Short Takes: ‘The Leather Boys’ (1964) ★★★ 1/2

A gay-themed movie entitled The Leather Boys suggests it’s a porno about twinks being initiated into the world of BDSM. Except, remarkably, there isn’t a gay adult feature by that name, at least not one I could find (the closest I got was a video series of suspect quality called Little Tattoo Leather Boy, Parts 1-3). No, The Leather Boys is a 1964 British drama about a young married couple and the man who tries to come between them.

Dot (Rita Tushingham, who most recently appeared in 2021’s Last Night in Soho) is a teenager in love with Reggie (Colin Campbell), a cute biker who wants to make her his bride. Their parents’ reaction to their engagement speaks volumes about their home lives: Reggie’s parents, who at best share a grudging tolerance for each other, savor a bit of schadenfreude at the thought of the teens’ doomed marriage, while Dot’s mother looks forward to her 16-year-old daughter getting hitched so she can rent out Dot’s room. The teen couple may be too young to get married, but who can blame them for wanting to get out from under their respective parents’ roofs ASAP?

We see the first sign of trouble during the couple’s honeymoon at Butlin’s Camp. Dot wants to experience all the resort has to offer; Reggie just wants to stay in their room and bone (“If you must know, I’ve had enough,” Dot says). Things only go downhill from there. Dot wants Reggie to take care of her, funding her shopping sprees and trips to the hair salon, but Reggie wants Dot to take care of him, keeping their one-room flat clean and having dinner—preferably something other than canned beans—waiting when he gets home from work. And forget sex. They argue more than fuck.

Reggie starts spending more time down at the Ace Cafe, the diner where all his biker buddies hang out. (I call them bikers, but they have more in common with middle-aged motorcycle enthusiasts than Hell's Angels.) This is where he meets Pete (Dudley Sutton), a slightly older guy who leads a seemingly carefree, itinerant life of a merchant marine. Reggie and Pete become fast friends, spending more and more time together—practically living together when Pete rents a room from Reggie’s grandmother. Dot is coached by her mother to lie about being pregnant to force Reggie’s return to their marriage. The ploy fails, with Reggie preferring Pete’s company. It’s only when Dot snarls that he and Pete “look like a couple of queers,” that Reggie begins to worry about the optics of their friendship. He’s quickly talked out of those fears—by Pete, who clearly wants to be more than just friends. Still, Reggie starts to rekindle his relationship with Dot, but don’t expect a happy ending for any of the three main characters.

I knew nothing of this “classic [of] ’60s British cinema” before putting it in my Tubi queue, so I went into The Leather Boys expecting a campy good time. But instead of something kitschy like The Set, you get a kitchen sink drama akin to Tushingham’s film debut, A Taste of Honey. 

Though Dot’s blond helmet rivals some of
the ’dos in John Waters’ Hairspray.

Screenwriter Gillian Freeman adapted The Leather Boys from her novel of the same title, and though she was credited under her own name for the movie, her book was published under the pseudonym Eliot George. According to Wikipedia (I haven’t read the book, though I might now that I’ve found an affordable reprint), the relationship between Reggie and Pete is more explicitly gay than in the movie, though still quite restrained (i.e., don’t expect graphic descriptions of cock sucking and butt fucking, though do expect Dick, as that’s Pete’s name in the book). Fortunately, not much is lost in the story’s sanitation for the screen, thanks largely to the quality of the production. Tushingham, Campbell and Sutton are all excellent. Even though the story is kind of straight-washed, the character of Pete is sensitively handled. He’s not a villain, he’s just fallen for a guy who doesn't like him in “that way.” Director Sidney J. Furie treats the material with respect, delivering a film that’s far more thoughtful and stylish than what I’d expected. (There are a lot of acclaimed titles in Furie’s filmography, but he also directed Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, so The Leather Boys really could’ve gone either way.) While I’m disappointed that I can’t make fun of this one, I can’t complain when my exploration of cinematic trash unearths a genuine treasure.

A Kennedy Era ‘Melrose Place’

For all the racy passages in L.A. 46, what
got me hard was the revelation that the
luxury building at the center of the book’s
action had rents as low as $275*.

Despite evidence to the contrary, I don’t seek out books set in expensive hotels or apartment buildings, but they always seem to find me. I was hunting for a vintage paperback copy of Day Keene’s Joy House on eBay (OK, another book that has a piece of real estate in the title, but it’s a single-family residence, not a multi-family), despairing that I couldn’t find any copies under $150, when I found two other Day Keene titles that looked wonderfully lurid, and for the combined price of $15. One of those novels was 1964’s L.A. 46.

The title refers to the postal zone for West Hollywood (this book was written ahead of the introduction of the ZIP code), specifically the stretch of Melrose between Doheny and La Brea. And in that area is the Casa del Sol, a luxury apartment building open to anyone who can afford it, be they psychiatrists to the stars, high class call girls, or small-town hicks with big city dreams—all are welcome so long as they don’t have pets or children.

Casa del Sol’s no children policy means the newly pregnant Eva Mazeric and her husband Paul, both WWII refugees, will have to find a more child-friendly place to live, but this is the least of Eva’s troubles. And Eva, though beautiful and seemingly happy, has had a lot of troubles in her young life, from losing her family during the Soviet occupation of Hungary to enduring (and, sometimes, guiltily enjoying) sexual abuse while in displaced persons camps and with a foster family. What’s got her so despondent that she seeks out the help of psychiatrist—or “sickey-ackey”—Dr. Jack Gam, who resides in the Casa del Sol’s penthouse, is learning that her older brother, whom she never knew, is still alive and living much, much closer than she’d like.

Dr. Gam has problems of his own. One of his patients, movie goddess (and Marilyn Monroe analog) Gloria Ames, has died of a drug overdose, putting Dr. Gam on the radar of police looking for answers and news media hungry for Hollywood scandal. So, he’s a bit preoccupied when Eva shows up for her appointment, and easily irritated when Eva can’t bring herself to discuss what’s got her so upset (“So, what’s your problem, Eva?”) Eva cuts the appointment short, apologizing for wasting the doctor’s time. Dr. Gam’s failure to gain Eva’s confidence, not to mention the suicide of his high-profile patient, has him wondering if he’s in the right line of work. The reader will also come to wonder about Dr. Gam’s aptitude for his profession as he comes across less a compassionate healer than a professional mansplainer.

Another Casa del Sol resident having a shitty day is “second-rate fighter” Marty Romero, a.k.a. Marty the Wonder Boy. When he’s not in the ring, Marty spends his days sexually harassing all the women in the building, including plump matron Mrs. Katz. Even his own mother can’t stand him. Finally sick of Marty’s shit—and taking care of Marty’s neglected wife Alicia and son Pepe —Mama Romero informs her son during one of his visits that he won’t be leaving alone; he’ll be taking Alicia and Pepe with him. And if he doesn’t? Well, maybe the boxing commission would be interested in hearing about how Marty threw his last fight. Then, just to make it clear she’s out of fucks to give, Mama Romero tells her son she wished she’d aborted him (“A goose quill I should have used before I brought such a son into the world.”)

As the book progresses, Eva falls apart, Dr. Gam falls for Eva, and Marty flips the fuck out. But while the bulk of L.A. 46 revolves around Eva, Dr. Gam and Marty, there are a host of other characters residing at Casa del Sol, far too many to be developed properly in a 250-page book. Those other characters include Lili Marlene, a one-time child star now earning a living as a stripper; Ernie Katz, a retiree whose business in New York didn’t always operate within the law; Colette, a high-priced call girl; has-been film director Mike Melkha, who spends his days drinking on the lanai and blaming his flops on a public too dumb to understand his work (sounds familiar); and Grace Arness, a model who, per the back cover copy, “pursued a strange kind of love.” Only Ruby Morgan, a rebellious teenager (exempted from the apartment complex's no child policy, evidently) living with—and desperately trying to get away from—her older sister and brother-in-law, gets a full-fledged story arc. 

A Banker Going Down on Mama and
Other Unsettling Childhood Memories

Day Keene (née Gunard Hjertstedt), better known for his hard-boiled crime thrillers like So Dead My Lovely and Home is the Sailor, is not an author you’d expect to write a melodramatic potboiler. Then again, he was the head writer for a few radio soap operas, so maybe it’s not that unexpected. He certainly had the talent to write this “Peyton Place of the West Coast,” to quote the cover’s ill-fitting teaser copy. (Peyton Place was notorious for exposing the sleazy underbelly of a genteel New England town, while Los Angeles’ trashy side was never much of a secret. Adultery, rape, incest and abortion in 1950s small town America? Shocking! In Los Angeles? That’s a slow Tuesday, even in the 1950s.)

And Keene goes for it, peppering L.A. 46 with several scenes of sexual debauchery, like Ruby’s sister Vera recalling a moment from their childhood, after their father had died and her mother faced foreclosure from the bank. To save the family farm, the girls’ mother gives in to banker Mr. Cronkite’s sexual advances, telling him she won’t enjoy it. Unbeknownst to Mama, her daughters are spying on the action through a crack in the window shutters.

[Vera had] seen animals serviced. She’d listened to her father and mother for years. But this was the first time she’d seen a man and a woman close coupled and the sight of Mr. Cronkite’s rigid protruding flesh, huge out of all proportion to the rest of him, first disappearing into then emerging briefly from the hairy patch between her mother’s thighs, had at the same time so excited and disgusted her that despite Ruby’s protests she’d had to leave the window and be sick.

It had gone on like that all afternoon. Every time she stood barefooted in the hot dust outside the window, the man from the bank had been beating his lean flanks and scrawny buttock even leaner. Then toward the late afternoon when she peered through the crack in the shutter, she thought Mr. Cronkite had gone. At first all she’d been able to see was her mother laying with her back arched and her head thrown back and her eyes closed and her lips drawn away from her teeth as she made small, animal sounds in her throat. Then looking on down between the massive breasts and equally massive thighs and drawn-up knees, she’d seen the top of Mr. Cronkite’s bald head rising and falling industriously, like a banty rooster pecking corn.

It’s not exactly spank-bank material, but still fairly explicit for a book penned in the early 1960s. Keene is just as detailed in his writing of Eva’s childhood sexual abuse, which had me wondering if these scenes were meant to be titillating or just shocking? It’s also interesting to note that it’s only when the sex is coerced or transactional that Keene provides more graphic descriptions. Good, clean romantic —or at least consensual—sex usually happens off page.

I don’t know if Keene was judging readers looking for smut by making the more explicit sex scenes the novel’s more unsettling situations, but he definitely judges some of his characters. As much as I’d like to say he’s surprisingly progressive, many of Keene’s depictions are very much in alignment with people of his generation. So, expect plenty of sexism and homophobia, with just a soupçon of casual racism. Though he writes of Grace, the “lesb” model, with some empathy, she is presented as someone who is broken and therefore needs to be “fixed.” More disheartening is that Grace also thinks there’s something wrong with her. When Ernie Katz comes to her aid after she’s been raped, Grace says: “I’d almost wished I enjoyed it. You don’t think I want to be the way I am, do you?” This attitude is mitigated, somewhat, by Katz, who tells Grace that she should be able to live with her “problem.” “People have lived with worse,” he says, later adding: “What can you expect from a world that was made in six days?” Grace’s rape, BTW, goes unreported because she fears it could cost her her job should it get in the papers. So, yeah, there are some fucked-up attitudes here.

But Keene also skewers some of the attitudes of his (and our) time, particularly regarding the media, represented in L.A. 46 by one of its residents, John Johns, a TV pundit whose name telegraphs that he's not meant to be taken seriously. Though Johns regularly spouts his “liberal” views on air (his editorials are only mildly progressive; readers today would be forgiven for mistaking him for a moderate Republican), his only deeply held belief is that the more controversial his positions, the greater the ratings. He’s nothing more than a rabble rouser. He even conspires with his wife to invite Marty’s poor wife and son over to their apartment for brunch, not out of genuine kindness but because it builds up his own image as the compassionate liberal, not to mention there’s the added kick of pissing off the neighbors. (“Are you certain you don’t believe some of that stuff you broadcast?” Johns’ wife asks.)

Overall, L.A. 46 is better-than-average trash fiction, with Keene steering this Kennedy era Melrose Place toward a violent conclusion worthy of the crime thrillers he’s more famous for. And it’s Keene’s crime fiction that I’ll continue seeking out, though I think I’ll just have to make peace with the fact that if I want to read Joy House and still be able to afford groceries I’ll have to settle on the more reasonably priced (and decidedly less cool looking) Stark House edition. What else can I expect from a world made in six days?

*That’s a boner-killing $2,411 in 2022 dollars, but possibly still worth wanking over depending on where you live.

Short Takes: 'Something Weird' (1967) ★ 1/2

I have the same co-dependent relationship with Herschell Gordon Lewis’ work that I have with Jess Franco’s: I know he’ll probably let me down, but I keep coming back because he showed me a good time once or twice. I came to my senses years ago with Franco (OK, I watched Bloody Moon last year, but what can I say? I’m weak), but I keep holding out hope that the next one of Lewis’ movies I watch will be a diamond in the rough like Suburban Roulette or Scum of the Earth or will at least equal the awful/awesomeness of The Blood Trilogy. It was this hope that led me to watch Lewis’ 1967 movie Something Weird.

The movie gets off to a haphazard start, opening with the murder of a woman by an unseen assailant, then jumping to a martial arts lesson in which the student and the teacher—both middled-aged white guys—demonstrate they still have a lot to learn. Then the martial arts student, Alex (wooden William Brooker), is about to get busy with a young lady when the movie smash cuts to a scene in which engineer Mitch (smarmy Tony McCabe) is electrocuted. Something Weird decides to stay with Mitch for a while, revealing that though the near-fatal jolt of electricity scarred his face beyond the repair of plastic surgeons, Mitch did get some psychic powers in the bargain. Mitch doesn’t seem to give two shits about his new power, squandering it by telling fortunes at $2 a pop.

Enter “the Hag” (Maudite Arums), who claims to have powers of her own: if he agrees to become her lover, she can restore Mitch’s face. Though the pair have the hammiest-member-of-the-high-school-drama club acting style in common, Mitch doesn’t think he can get it up for a woman with a face covered in green makeup and spitball warts. He changes his mind when he discovers that, after a forced kiss, the Hag transforms into a beautiful, vacant blonde named Ellen (Elizabeth Lee, who might be a sentient department store mannequin).

With his face now free of papier mâché scars and Ellen by his side, Mitch starts exploiting his special talent to the fullest by making a series of TV appearances, which attracts the attention of FBI agent Alex. You remember Alex, from earlier in the movie? Yes, that’s right, the failing judo student. (Or was it karate? It doesn’t matter.) Alex is trying to solve a series of grisly murders (also from the film’s beginning) and thinks someone with Mitch’s abilities might be able to help him in his investigation. To help Mitch, he offers the electric engineer-turned-psychic some chemical help: “What I have here is a drug, called LSD. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.” Mitch's trip and that murder investigation are put on hold, however, when Alex meets Ellen. Fuck getting a killer off the streets, Alex has got a hard-on!

Something Weird has its moments, including a WTF sequence when Alex is attacked by his own bedding, the camera capturing the dental floss used to manipulate the homicidal blanket, and some of Lewis’ signature gore, including a wig stand woman’s head set on fire. Unfortunately, while Something Weird lives up to its title, much of it also pretty fucking boring, having more in common with She-Devils on Wheels than Two Thousand Maniacs. The barely comprehensible story might be from the mind of screenwriter James F. Hurley, but this is very much an HGL movie. I could maybe forgive the bad acting and static camera work if I were able to overcome the overwhelming ennui felt watching it. It’s not the worst of Lewis’ movies I’ve seen so far, but that’s not saying much. At the end of the day, you’d do better to check out the video company that took its name and logo from Something Weird than watch the actual movie.

Hot, Horny and Depressingly Relevant

The 1984 edition of Miami Golden
Boy from British publisher
Granada Publishing.

Though my review of The Movie Maker went a whole year and a half without a single view, I am going to try once again to gin up interest in author Herbert Kastle, this time reviewing his 1969 novel MIAMI GOLDEN BOY.

While The Movie Maker was Kastle’s take on the Harold Robbins/Jacqueline Susann-style showbiz potboiler, Miami Golden Boy has more in common with the works of Arthur (Hotel; Airport) Hailey and Burt Hirschfeld, with multiple characters and their parallel narratives converging at a single location.

In the case of Miami Golden Boy, that single location is the Bal Metropole, a swanky Miami Beach hotel that out-Fontainebleaus the Fontainebleau (the Beach’s three main themes, Kastle writes, are “BIG—ORNATE—MORE.”) Not only is the hotel able to accommodate a thousand(!) guests around its pool, it also features two nightclubs, a bar or three, a variety of restaurants and snack shops, and, on the Arcade Level, a veritable shopping mall.

The Bal Metropole (or the BM, as I’ll refer to it only once) also leases office space to the ad agency Andrew Stein Associates, which is why ad exec Bruce Golden, the titular Golden Boy, is frequently roaming the hotel’s giant halls. Bruce is young and hot, with a smooth confidence that makes panties dissolve almost instantly (“That’s what this hotel’s needed. A work of art,” remarks a horny socialite upon spotting Bruce in the lobby.) But while Bruce isn’t above indulging in some recreational sex, he has ambitions beyond just scoring pussy. He’s on the hunt for rich pussy, and the Bal Metropole is the perfect hunting ground: Where a Golden Boy might wilt and die outside the magic circle in Palm Beach, he could flower and triumph in Miami. The money was arriving. The women with money were arriving. Somewhere among them would be his bride.

The woman he sets his sights on is Ellie DeWyant, a waifish beauty with an even more attractive bank account. What Bruce doesn’t realize when he first hits on her is she’s also the daughter of the Bal Metropole’s owner, and she’s not charmed by Bruce’s come-ons. She’s also a bit of basket case, given to bouts of depression and easily panicked, especially when someone at the hotel begins blackmailing her. Ellie’s vulnerability ultimately works to Bruce’s advantage, allowing him to become, if not her Golden Boy, then at least her perceived White Knight, but he may have gotten himself more than he bargained for. Ellie, in turn, has gotten less than she’s hoped. But, hey, the sex is fantastic!

Avon’s 1971 paperback gives the
impression that Miami Golden
Boy is a romance novel.

Besides Bruce and Ellie, we meet Marjory Fine, the aforementioned horny socialite, who, when her fat husband leaves for business, hosts parties primarily so she can spy on her guests’ sexual dalliances. She even has a two-way mirror installed in her private bathroom so she can watch her guests fuck in the adjoining bedroom (voyeurism sure was a lot of work before the Internet). Among the guests she sees in action are hunky lifeguard Jerry Leech and the wife of men’s shirts magnate Max Prager, Ruthie, who’s got plenty of cushion for pushin’. Marjory sees more than she wants to, however, when swishy decorator Marco brings Democratic up n’ comer Sen. Richard Christopher into that bedroom and things get weird.

Fortunately for the senator, what happens in Marjory’s suite stays in Marjory’s suite. Were people to find out, the scandal would not only ruin Dick Christopher’s presidential aspirations, but it would also positively destroy him in the eyes of his father-in-law, former President—and father-in-law of the book’s current President Jonathan Standers—Michael Wheeler (did you get all that?) The former President is also at the hotel, and though he’s recovering from a stroke his iron grip on his political dynasty is as strong as ever. When Christopher remarks to his father-in-law’s nurse, Eve, that he’d want her as his nurse if he ever needs one, Wheeler says, “You seem to need one right now. Nurse…or nursemaid.” 

Wheeler might also be touchy about anyone eyeing Eve, a shy, sheltered young woman, as he hopes to groom her to be his mistress when he fully recovers. And he recovers quickly, thanks to Eve’s therapeutic hand- and blowjobs. But as awed as Eve is by Wheeler’s money and power, it’s manwhore Jerry Leech who moistens the crotch of her cotton panties.

Other characters include May Krasmer, owner of a successful chain of Chicago jewelry stores, who is in Miami to get some strange since her manipulative, impotent husband has given up even trying to get her off; Dan Berner, Sen. Christopher’s speechwriter, who gets a diagnosis that forces him to choose between the sex he lives for and just living, period; John McKensil, manager of the Bal Metropole, who has a weakness for underage girls and just might not be able to control himself once he discovers his new secretary, Violetta, is much younger than the 18 years she claims to be; and Wally Jones, an entertainer in the Sammy Davis, Jr. vein, whose celebrity provides little protection against America’s racism, especially when he accidentally punches the girlfriend of rival entertainer—and avowed racist—Benny Barker.

Some of these characters aren’t who they present themselves as, however. Some are actually involved in Cuban ex-pat Ivan Cesar Lamas’ plot to kidnap Sen. Christopher. Too bad some of Lamas’ henchmen are only in it for the money, not revolution.

Trash, But Not Disposable

Avon gave Miami Golden Boy a sexy
makeover “in the Harold Robbins
tradition” for its 1976 edition.

 

Miami Golden Boy is the type of novel that gets dismissed by intellectuals as popular fiction, the type of people who say the word “popular” in the same tone of voice one says, “You’re wearing that?” To that end, I’d like to say: fuck them. However, I sometimes wonder if Kastle might not have had a similar opinion of pop lit as those sneering intellectuals. His books may be written to appeal to the unwashed masses (or “deodorized masses,” as Sen. Christopher terms them), but he’s critiquing them, too. In Herbert Kastle’s world, there are no saints. Millionaires, politicians and criminals are all one and the same, they just get what they want through different means.

Beneath all the sex and sleaze in Miami Golden Boy is a scathing social commentary that, depressingly, is as applicable in 2021 as it was in 1969, especially in matters regarding race. There’s even a scene in which Wally Jones is stopped by police for “walking while Black,” though unlike in recent real-life incidents, the cops don’t shoot Jones, content to just humiliate him instead.

Then there’s Sen. Christopher’s speech, which originally includes these passages about America addressing its history of slavery and its continued practice of systemic racism. (A heads up, I’m quoting these passages as written and, as the book was written in the late 1960s, they use a dated term for African Americans.)

“What we must do is expand our understanding in terms of history, and also in terms of the human heart, sadly deficient when dealing with our Negro compatriots. These people who were kidnapped from their homes, packed into the bowels of ships like no intelligent cattle shipper would pack his stock, sold like any domestic animal, and bred in the same way. Now, overnight as it were, we expect the recent descendants of these tormented people to accept all middle-class virtues at face value, even when they have no part in middle-class benefits. We expect them to leap into the mainstream of American life, and we speak of our poor-folks’ childhoods to show it can be done easily enough. But our grandparents were not Black and were not slaves, and we are not Black and are not saddled with the malaise of recent slavery.

“Answers, you say, not questions, are what we need. Answers, I’m afraid, are not easily come by. And when offered, not easily accepted. Germany has dug into its pocket to indemnify, massively, the remnants and descendants of those killed in the Nazi holocaust. Not all Germans were Nazis. Not all Germans are, strictly speaking, responsible for what happened to the Jews. Yet all are paying.

“Not all Americans are responsible for what happened to the Negro people. Yet all Americans must dig into their pockets and then into their minds and hearts.”

Considering that the concept of critical race theory currently has the right wing’s collective catheters in a knot, I could imagine the above speech causing Scanners-style explosions of the talking heads at Fox News and NewsMax if delivered by a politician today. (The Internet, always quick to miss the forest for the tweets, would just focus on the use of the word “Negro.”)  But then, no real politician would risk saying these words, and neither does the fictional Sen. Christopher, who cuts them from his speech because to utter them in front of a largely white crowd on live TV would destroy his chances at securing the presidential nomination.

So, yeah, Miami Golden Boy may have all the elements of trash fiction, including a scantily clad woman on its cover, but it’s too well written and has too many pointed observations to be disposable. 

 

Not to be Outdone: Burt Hirschfeld’s ‘Key West’

Burt Hirschfeld wrote his
own Florida-set sex, scandal
and (overthrowing) Castro
novel in 1979, but his heart
just wasn’t in it.

I have no idea if Burt Hirschfeld wrote Key West in response to Miami Golden Boy, or if he in fact ever read Herbert Kastle’s novel. Regardless, his 1979 novel has a lot in common with the novel Kastle published a decade earlier, including a plot to overthrow Fidel Castro as one of its main narrative drivers. 

Unlike Kastle’s novel, however, Hirschfeld’s politics in Key West are more conservative — the man planning an assassination of Castro is an ex-CIA agent who frequently laments the weakening of America’s moral fiber — and his plotting less disciplined. The only instance where the majority of characters cross paths is during a party thrown by that stuffy ex-CIA man. I could believe the described bacchanal, which includes people doing drugs and having gay trysts in the bathroom, taking place at a party thrown by a staunch Republican, but that that said Republican’s guest list includes middle class slobs as well as the town’s elite strained credulity.

As a whole the book reads like the novelization of a Prime Time soap that got canceled after its eighth episode. Narratives are either wrapped up quickly or just dropped, resulting in the book simply petering out without a satisfying conclusion. Key West isn’t a total waste of time — Hirschfeld’s writing is as engaging as always — but only Hirschfeld completists need bother seeking this one out.

Queer and Loathing in the San Joaquin Valley

The original cover of Lost on Twilight
Road is as misleading as it is tacky.

I really intended this to be my second Pride Month post, but work, life and shit got in the way of me meeting my self-imposed deadline. But then, shouldn't Pride be celebrated all year long?

With that in mind, let’s get back in the closet! Let’s get LOST ON TWILIGHT ROAD.

I first learned of this 1964 novel, written by the late Joseph Hansen under the pseudonym James Colton, in the early 2000s when I read about it in Susan Stryker’s Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback. While there were many titles discussed in Queer Pulp that piqued my interest, only Styker’s overview of Lost on Twilight Road, which she described as a “white trash epic,” sparked an obsession. I didn’t just want to read Lost on Twilight Road, I had to. 

Of course, Twilight Road was long out of print and difficult to find. I discovered a copy on Alibris shortly after reading about it in Queer Pulp but was put off by the nearly $60 price tag. Turned out, $60 was a bargain. The next time I found the book for sale online, the price was over $200, and it just went up from there. I gave up when I saw it listed for over $450 on Amazon. But then, in the mid-2010s, it popped up on eBay with a relatively modest opening bid. The price didn’t stay modest for long, but I managed to stay one step ahead of the escalating bids, until I finally got the news I’d hoped for: I had won Lost on Twilight Road! I won’t reveal how much I paid for it, but it was worth every penny.

The protagonist of Lost on Twilight Road is Lonny Harms, who, contrary to what the cover illustration would have readers believe, is a cute, blond 16-year-old boy, not a 38-year-old alcoholic man.

The cover painting appears to be modeled on B-movie
actor Sonny Tufts.

For Lonny, home is wherever his drunken slut of a mother parks their trailer. At the book’s opening, said trailer is parked in a dusty trailer camp in California’s San Joaquin Valley, baking in April sun, turning its interior into an oven. No wonder Lonny gets naked the moment he returns from school. If only his own nakedness didn’t awaken all these confusing urges.

It was crazy to get this way when you took your clothes off. Did it happen to everybody? … Did the rest of it happen, too — the part of you that was supposed to ride quiet and harmless in your pants — did that do this, stretch out, stand hard like this, for other guys? And was there no controlling what you did about it, what your hands did, how your body shouted to be released out of itself, and nothing you could do to stop it?

No sooner has Lonny shot his load than his mother comes home, drunk after having spent her day at “some cheap bar” rather than at work. The mortified teenager waits for the full force of her rage. Instead, she grins and says, “My God, little Lonny’s growing up.” 

A couple days later Lonny returns from school to discover Mildred, a friend of his mother’s, waiting for him inside the trailer. Mildred is described as dark (“maybe part Mexican or something”), younger than Lonny’s mother (“maybe somewhere around twenty-five”) and dressed in a halter top and flimsy gingham shorts. Mildred claims she’s just stopped by for a friendly visit, but it’s clear she’s not there to just to chat. After serving Lonny spiked lemonade, Mildred’s undoing the buttons of his Levi’s (“Don’t you know that’s what a woman’s for?”) Only when Mildred is in a post-orgasmic haze is Lonny able to get away “from her [... ] and from his mother, from the men with big cars, from the constant drunks, the early morning escapes, the old Chevy, the dirty trailer, all of it. Forever.” 

So begins Lonny’s journey down “Twilight Road.” He’s first taken in by Linus and Martha Brucker, helping the elderly couple on their small farm. The Bruckers are the family Lonny always wished he had, but his happiness is threatened by a visiting nephew, Hal. Though the boys are around the same age, Hal has little interest in being Lonny’s friend — except at night, when he and Lonny are alone in the guest room. But Hal is no queer, as he makes clear the next day. Lonny can suck Hal’s dick (or jerk him off or whatever — the sex isn’t graphically described), but during daylight hours he’d better keep his faggot ass away from him. This doesn’t sit too well with Lonny, though he doesn’t put his foot down until the last night of Hal’s visit. As revenge for being denied a farewell nut, Hal outs Lonny to Uncle Linus, and the old man sends Lonny packing.

He attempts to settle down in another town, taking a job as a dishwasher at a drive-in restaurant, but loses that gig when he refuses to be kept by Mr. Porter, the fat queen who owns the restaurant—and half the other businesses in town. Time for Lonny to hit the road again.

Things improve for Lonny considerably in Lordsburg, where he lands a job as an assistant at the town’s weekly paper, the Standard, owned and edited by handsome, 35-year-old Gene Styles. Lonny throws himself into his work, thankful to have Gene as a mentor and relieved to have such a demanding job to distract him from his homo desires.

An emergency at work returns Lonny’s thoughts to his sexuality. A local judge and the sheriff barge into the Standard office when Gene’s away, demanding an unflattering story about the pair being cruel to out-of-work migrants be pulled (this was over five decades before “being cruel to out-of-work migrants” would be a GOP flex). Lonny calls Gene as soon as the two men leave, surprised when another man answers. The man tells Lonny to come over to Gene’s house, instructing him to come around to the side patio instead of the front door. Lonny does as he’s told, and discovers what most readers will have already guessed:

French doors stood open, and beyond them, inside the room, Lonny saw a rumpled white bed, its blankets fallen to the floor. And on the bed sprawled two naked figures. The back of one was turned, but Lonny recognized Gene Styles. And tangled with his lean, brown arms and legs were paler ones. But not those of any woman, of any wife.

It was a man that was with Gene, another man. What went on? For a crazy instant, Lonny thought it was a fight he saw, a beating, an attempt to choke, to kill. He almost yelled. Then he realized what was happening. His knees went weak. He felt dizzy. He turned and ran.

What I love about the above passage is how Lonny, who, though bit confused about sex, is clearly sexually aware, thinks Gene and his lover are fighting, like he’s an 8-year-old walking in on his parents fucking. (Then again, over half the content on RFC looks like assault to me, so maybe Lonny’s confusion stems from Gene liking it rough.) Lonny’s innocence is further belied when, after getting caught by Gene and assuring the editor he’s not repulsed by his homosexuality and has no intention of quitting, he goes to a diner, cruises a sexy Mexican teen named Pablo and takes him back to his place. Seeing Gene in flagrante-delicto may have made Lonny’s knees go weak, but it also made his cock rock hard.

Anyway, Gene refuses to pull the story, putting him on the sheriff’s and judge’s respective shit lists. But unhappy local officials are nothing compared to his scheming bitch of a boyfriend, Max. Max had set Lonny up to discover the two men fucking in hopes of scaring away Gene’s cute assistant. When that plan backfires, Max just becomes more vicious and pettier. 

Though Lonny has assured Gene he’s accepting of the older man’s queerness, he is tight-lipped about his own sexuality — and his relationship with Pablo.When Lonny does finally come out to Gene, the older man’s response is fear that he’s unduly influenced his fair-haired employee (“This is not hero-worship, surely?”) Perhaps most telling of the time this book is written is Gene’s response to Lonny asking if it’s OK to be gay:

“I don’t know,” Styles sighed wearily. “It’s complicated, Lonny. But even if I believed it’s all right, I don’t think I’d tell you. A decent man has obligations, especially to younger men who trust him and look up to him.”

So, in the name of “decency” Lonny must deal with his sexuality in his own way, and secretly. That secret gets out amongst Pablo’s peers, however, and they jump him and stab him several times for being a joto. Pablo’s mother is also aware of her son’s relationship with Lonny and she makes no attempt to hide her contempt when Lonny appears in Pablo’s hospital room. But the sight of his boyfriend brings a smile to Pablo’s face, so of course Pablo’s family and his confessor, Padre Guzman, must do all they can to wipe it off. Pablo, powerless against the relentless Catholic guilt, agrees to move to Mexico, where he’ll finish his education and become a priest.   

A heartbroken Lonny later visits Gene Styles at his home. Max has left for the evening — taking all the fuses from the fuse box with him. Once Gene and Lonny restore the power, Gene discovers that Max has gouged deep scratches across all the albums in his collection, rendering them unplayable. Gene’s record collection may be ruined, but the evening isn’t. 

Yep, in a turn that’s as surprising as the revelation that Gene’s “family,” the 35-year-old newspaperman and his assistant, now 18, end up spiriting away to a coastal motel for a weekend-long fuck-a-thon. Some might argue that Gene — who has been schooling Lonny on art, literature, and music — has been grooming Lonny all along, but it doesn’t really read that way. Also, Lonny seems to be genuinely in love with Gene (so, fuck off Pablo). They’re more Chris & Don: A Love Story than a SayUncle.com video.

It’s easier to accept Gene and Lonny together if you imagine
them looking like a pre-car wreck Montgomery Clift
and a young Tab Hunter.

But blowing a teenager (presumably) isn’t the worst thing Gene does with his mouth. When Gene isn’t teaching Lonny the many ways to love a man, he’s sharing some more questionable thoughts on what it means to be gay in the early 1960s, such as this tidbit:

“Maybe we always come with the dying of a civilization. I don’t think anybody who took a hard look at the past would tell you differently. When civilizations start to decline, homosexuality not only booms, but gets tolerated.”

He then adds: 

“I only know what I like. And I also feel pretty sure you can’t make a crusade out of it, start clubs, wave banners, or lobby for legislation. When tolerance comes, it comes spontaneously. It’s coming now, by the way. Which now I don’t think bodes well for western civilization.” 

And finally:

“Being born queer is like being born with any other handicap. You have to make the best of it. But as you get around, you’ll notice a lot of boys and men who seem out to make a show, who wave it in everybody’s face, and then feel hurt when the normal world calls them dirty names. These guys are asking for it—camping it up, flouncing around in drag[.]”

Author Joseph Hansen, in addition to being a trailblazer in gay fiction with his series of mystery novels featuring gay private investigator Dave Brandstetter, helped found the Hollywood Gay Pride Parade, so I don’t think Gene represented Hansen’s views so much as the internalized homophobia of men in his generation. Then again, Hansen was married to a woman for 51 years, so what do I know about his real views?

Mad Max and the Search for El Fumador

Gene and Lonny’s weekend of hot sex is short-lived. When they return to Lordsburg, Gene buys Max off, paying the evil queen a total of $5,000 to get out of his life. Max, however, costs Gene significantly more, tipping off local law enforcement about Gene possessing illicit drugs and pornography, then planting plenty of evidence for the sheriff and his deputies to find when they execute a search warrant on Gene’s house. 

Gene is arrested, but, to Lonny’s dismay, doesn’t really try to defend himself during his preliminary hearing (presided over by the same judge featured in the news story Gene refused to pull). It’s better to be convicted on trumped-up drug and pornography charges than reveal the truth about him and Max, whom the prosecuting attorney has already declared “a proven and notorious degenerate. A homosexual.” Worse, the true nature of Gene’s relationship with Lonny could get exposed in open court.

Lonny makes it his mission to prove Gene’s innocence. Max is long gone, so while his daddy boyfriend awaits trial, Lonny goes searching for the only other man who could clear Gene’s name, the ridiculously named El Fumador, a notorious area drug dealer known for his small stature, wearing wide-striped suits, and driving a pink Cadillac. So during the two weeks before Gene goes to trial, Lonny takes the editor’s car and embarks on a search of the San Joaquin Valley for the pink Cadillac.

His search is a failure. At the end of the two weeks Lonny winds up back in the motel suite of Mr. Porter, the predatory queen who propositioned him a year earlier. Broke, defeated, and desperate, Lonny offers himself to Porter, and the hefty homo happily seizes the opportunity (Hansen describes their coupling as a “sad, flabby business”). Yet Porter already has a full-time fluffer, and he’s not about to share his sugar daddy, ordering Lonny to leave or he’ll “cut [his] precious cock off!”

Lost on Twilight Road’s
alternate cover design, which
is...better?

Just when it looks like Lonny’s story is about to end as it began, with him wandering aimlessly down “Twilight Road,” he spots El Fumador’s pink Cadillac in Lordsburg. He confronts the drug dealing runt, and though he gets El Fumador to admit he planted the pills and porn in Gene’s house, Lonny also gets the shit beaten out of him, then shot at, the bullet grazing his skull. El Fumador runs away as Lonny’s begins slipping toward the downer ending that was required of so many queer pulps.

But not Lost on Twilight Road! Lonny’s skirmish with El Fumador occurred right outside the rectory of the Santa Teresa church, and Padre Guzman, of all people, overhead the whole thing and called the sheriff. El Fumador is arrested, and Gene Styles is released into Lonny’s arms. “I want you whole and with me, now,” Gene says while visiting Lonny in the hospital. “I’ve got so very much to learn from you.”

When I first got this book, I expected it to be campy fun. I mean, you saw the cover. How could anyone expect to take this book seriously? Yet Hansen took it seriously when he wrote it under its original title, Valley Boy. (He didn’t care for the publisher’s re-titling, and he described the cover as the “world’s worst cover illustration.” I disagree with him about the publisher’s title, which I find wonderfully lurid, but he’s right about the cover, though I don’t think the boring cover painting of the second edition, which Hansen preferred, was much of an improvement).

Bad cover images seem to have plagued Mr. Hansen
throughout his writing career.

Though there are plenty of moments in the book that make it read like a novelization of a sweaty sexploitation movie, and the name “Lonny Harms” sounds like a character in a John Waters film, Lost on Twilight Road is more heartfelt than campy. Beneath the titillation of Lonny stumbling from one sexual misadventure to the next is a is an honest exposé of what gay men endure just to get along in the world. Lonny’s transformation from wide-eyed innocent to proud — but not quite out — homosexual may be far-fetched, but it’s also revolutionary for the pre-Stonewall ’60s. Gene Styles’ self-loathing is an unhealthy, hetero-normative way of thinking; Lonny’s self-acceptance is the ideal. Gene Styles is right: he does have so much to learn from his barely legal lover.

Goddamn, this was a long one. (Reader: You’re telling me!) But I really do adore this book, despite its problematic passages. Unfortunately, a more-detailed-than-necessary synopsis might be the closest most readers will get to actually experiencing it. Though Hansen went on to be a successful and acclaimed novelist, his early “James Colton” pulps never got reprinted. I hold out hope that one day these books will find their way into digital markets, like some of Hansen’s mystery novels, but until that day happens, my obsessive review will have to suffice. If that doesn’t get the Hansen estate’s ass in gear to re-release the author’s early pulps, I don’t know what will.

But What is the Cat Thinking?

WHERE’S ANNIE? is not just the title of this 1963 novel by Eileen Bassing, it’s also the question I kept asking myself while reading it. Specifically: Where’s Annie, and why is she name-checked in title? Because this novel isn’t really about Annie at all.

Annie, the young trophy wife of a retired navy admiral, is but one of a group of American ex-patriots living in an un-named village in Mexico, and even then she is only a peripheral character, having only slightly more impact on the book’s story as the natives of the village.

The book’s actual main character is Victoria, a middle-aged writer who, after ditching husband No. 4, has settled in the village to write a great novel, provided she can get past her writer’s block. Victoria is not an easy character to love. We first meet her when she nearly collides with Andrew Cunningham, Annie’s unhappy husband, while he’s out for his morning walk. “Out of my way,” she says, as though he’s the one at fault. Victoria is too involved in her own thoughts to waste time with social graces.

Victoria is bitchy, but she’s not heartless. She later comes rushing to Cunningham’s aid when his fishing boat sinks in the lake at the edge of the village, then later she organizes a search for Annie when the admiral’s young bride disappears from a party (insert title drop here).

Annie is ultimately found in the arms of another (younger) man. Annie lamely defends herself, telling Victoria that Cunningham is “so…old.”  Victoria encourages Annie to remain faithful to her husband a little longer. “You have time,” Victoria says. “He has…almost no time.” (Bassing is fond of ellipses.)

The Cunninghams leave for the U.S. the next day and Victoria once again focuses on her work. But first, she walks to the post office to see if her agent has sent her a check, then she goes drinking with Charlie, a recovering morphine addict who fights off cravings with booze and pot, and Harry, a junkie who’ll take whatever drug is available. She later meets Ned, a homosexual and gifted artist. Though Ned is perfectly charming, Victoria, who couldn’t give less of a fuck about making a good first impression, is openly hostile. Still, Ned invites her to visit him. She refuses.

Days later she decides to apologize for her rudeness, visiting Ned on the exact same day he comes down with malaria. Victoria elects to stay with him and nurse him back to health, partly out of penance for her earlier treatment of him, but mostly to avoid her typewriter. It’s during this chapter that we get one of the book’s best lines, when Victoria tells Ned, “I’d rather deal with your excrement than your gratitude.”

The pair become friends, but it’s not a healthy friendship. Victoria had to deal with Ned’s literal shit when he was sick but dealing with his metaphorical crap may be worse. It turns out Ned’s charm masks his cold, selfish nature. The pair fight and make-up constantly. He finds her too dowdy, too bohemian, too emotional. She resents his criticisms of her and her writing, but when her temper cools she’s back at his door, seeking his approval. It’s Harry, of all people, who’s the voice of reason:

“[Do] you know what I see Neddy-boy doing? I see him trying to make my Vickie, my original, over into his own mold. He is fashioning, as though he were God, another little Neddy-boy.”

Harry is a drug addict and shit-stirrer, so Victoria dismisses his observations. Besides, she’s too preoccupied with what Ned’s cat is thinking to pay attention to what Harry says.

Let me explain: Late in the book Ned gives Victoria his cat, Hassan, to care for while he’s out of town. This cat behaves like most cats (lies there, mostly), much to the consternation of Victoria.

Could it think? She stared at it and the cat stared back at her, in cross-eyed indifference. After a moment — and she was aware that a lot of time passed this way, hypnotically, with her staring at the cat and the cat staring back at her — it reached out with its paw and pushed at an envelope which was on the shelf near it. The cat did not watch the envelope flutter to the floor, as she did. But wasn’t that proof, since it was a deliberate act, that the cat must have some thought, some reasoning process? Then what could its reasoning process be?

The above text is but a mere taste of Victoria’s obsessing over this cat. Bassing devotes almost three fucking pages to Victoria wondering what makes this goddamned cat tick. I only bothered with one of those pages.

And this tangent about the mysteries of cat thought highlights my biggest problem with Where’s Annie? For all the well-drawn characters and sharp observations, Bassing too often gets bogged down in minutiae at the expense of the story’s momentum. This is a loose, character-driven narrative, with as much attention given to the characters’ inner lives as to the story’s minimal action, but I would argue that any inner life that dwells on the inscrutability of cats is perhaps not a life not worth reading about.

Not helping is Bassing’s tendency to try too hard, her writing often self-consciously literary, as if she’s more interested in impressing critics than engaging readers, similar to how Victoria tailors her writing to please Ned rather than herself. Consequently, this book felt longer than its 382-pages.

But Where’s Annie? has a lot to recommend it. Victoria isn’t particularly likable, but she is relatable. I’ve known people like her—I’ve been friends with them—and as in real life, I was alternately drawn to Victoria for her acerbic wit and put off by her surly attitude. Still, even though I didn’t entirely like her, I didn’t think she deserved the treatment she got form Ned.

Speaking of Ned, while I wouldn’t nominate Bassing for a GLAAD award, her treatment of Ned’s homosexuality is pretty progressive for 1963. She matter-of-factly acknowledges Ned’s queerness (Ned has a boy toy, Manuel), but his homosexuality never becomes his sole character trait. In fact, there are only a couple instances in the book when characters make derogatory comments about Ned’s sexuality. People don’t dislike him because he’s gay, they dislike him because he’s an asshole. 

I didn’t know anything about Eileen Bassing when I was given this book five years ago (my nephew saw it at a used bookstore and thought it looked like something I’d read). Besides Where’s Annie?, she wrote the novel Home Before Dark. According to her obituary — she died in 1977 at age 58 — she also was a screenwriter (she adapted Home Before Dark into a 1958 movie starring Jean Simmons), a story editor and an advisor for the motion picture and TV industries. I’ve seen Home Before Dark and recommend checking it out next time it appears on the TCM schedule. Where’s Annie? is worth checking out, too. If you can fight the temptation to abandon the search early, Where’s Annie? is ultimately a satisfying read.

The Lurid and the Literary

“Out here books are crap,” explains a screenwriter character in Herbert Kastle’s 1968 novel THE MOVIE MAKER. In Hollywood, this character goes on, books are just “words to be boiled down to a plot skeleton and refleshed for the screen. No one reads novels for the movies. They read story, skimming along and noting interesting twists and turns. Bestsellers are bought for their titles more than anything else.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out Kastle got a similar talk when he was working as a screenwriter, one of several of his early writing jobs—including editor and copywriter— before he became a full-time novelist. I also think this statement could be modified to apply to trashy Hollywood novels: no one reads these type of books for the writing; they read them for the sleaze.

The Movie Maker delivers the sleaze, but it’s too well written to be labeled mere trash. In fact, it’s so well written I can imagine Kastle’s agent having to lecture him about the hard truths of writing trashy Hollywood novels.

“Goddammit, Kastle,” his agent would have groaned, “why do you do this to yourself? All we wanted was a look at the sordid goings on in the movie business. Lots of sex, drugs and characters that are fictionalized versions of real stars, you know the drill. I know you know it because you’ve got this Mona Dearn character in this thing—a definite stand-in for Marilyn Monroe, all neurotic and fragile and shit. And giving her some lesbian leanings was brilliant. Man, I was getting hard just thinking of the possibilities, imagining Marilyn-but-not-Marilyn going down on, I dunno, an Ann Margaret stand-in, or maybe a fictional Jayne Mansfield. That would’ve been hilarious!  Sounds hot, though, doesn't it? But no, that was too easy for you. You had to go into her loneliness and insecurity and how her feelings for the movie publicist, Terry Hanford, are never reciprocated. Then the stuff about her painting, how she’s afraid to show her paintings to anyone in case they don’t like them, kind of a metaphor of how she’s afraid to show people her true self. I mean, Jesus Christ, who’s going to get hard thinking of that?

“At least you redeemed yourself with the Lois Lane and Sugar Smart characters,” the agent would continue. “God, what a couple of bitches. That poor egghead writer, Charley Halpert, didn’t know what hit him when he opened his motel room door to those two. You almost feel sorry for the bastard until you remember that it’s his fault for saying yes to a three-way with two teenagers. Serves him right, thinking with the wrong head.

“But maybe you should’ve been thinking with that other head, Kastle, instead of giving us all this insight into Charley Halpert’s inner conflicts—cheating on a wife who doesn’t support his writing ambition, his wanting to prove himself in Hollywood to win her respect but thinking maybe they should just divorce, except he doesn’t want to risk never seeing his son again. Then you involve him with this Cheryl character, the fat secretary—okay, okay, Rubenesque, but as far as today’s readers are concerned a Mae West figure isn’t much better than an Orson Welles figure. If Jacqueline Susann had that character in one of her books, Cheryl would be rejected repeatedly, maybe sexually humiliated when she does get laid. Then she’d spend a good third of the book slimming down until the men who rejected her earlier are begging to take her to bed, and then she rejects them. But I guess imitating a proven moneymaker was too simple for you, wasn’t it Kastle? Cheryl not only has two men hot for her—Charley and that producer, Alan Devon—she’s got that alcoholic, paraplegic husband of hers who seems to only want to stay married to make her life miserable. So, now the reader’s conflicted, wanting to write off Cheryl as a slut but having to wrestle with her relatable emotions. It’s too… too gray.

“Speaking of gray—or just gay—there’s that whole subplot with the schlock horror director, Carl Baiglen, being blackmailed by that young policeman from Baiglen’s hometown in the Midwest. That was good, a clever way for the cop to leverage his way into the movie business, transform himself into Brad Madison. Making him a closet case was a nice touch, too. Who was the real-life inspiration? Hudson? An amalgamation? Fine, you don’t have to tell me. Anyway, the homosexual stuff adds a bit of spice to it, but then you have to humanize him. I mean, people might forgive Baiglen for maybe-accidentally-on-purpose killing his first wife, but expecting readers to sympathize with this homo blackmailer? Worse, have him carrying on with Baiglen’s gay son Andy, and then present a reasonable argument—from Andy’s mother, no less—why Baiglen should not kill Madison? Look, Kastle, times are changing, but expecting people to sympathize for a fag actor is just too much.”

Kastle’s agent would pause here to light a cigarette, because it was the 1960s and everyone smoked. “But here’s my biggest problem,” he’d say, exhaling a pale blue cloud. “It’s your two main characters, Nat Markal and Isa Yee. Nat Markal is the head of Avalon Pictures, right? You’ve got his look right—I pictured a younger Edward G. Robinson—and he’s got the right take-no-shit personality, what people expect from a studio chief. Yet, he’s been faithful to his wife all this time, that it’s a point of pride for him? Christ, if anything could make Harold Robbins laugh, that would. Do you know how many starlets Nat Markal would’ve fucked if he were a Robbins character? At least four, within the first fifty pages. Yes, I know Markal’s staunch fidelity to his wife makes his falling for Isa Yee that much more dramatic, but who cares? And Robbins wouldn’t have Markal risking it all to make this grand epic—what did you title it? The Eternal Joneses?—for the sake of his artistic legacy. No, in a Robbins novel Markal would only make that movie if he thought it would be a huge blockbuster that would make him even richer. Fucking and making money, Kastle. That’s Robbins’ formula for success, without any of these petty concerns for three-dimensional characters. Do you know how many copies of The Adventurers Simon & Schuster sold? I could buy a yacht with that kind of money.

“Isa Yee almost gets this lost ship back on course. The sexy starlet with a dark secret. Dark, get it? C’mon, I’m not being racist, it’s a joke. Seriously, though, I thought Isa was a spitfire, and I can already see her on the paperback cover, a naked Eurasian girl—your word—practically draped over a director’s chair. The way you described her in those early chapters, especially when she strips for Nat Markal in his office, is hot stuff. But you couldn’t just let her be a conniving bitch, and one who does anal, no less. No, you had to make her smart and conflicted, adding in this race stuff. Christ-a-mighty-damn, first gays then race relations. I get it’s the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement, etcetera, etcetera, but people don’t pick up books like this for cultural insight. They just want sex and scandal, with cliché characters that are clearly good or clearly bad. You’re killing me with all this nuance, Kastle.

“No, no, I don’t want you to re-write it,” the agent would sigh, waving his hands dismissively. “It is a good book. I just wanted you to understand you don’t have to work that hard in the future. They can play up the sex and scandal when they market this thing, maybe compare it to Valley of the Dolls and The Exhibitionist, because it does fit in with that market. I just hope we don’t get any backlash when people discover they’re having their viewpoints challenged, or that the people making movies aren’t presented as just shallow vessels motivated solely by sex and greed. Who knows, readers might find it refreshing. But I still think Harold Robbins is going to laugh his ass off when he reads this thing.”

But, seriously, The Movie Maker is well worth your time, blending the lurid with the literary.  I’ve enjoyed the works of Harold Robbins, Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins, but their books are the equivalent of devouring a box of Ho Hos. Kastle’s books are a fattening meal that sticks to the ribs. You can read reviews of his other books here and here, and check out another review of The Movie Maker here.