From the venerable star of Hitchcock's Psycho
comes a saccharine, painfully overwritten roman à clef spanning Hollywood's golden heyday from the late 1930s to the early 1970s. Although it is designed to have film buffs guessing who's who among the cast of studio bigwigs and film actors, this wooden kiss-and-tell disappoints. Opening in 1972 in a hospital emergency room where powerful movie mogul Eve Handel arrives in the throes of a heart attack, the prologue refers to her scandalous secret journal—in which she's been "free, free to verbalize, to expose her naked innermost emotions... no matter how sordid or how foolish or how romantic those innermost thoughts might be!"—that could destroy the careers of many cinema figures. The story flashes back to 1934 to begin the pulpy saga of Eve, the precocious daughter of an affluent Chicago family who wins a scholarship to the London School of Dramatic Art at age 17. From this early moment, the narrative blurs into a run-on account of the exploits of the Teflon-coated young woman as she gouges out a place for herself in the old boys' network of Hollywood power brokers. Along the way, a myriad of cameos will titillate readers to try matching them with their famous counterparts. (One character bears a striking resemblance to one of the author's former husbands, an iconic film hunk.) Sadly, Leigh's campy, jejune second take on Tinseltown (after House of Destiny) is more Pollyanna
than All About Eve, as the author barely scratches the surface of what could have been a veritable gold mine of trashy behind-the-scenes melodrama. National advertising. (Feb.)
Forecast:Leigh's name and promotional dollars will have to sell this one, as positive reviews seem unlikely.
