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star power The Examined life Top left: Barbara Stanwyck striking a pose circa Three other books shed new 1940; bottom left: with light on cultural luminaries. husband Robert Taylor in 1939; below: author Victoria Wilson. A story lately told Anjelica Huston

When Angelica Huston was born, the news was delivered by a barefoot runner to her father, the director John Huston, who was in the Belgian Congo filming The African Queen with Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. The first installation of this two-part memoir (the second will be published next fall) follows the pre-L.A. life of this ultimate child of Hollywood: growing up in Ireland, falling in love with theater in London, and modeling in New York (Scribner; $25).

My MISTAKE: MIRACLE WOMAN A MEMOIR A sweeping biography tells the larger-than-life story of Barbara Stanwyck. Daniel Menaker By Michael Lindsay-Hogg movie movie Former Random House ( bigwig Daniel Menaker ooking at victoria Wilson, Wilson brilliantly sets the movies Stan- chronicles the ups and you can’t quite believe she has been an edi- wyck made against a whole period of Ameri- downs of his career, from Swarthmore in the early L tor since 1972 at Alfred A. Knopf, where can history, from the Roaring Twenties to the ’60s to a 26-year run at she has earned the respect and love of many fast-changing, coming-of-age motion picture the New Yorker. It’s an a writer (I am one). Now, having brought out industry at the dawn of World War II. (This entertaining behind- the-scenes look at the books by the likes of Lorrie Moore, William 1,000-page tome ends in the summer of 1940; ) magazine, especially when Menaker recalls Gass, and Anne Rice, she is at last bringing out a second volume, on the way, starts off with the on ; everett collection collection everett ; office run-ins with the likes of Tina Brown, one of her own: A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: iconic Meet John Doe.) ) wil s William Shawn, Roger Angell, and his Steel-True, 1907–1940 (Simon & Schuster; Wilson—now a vice president at Knopf— ( eventual wife, Katherine Bouton (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $24). $40). It is the story of a woman she describes as has star quality herself. She is delicately pretty, “one of Hollywood’s most uncannily natural, with a strong mane of white hair, which is timeless, and underrated actresses.” appropriate for someone who rides her white Stanwyck’s 88 movies began with the com- horse, Twist, on weekends. Her appearance— Roth R avid Joyce ; Unbound ing of sound, and she went on to work in televi- blue jeans, striped shirts, Belgian loafers—is ) Claudia Roth Pierpont sion, from its early days all the way through the an indication of her mind: informal, liberal, aylor

1980s. Wilson gives us an appropriately large, elegant, with a definite sense of form and style, s hot publicity tanwyck s ( Philip Roth and writer thrilling, and sensitive biography to go with all of which she brings to Steel-True. Claudia Roth Pierpont (no relation) first met in this staggering career. It’s the saga of Ruby Ste- Wilson spent 14 years working on the life g e s 2002, and they became vens, a Brooklyn girl orphaned and abandoned of Stanwyck, whom Frank Capra called “the pen pals and friends. at the age of four, who, with a sex- greatest emotional actress the tanwyck and T and tanwyck

But it wasn’t until the s

ily sullen acting style, became one screen has yet known.” What she ( acclaimed novelist of Hollywood’s highest-paid stars. discovered—and shares in this made the decision to on retire that Pierpont, We see her high-flying years on indelible, revelatory book—is an with Roth’s blessing, began work on the Broadway, her difficult marriage artist’s extraordinary transforma- first major study of the author, one that

to vaudeville legend Frank Fay, and tion from homeless child to one of I ma ollection/Getty reveals many eye-opening details about his personal life (Farrar, Straus and her second marriage to dreamboat the most magnetic stars in the his- Giroux; $27). S.W. Robert Taylor. tory of Hollywood. • W il s V ictoria ; ) ter s s po NOVEMBER 2013 T&C 74 townandcountrymag.com C Screen Silver