“You’re getting a big kick out of making me feel cheap.”

Hard-Boiled: Great Lines from Classic Noir Films is a splendid resource book for the film noir aficionado. It contains 300 memorable lines from almost 150 films. Film noir fans know that one of the best things about noir is its snappy dialogue–we drool over lines such as “you’re like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another” (Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past) and “If I’d been a ranch, they would have named me Bar Nothing” (Rita Hayworth in Gilda).

The book begins with a chapter written by Lee Server. This introduction serves as a nice overview of noir–its origins, the great noir directors, and the genre’s salient features. Then the book leads into the quotes that are alphabetized by film listing. Each quote credits the actor who delivered the line and the name of the character played. There are a generous number of spectacular black & white and colour photos and film ads accompanying the text. At the back of the book, there’s an index of actors, directors, and writers with the page number that references to the quote. In addition there’s also another index of the first lines. I like the book’s organization.

The book is co-authored by Peggy Thompson and Saeko Usukawa, and there’s a statement that “now you, too, can sound like you just stepped off the set of a film noir classic.” Actually I bought the book for my smut-beaked parrot, Dirty Harry, who has learned several film noir quotes, and I want him to learn more. This book will serve as a resource for Dirty Harry and me, and I am anticipating the fun we will have. He already says “We’re sisters under the mink” (Gloria Grahame in The Big Heat) and “You cheap canary” (Robert Ryan in The Racket). If you don’t have a parrot to teach some of these quotes too, don’t despair; the book will still give you leads on films you never heard of–plus you can always toss some of these great lines around whenever you’re given an opening. My only complaint about the book is that there are a lot more quotes that never made it into this collection. For example, the line “You couldn’t plant enough flowers to hide the smell” (Glenn Ford in The Big Heat) didn’t make it into the book while other quotes from the film did, but for a collection of 300 great lines, I can’t complain.

 “Let’s drink to Gloria. Let’s drink to life.”

Peter Turner, an actor and former lover of film noir star Gloria Grahame, authored an account of her last days, Films Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool. Gloria Grahame’s film career was hampered by personal scandal–including four marriages, an affair with her stepson (who became husband number 4), and nasty custody battles. In the 70s, Gloria traveled to England, performing plays, and it’s here that she met Turner. Their relationship moved to New York and to California, but when they broke up, Turner moved back to England.

On September 29th 1981, Turner received a phone call. Gloria was ill in a hotel in Lancaster. Turner, along with family members, collected Gloria from the hotel and took her to the family home in Liverpool. Gloria had been diagnosed with a huge stomach tumour the year before (earlier breast cancer metastasized to the stomach), but she rejected surgery, insisted she didn’t have cancer and traveled to England to perform on stage. Once in England, a doctor drained fluid from her stomach. Although no one was aware of it, this action perforated her bowel. Gloria was dying. The Turner family nursed Gloria in their home until some of her children arrived to take her back to New York.

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is grim reading, and Gloria Grahame fans know how the story ends. Author Turner is not a professional writer, but the book is well written and Turner is obviously very comfortable with his style and his tale. Turner juxtaposes Gloria’s last days with memories of their relationship in happier times, and for the most part, the transitions back and forth are smooth. The most interesting parts of the book, however, are the details about Gloria–her taste in clothes, her health obsession, habits etc. The book pays homage to Gloria–an amazing actress, and a tremendously brave and tough person. Fans of Gloria Grahame will want to read this book as a companion piece to her biography Suicide Blonde by Vincent Curcio.

“Sometimes it seems to me, I’ve known so many men that the FBI ought to come to me first to compare fingerprints.”

It was Mae West month around here, and to top off watching my favourite sexpot’s films, I decided it was time to read her autobiography Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It. After turning the final page, I concluded that Mae West was an incredible woman. She created a successful persona and knew just how to market herself–controlling every last little detail–from the costumes she wore, the scripts she edited and wrote, to the theatres she performed in. She understood her audience, and she knew how to give her fans what they wanted.

Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It begins with Mae West’s childhood. While this portion of the book is relatively brief, it’s clear that Mae was a precocious child. She thrived on amateur theatrics, and her mother supported the goal to make Mae a star. Mae West details her career and explains how she moved from Vaudeville to Broadway, and eventually turned her sights on Hollywood.

This is not a tell-all book. Mae West remains surprisingly discreet when it comes to naming names–although she includes overviews of liaisons with various men. Throughout the book, Mae West doesn’t hesitate to offer her insights on love, male/female relationships, homosexuality, and sex. And Mae West is unrelenting when it comes to giving herself ample praise–it begins with noting that her siblings were comparative weaklings, and goes on to her describing herself as a forerunner of the sexual revolution. No one can accuse Mae West of false modesty.

The book also includes several amusing anecdotes. She describes what it was like working with W.C. Fields, how she fooled a diamond swindler (she kept a jeweler’s scale at home for her hobby of diamond collecting), and how she imperiously selected a director (it was Mae’s way or the highway). Included are many details of the changing theatre scene as the Depression hit, behind the scenes information on her delightful films and her ongoing battles with the Hays Code. Even William Randolph Hearst wrote “Isn’t it time Congress did something about Mae West?” Fans of Mae West will enjoy this book and be surprised to discover that in print she sounds like her film characters–tough, unsentimental, always in control, and full of one liners: “getting down to your last man must be as bad as getting down to your last dollar.”

“If the pressures don’t get you, the habits will.”

Imagine you are sitting on a stool in some seedy Hollywood bar one evening, when a washed-out woman approaches you, and for the price of a few drinks, she begins to tell you her life story. If you can imagine the scenario, then you have captured the flavour of the book I Am Not Ashamed, Barbara Payton’s autobiography penned a few years before her death at age 39.

Barbara Payton was a promising Hollywood starlet in the 50s. Earning an average of $10,000 a week, she was one of the beautiful blonde goddesses slated for stardom. With a $100,000 contract for her role in the James Cagney film, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, she was courted by some of the biggest names in the film industry. But just a few years later, Barbara Payton, now penniless, worked as a prostitute on Sunset Boulevard. What happened?

Barbara Payton was the woman in the infamous love triangle with rival lovers Franchot Tone and Tom Neal. A fight between the two men put Tone in the hospital and Barbara in the headlines. Payton married Tone, a marriage that lasted 7 weeks, and then returned to Tom Neal. From this point, it was a downhill slide for Barbara. Dropped from her studio contract, she began to drift …

It’s difficult to pick one single time when things began to go wrong for Barbara. She doesn’t seem to know when it began, and it seems that the career disappeared for more reasons than the relationships she scandalized Hollywood with in the 50s. She refers to getting bloated, losing her looks and calls herself as an old woman at age 35. She often discusses her careers in generalities, and recalls moments at the pinnacle of her success with momentary sadness before moving swiftly and deliberately away from those painful, glittering memories: “If I get a wine with bubbles in it and drink enough of it, I can look at the reflection in the store window and see myself as I was the first time I wore a mink.”

Barbara doesn’t take a strict chronological approach to her story. She wanders around, and some memories seem to spark other memories, so at times it’s difficult to know the sequence of some of the events she discusses. Some of the scenes (Mexico, for example) seem a little unbelievable, and they seem more appropriate for some Hollywood blockbuster. Don’t look for a great deal of name-dropping–there’s a conspicuous absence of names, and Barbara explains this is for legal reasons. She does, however, describe her relationships with both the “socially acceptable” Franchot Tone and “the train to nowhere”, Tom Neal. With all men, ultimately, “forever is just a weekend.”

There’s a great deal here that the book doesn’t mention. For example, a teenage marriage (which was annulled) is not discussed in these pages. Instead Barbara concentrates on the many gifts she received–a Cadillac, a mink coat, a jade necklace, etc. Throughout it all, she boasts of her ability to read and use men for the roles she wanted, and yet it’s clear to the reader that things were not as cut and dried as that. The book’s strongest passages are when Barbara describes her ever-declining value as a prostitute, and this she seems crystal clear about. She describes the situation as “my price had fallen.” And these pages are heart wrenching, painful, and perceptive. The book includes many black and white photos, and Barbara’s deterioration is shocking. As often happens with an autobiography, you trade the skill of a polished professional writer for the raw account of the celebrity. While I Am Not Ashamed isn’t a perfect book, film noir fans will be fascinated by Barbara Payton’s unforgettable memoir.