Red Star Over Hollywood by Ronald and Allis Radosh
For the latest episode of Ellroy Reads I review one of the key historical texts which inspired James Ellroy’s Red Sheet. Red Star Over Hollywood explores the history of communism in the United States and Hollywood in particular. It provides a revisionist commentary on the Hollywood Ten and the Blacklist. Radosh writes with the authority of a lapsed believer, he was a ‘red diaper baby’ and ardent communist for much of his youth. His slow conversion to conservatism informs much of his take on Hollywood’s flirtation with the far-left, and in turn inspired Ellroy to write Red Sheet.
I hope you enjoy the episode, and do remember to subscribe to the channel. Next week I’ll be posting another Q&A episode, so please leave your questions either here or on the channel and I will answer them in the episode. Thanks.
Tremor of Intent by Anthony Burgess
For the latest episode of Ellroy Reads I review Anthony Burgess’ idiosyncratic spy novel Tremor of Intent. Written to both exploit the spy fiction craze of the 1960s, and also as a reaction to it, the novel never attained the commercial success of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, and yet its critical reputation has grown over the years and it was almost used as the basis of a Bond film. I tell this story as well as James Ellroy’s connection to the novel in today’s episode.
Enjoy the content, and do remember to subscribe to the channel, like, comment and share on the world wide web.
Kidnap: The Story of the Lindbergh Case by George Waller
For the latest episode of Ellroy Reads I review Kidnap, George Waller’s gripping account of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. I also discuss James Ellroy’s complex portrait of Charles Augustus Lindbergh in his recent novels This Storm and Red Sheet.
I hope you enjoy the episode, and do remember to subscribe to the channel and share the content.
A James Ellroy Hollywood Story
For the latest episode of Ellroy Reads, I catch up with a few viewer questions that I didn’t get chance to cover in the last Q&A episode. I also tell a Hollywood story, never revealed before, which is connected to my time as James Ellroy’s biographer. Fans of Hush-Hush showbiz gossip should get a kick out of this tale!
Enjoy the episode and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel.
Tours of the Black Clock is Steve Erickson’s highly acclaimed third novel. It presents an alternative view of World War Two, and an ahistorical portrait of the twentieth century. There are many labels that might be attached to the novel – surrealist, relativistic, magical realism, and yet it can also be read as a gripping story of an American man who becomes the pornographer to Adolf Hitler.
You can find out more about the novel in the latest episode of Ellroy Reads, and I also go into Steve Erickson’s unlikely friendship with James Ellroy and the even more absurd reason it came to an end. Hope you enjoy, and do remember to subscribe to the channel, like, comment and share the content.
The Dark Ages – were they really so bad? Certainly not if Hollywood, and moviemaking in general, is anything to go by. In his witty, engaging study of films set in the Dark Ages, Andy Rohmer examines cinematic fascination with this period, of which Kenneth Clark once observed civilisation only made it through by ‘the skin of its teeth’. This is the fourth book in Rohmer’s World History: The Hollywood Version series in which he meticulously goes through every period in history and examines how it has been portrayed, be it glamourised or maligned, in the movies.
Rohmer defines the Dark Ages as 476 to 1050 AD, and starts with films set in the Arthurian Cycle and ends just before the Norman Conquests. He is primarily a film historian and sets out, film by film, to note the eccentricities and idiosyncrasies of celluloid history. For instance, he notes that Clive Donner’s film Alfred The Great (1969) is a ‘late Sixties attempt to do a historical epic in the language of youth revolt’. Whereas Antonie Fuqua’s big-budget King Arthur ‘vacillates inconclusively between hard, R-rated historical war film, Bruckheimer summer spectacle and parable about empire and freedom’. I’ve been a fan of Rohmer series since the beginning and I’m pleased to say that all of his observations are a delight to read. The balance between historical context, behind the scenes content and critical analysis is exactly what one would wish.
Treat yourself to a copy of this wonderful book, and don’t be surprised if it sends you in pursuit of the movies that shed light on the Dark Ages.
The Power and the Glory is Graham Greene’s account of the Cristero Rebellion. He based it on his experiences travelling through Mexico observing the anti-Catholic persecution by the government of President Plutarco Elias Calles. The Cristero War forms part of the backstory of James Ellroy’s latest novel Red Sheet.
In the latest episode of Ellroy Reads, I examine the influence of Greene’s novel on Red Sheet, as well as the importance of Mexico as a location in Ellroy’s life and fiction. Hope you enjoy the show, and do remember to subscribe to the channel, like, comment and share the content.
Played to Death by Mike Ripley – Review
For years Mike Ripley delighted readers with his Angel series and more recently his Albert Campion novels, a continuation series of the classic character created by Margery Allingham. With the publication of Buried Above Ground last year, Ripley introduced a new character in Roland ‘Roly’ Wilkes and a new string to his authorial blow, via a metafictional parody of the publishing business. Roly is an editor who lost his job in a publishing merger and ended up working in a small library. In Buried Above Ground Roly is jolted out of his peaceful existence as a librarian when he becomes embroiled into an elaborate copyright mystery regarding a forgotten author. That novel combined humour and mystery in a delightful literary cocktail. Ripley achieves that delicious blend again in the second book of the series – Played to Death.
This time the focus is on actors, who after editors are often the bane of most authors existence! Adam Cunningham is a solicitor and enthusiastic practitioner of amateur dramatics. Cunningham is involved with the Hopewell Players, who are staging a play by the late dramatist Othniel Soulby. However, Cunningham suspects the shoddily written play is a forgery and the aspiring thesps at the Hopewell Players are not all that they seem to be. He enlists Roly Wilkes, now an established detective of all things literary, to investigate. What follows is an entertaining and often very funny romp in which Ripley lands potshots at the theatre, local politics, archaic class structures, small-town grudges and other indispensable aspects of English life.
Roly Wilkes is a beguiling character who seems equally at home in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction as he does in a modern novel.
In 1959, Sterling Hayden turned his back on Hollywood acting career and took his four children on a voyage to Tahiti. Wanderer is his memoir of that time. It also includes fascinating material on Hayden’s Hollywood career, wartime service in the OSS and, the most shameful episode of his life, his turn as a friendly witness before the HUAC.
James Ellroy wrote the preface to the French translation to Wanderer, which I read in English for the latest episode of Ellroy Reads. Hope you enjoy the show, and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel.
Biographical Conversations with James Ellroy
The phone rang and I heard the unmistakable sound of James Ellroy’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Hey, hey” was how Ellroy greeted me.
He was clearly in a buoyant mood, and he had every right to be. This was our first conversation since I had landed the contract with Bloomsbury to be his biographer, and he was delighted that I was the one who had the nerve to put his life-story, with all its triumphs and disasters, into print.
“You’re sitting on a pot of money, Steve” he said by way of congratulations as ‘You’ve got the CONTRACT’ and vowed that he was “going to tell me everything.”
Candour seemed to be the initial theme of our work together. You might say that intimacy was the first order of business as he was insistent that I interview his ex-partners, which I duly did, and had some in-depth conversations with them which greatly benefitted the book, although Ellroy would get nervous when he knew I was getting ready to talk to someone who he thought had an axe to grind. He warned me that one of them ‘is going to rat me out. Call me a racist, sexist, homophobe, fascist etc.’ He couldn’t have been more wrong about this. Ellroy’s ex-partners gave a very balanced portrait of the man and author they had been in a relationship with for several years. Naturally, embarassing details would sometimes crop up, such as how Ellroy had argued with a girlfriend over Dave Chappelle. She was a fan. Ellroy was not.
‘Dave Chappelle was a good cat’ Ellroy enthused to me, when I brought this to him. ‘I had a blast with him on Conan, and he wanted me to do the town with him afterwards, but I said no, I don’t cheat on my wife.’
I found this response bizarre at first, but telling in retrospect. Chappelle was not inviting him to a sex party but was simply asking him to socialize. Ellroy was eager to ease my discomfort when such matters came up in conversation. ‘You never have to worry about telling me anything, Steve’ he said, at his most disarming, once we had wrapped up the talk.
I would periodically update Ellroy on my progress. Those conversations could be stressful or agreeable, depending on the nature of my research at the time. Sometimes Ellroy could be disarming if he could tell I was worried about breaking bad news. For instance, one time I informed that an ex-girlfriend had felt ‘haunted’ by their former relationship.
‘She was haunted by me’ he said in disbelief, ‘…well, good.’
Sometimes he would brief me prior to a conversation with an ex-partner. One relationship, which he had immortalised in his novel Blood’s a Rover, gave Ellroy some consternation when I sent out an interview request. He had spoken to the lady in question once since their break-up in a phone call which she instigated but Ellroy found to be ‘completely perfunctory’ and ‘I had the feeling that something was on her mind’. Ellroy was pleased when she told him that she had read The Hilliker Curse, another book he had written covering the relationship, ‘but astonishingly she hadn’t read Blood’s a Rover’. Ultimately, ‘I’ve got no idea how she’ll respond’ he told me.
The response, when it came, was not good. The ex-partner rejected to being ‘fictionalised’, even though I made it clear that I was writing a biography and referred to her former fiancée dismissively by his surname. Ellroy was taken aback when I reported back to him, ‘she really said that about me?’ Then the humour returned to his voice, ‘it’s a good dog’s name isn’t it – ELLROY!’
He was calm and objective in giving me advice on how to respond to such setbacks: ‘Well, I would stress to her that it’s not fiction, it’s a scholarly biography’ Ellroy replied calmly, ‘and assure her that you won’t contact her again. Cease and desist.’ But his mood changed when I told him about other things she had told me about the relationship. ‘That is not going in the book. She’ll sue you. She’ll sue me. She’ll make both of our lives miserable.’
Not every difficult moment related to an ex-partner. Ellroy, for instance, was dismissive of the reinvestigation of his mother’s murder for My Dark Places, claiming her knew early on, ‘We’re not gonna find the guy. I’ve just gotta go through with this.’ His ill-feeling towards that time had ultimately led to the end of his friendship with Bill Stoner, although he declined to give a specific reason, merely stating that they had lost touch and it was ‘one of those things’. He still carried a lot of respect for Stoner. A feeling that was mutual. Perhaps no friendship could have survived the nervous breakdown Ellroy suffered while on The Cold Six Thousand book tour in 2001, which he firmly believed had its genesis in My Dark Places.
But ultimately most of the problems would come back to the thorny issue of Ellroy’s ex-partners. After I interviewed one woman who had been treated particularly shabbily, Ellroy responded ‘I’ve expressed racial animus before, it’s wrong.’ The woman in question accused Ellroy of making racially-charged comments to her. ‘It’s a sin’. The comment might sound like a platitude, but it was Ellroy’s way of conveying genuine remorse by examining his behaviour through the Christian lens of being a sinner. He could repent about it and move on. My dilemma as a biographer was how to balance Ellroy’s private life, or ‘sins’ as he might put it, against his stunning accomplishments in American literature.
The reader will be the judge.
The Venetian Vase 