The American Way: A True Story of Nazi Escape, Superman, and Marilyn Monroe

In this entertaining if somewhat overstuffed saga, journalist Stapinksi (Murder in Matera) and graphic designer Siegler (Dear Client) untangle the threads linking Siegler’s grandfather, Jules Schulback, to DC Comics publisher Harry Donenfeld, film director Billy Wilder, and Marilyn Monroe. A furrier and amateur filmmaker, Jules and his wife fled Nazi Germany in 1938 with the help of Donenfeld, who agreed to be their financial sponsor. (He had once been neighbors with Jules’s cousin in the Bronx.) Sixteen years later, Jules closed his fur shop in Manhattan one night and walked uptown to the block where Wilder was filming the scene in The Seven Year Itch when Monroe’s skirt blows upward as she stands over a subway grate. A raucous crowd made Wilder’s footage unusable (he later recreated the scene on a Hollywood soundstage), leaving Jules’s recording “as the only color-film footage to survive.” From this tidbit of family lore, Siegler and Stapinski weave a sprawling story that touches on the Broadway Mob, the rise of pulp magazines (“sex paired with badly written detective tales”), the origins of Superman, the Hollywood production code, Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak, and much more. Though not every detour pans out, it’s a dizzying and edifying ride. (Feb.)