn and others like him. I therefore would like to issue to Mr. Bret a most fervent appeal: Please sir, write no more books! What you are doing is immoral, unworthy, and ultimately life-destroying. It sells short the unfortunate people you write about, the public who might unsuspectingly buy your books, and even you yourself. If you wish to be a biographer, then I beg you, by all means, be a biographer. But don't be what you currently are – a third-rate writer of unsubstantiated tabloid trash who is merely satisfying the evidently insatiable public thirst for titillating filth, all for the sake of a sleazy buck (or quid).
And for God's sake, why not try to find a way to make a dignified living without preying on the defenseless dead?
— David DeWitt
CLARK GABLE bio Review by Arno O'Thames at Amazon.com…
23
Jan
“Is that you, David Bret?” The author of CLARK GABLE: TORMENTED STAR, caught recently in a private moment.”
The same author who wrote Errol Flynn: Satan's Angel is at it again trashing another iconic star who can't rise from the grave to defend himself…
The Review:
INSANITY, | By | Arno O'Thames (Dublin, Ireland) – See all my reviews |
A well-known definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over, yet all the while expecting a different result. Well, David Bret, British chronicler of such celebrity lives as Valentino, Morrissey, Elvis, Errol Flynn, Joan Crawford, and Edith Piaf, has done it again. As in Camus' famous essay on the myth of Sisyphus, he's pushed the rock all the way to the summit of the mountain, only to have it stop, teeter, and then roll back down to the bottom, crushing him along the way. Once again, despite all his attempts to win some sort of respectability, he has provided the world with yet another model of how not to go about writing a biography. He seems to think that by continually assailing the book stalls with questionable attempts at recreating past lives, he may yet acquire, by sheer attrition, a favourable reputation.
He is sadly deluded. His whole enterprise banks on the fact that when dealing with the dead, there are no laws of criminal libel. The dead have no rights or recourse of redress to their reputations. However, there should, and must be, a law against criminal ineptitude. Libeling the dead aside, Bret's books characteristically exhibit the equally serious offences of terrible writing, frequent misprints, misspellings, misstatements of fact, bad taste, and – worst of all – an almost supernatural lack of acquaintance with correct research methods.
All of which means that if you are a serious-minded person who wants to discover something about a major film star of the past, buy CLARK GABLE: TORMENTED STAR at your own peril. You will learn almost nothing about William Clark Gable, figure of Hollywood history, but everything about David Bret, frustrated celebrity hanger-on and would-be literary mover and shaker.
In this case there will be some moving and shaking, but it will be the moving and shaking of the reader's head in disgust, followed by its removal to the nearest toilet for vomiting.
Despite the claims of his misguided publisher, this is not a biography. Like his other books, it is a diary of his own homoerotic imaginings projected onto a dead celebrity. The dust jacket of the book claims: “Bret draws on a wealth of unpublished material to examine every aspect of Clark Gable's career and personal life, telling story as it has never been told before . . . .”
Okay, at least the second part is true. Nobody has yet – for good reason – had the audacity to claim that Hollywood man's man Clark Gable, at the beginning of his film career, was a male prostitute, and that he had numerous prolonged affairs with men. The first part, however, is patently misleading. CLARK GABLE: TORMENTED STAR is a tired rehash of material from other books and fan magazines, mangled by Mr. Bret's personal proclivities, and peppered with his trademark salacious tidbits of sexual shock-talk. And if the book draws upon any material that's “unpublished,” it's only unpublished because Mr. Bret has just recently thought it up.
Why a publishing house that cared a fig about its reputation would touch anything with David Bret's name on it continues to be one of the unsolved mysteries of our day. With a little digging perhaps the mystery might be solved, but then the question becomes: Who cares? Why bother?
My sympathies go out to John Clark Gable and to any others who might be hurt by this vile, bungling, utterly contemptible piece of trash.
— David DeWitt
What tunes did Errol Flynn listen to…?
22
Jan
Thanks to the most Excellent Gentleman, Karl – Skipper of the good Yahoo ship, Zaca – we can listen to the Top 100 Songs of the day during the Golden Years of Pop Music! Click on any year from 1950 to 1984 to listen to random play of the most popular songs of that year… just play these wonderful old classic songs in the backround and keep surfin' Dudes!
— David DeWitt
