Playland - Softcover

Dunne, John Gregory

3.41

83 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452274958 ISBN 13: 9780452274952

Publisher: Plume, 1995

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A critically acclaimed best-seller set in the glamorous, gangster-dominated Hollywood of the 1940s tells the story of Blue Tyler, a child star who disappears from Hollywood and becomes a bag lady in New York City. Reprint. National ad/promo.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

A child movie star disappears and emerges 45 years later as a blue-haired trailer-park hag in Dunne's lurid tale of Hollywood sex, crime, and deception. In the 1930s, Blue Tyler was Tinseltown's highest paid ``cinemoppet''--Cosmopolitan Studio's meal ticket until she turned 23, when she fell from the biz and, to all appearances, off the planet. Decades later, researching a dopey cop movie, screenwriter Jack Broderick (back from The Red, White, and Blue, 1987) crashes into her accidentally in Detroit, where she is living in anonymous squalor. He alerts his producers that the real story is the discovery of the now elderly Blue Tyler, scraps everything else, and--helped by a vulgar extortionist policeman--gets the scoop on her life. All this is done through interviews with people who knew her, notably her ex-lover and publicist who afforded her a lifelong stipend, and her director, a one-legged war veteran and one of the only men in LA who didn't sleep with Blue (he's gay). Other sources include newspaper articles and court transcripts that reveal Blue's affair with vicious gangster Jacob King, who was gunned down in Playland, his tacky Las Vegas hotel, and various classified documents unearthed by shady connections. Interviews with brassy, foul-mouthed Blue herself (before she disappears again) offset the testimony of those who knew her. The result is an intriguing puzzle of identity. Does Blue's self-portrait match the image that friends and the public paint? Jack's compulsive fixation and frustration with her mount as he struggles to complete his research and cram her legend into a hit screenplay with integrity. At the end of the seamy story, the truth remains unclear, but nobody cares. The constant maybes and the run-on rants are made tolerable, even beguiling, by Dunne's bristling prose and savage cinematics. Dunne delivers grit with polish in this wicked celebrity archaeology. (Author tour) -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Booklist:

The quest that drives this shrewd, ironic, caustic, and extremely well written Hollywood novel involves finding what became of Blue Tyler, one of the hottest child stars of the late 1940s. Blue, actually Melba Mae Toolate, was cast as a pure and innocent little girl, but there was always something risque about her, something inviting more than paternal pats on the head, something that inspired her more demonstrative fans to send her letters encrusted with a certain bodily fluid. Dunne's hilarious and hapless narrator, Jack Broderick, estranged son of a mean-spirited billionaire and a modestly successful screenwriter, ends up finding Blue in a trailer park outside of Detroit after weathering a series of bloody disasters fraught with absurdity. Indeed, most of the initial plot shifts are precipitated by unexpected deaths. This is in keeping with the nasty, hypocritical machinations of postwar Hollywood, when gangsters were as glamorous as movie stars, and chic segued into violence with horrifying alacrity. Sex scandals, casino deals, the red scare and blacklisting all play a role in the cynical tale of Blue Tyler and her love affair with handsome hit man Jacob King. Everyone has an angle, whether it's money, power, lust, or the perspective of the camera. In sum, this is a wickedly funny, foulmouthed, hard-boiled, and perfectly executed bit of adult entertainment. Donna Seaman

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