Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.
This week, I'm giving thanks for Victoria Wilson who spent 15 years deep-sea diving into Barbara Stanwyck's life. If you've spent any time at The Quivering Pen lately, it seems I've been going
full-bore,
24/7 on this new biography of the renowned movie star, and maybe you're ready for me to tamp down my enthusiasm for the book, maybe you feel it's time to muffle and muzzle my Stanwyck-ipation. Too bad. You're gonna get at least one more mention of
A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel True: 1907-1940 from me here at the blog. The trailer for Wilson's book is fairly ordinary by book trailer standards, though of course it has an extraordinary person at its center. "Barbara Stanwyck was complicated," Wilson says at the beginning of the video. "She was dark, she was sexy, she had a flair, a kick. She projected intelligence and that was all seen in her life a thousand-fold." If you've ever seen movies like
The Lady Eve,
Double Indemnity,
Baby Face,
Meet John Doe, or
Sorry, Wrong Number, you know exactly what Wilson is talking about. "She was a fascination and I had a fabulous time writing this book," the author adds. Despite all the bloggy blab I've been giving this biography lately, I haven't been able to clear any space in my reading schedule to crack it open. I hope to start doing so this week.
Steel True looks to be as sumptuous and bountiful a feast as anything I'll find on my Thanksgiving table.
There's at least one bit of major news in that video (which I have just now watched) which is NOT in the book: the stuff about her son, Dion Fay, being cast out of her life, working in a motel, and talking with the biographer but never meeting her. In the book, he's just a kid, so we never see all the stuff that happened later. Makes me yearn for vol. 2.
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