fame

The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago

brittany — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

During the 1920s, a rash of killings rocked Chicago. The murderers were young women who drank, and most killed their lovers. Most were white and all-male juries that refused to believe women were capable of cold-blooded murder released most of them. During this time, the crimes were reported in the newspapers by “sob sisters,” female reporters who were able to interview female inmates and victim’s family members.

The Girls of Murder City is about this period in time, two killers in particular, Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, and a female reporter, Maurine Watkins. Beulah and Belva both killed their lovers after the men threatened to leave them. Both were beautiful, rich, white, and relatively young. The newspapers gave both women a chance to be famous, and both used it to their advantage.

Maurine Watkins was a hardworking, pious Christian who came to Chicago with the plan to use her column to show the evils of the world. Her sarcastic, strong-willed writing was often the only counterpoint to the sob sisters’ tales of woe in the papers. She would eventually use her stories to write the play Chicago, which would become the long-running musical.

The book tells an interesting story about the rise of the “girl gunners” and the creation of Chicago. The problem is that the story feels a bit unfocused. Maurine is not the main focus of the book, but neither are Belva and Beulah (or Chicago characters Velma and Roxie, if you will). The book explores their cases and delves into the lives of the other women in jail with them, but then switches to focus on Maurine. As a result, the story feels a bit shallow. I wanted more from both of the stories. Other narratives, like the story of the murder of Bobby Franks by teenaged killers Leopold and Loeb, are shoehorned into the story and feel tacked on.

Most importantly, the book is very poorly cited. For a while, I did not know if I was reading a non-fiction book or a “non-fiction” fiction book like In Cold Blood. Douglas Perry included details he seemingly could not know unless he had been there. There is an extensive note section in the back of the back of the book, but without explanation as to where each note belonged, reading them was slow going. More confusingly, there are footnotes in the book, but not to the main facts. They function more as author asides. Actual footnotes would have made the book much better, and given it much more authority.

I enjoyed The Girls of Murder City, but it could have been much better.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, April 12th 2011

Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters

farhana — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Marilyn Monroe

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Everyone knows about the tragic life of bombshell Marilyn Monroe, whose nickname “Miss Golden Dreams” would indicate nothing of how brief her existence would be. At thirty-six, the “orphan” with a mentally damaged mother and no father to call her own was found naked and dead in her Los Angeles home, apparently from suicide. With three divorces, several miscarriages, and plenty of roles depicting her as a dumb blonde, not even Monroe’s celebrated curves, sapphire blue eyes, or perfectly heart-shaped face were enough to keep her smiling. No fame or money could save the starlet with the little girl voice from the many demons that haunted her.

Since her passing in August 1962, hundreds of books have attempted to capture the patron saint of tragic screen sirens. Now, forty-six years later, Monroe speaks for herself in Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters, the sleek hardcover edited by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment. Fragments gives us a glimpse of a woman who was used and misused many times over. Finally, we have the truth of who really was one of the twentieth century’s greatest icons.

This book is a collection of Monroe’s poems, letters, notes, diary entries, and even recipes that were kept hidden-until now. However, the first few pages confirms what many have long suspected—that she suffered from a dark depression, which wasn't widely talked about during her lifetime.

Despite seeking guidance from several doctors, Monroe wasn’t afraid to further examine how she felt, even noticing how her sadness was affecting her physical beauty, including “eyes dulled, cheeks flushed with capillaries that look like rivers on maps” and “hair lying like snakes.” Using a poetic language, undoubtedly inspired by her passion for literature, Monroe expertly depicted herself as “a dancer who cannot dance,” a turbulent storm who couldn’t be embraced by the men she sought.

Monroe’s marriage to Yankees baseball star Joe DiMaggio may have been a match made in tabloid heaven, but it was her relationship with playwright Arthur Miller that proved more telling, and perhaps more damning, than any of her other romances. From her rainbow collection of books, as seen in Fragments, to her determination to attend the Actor’s Studio in New York City, it was of no surprise that Monroe would be drawn to someone who can satisfy her desire to learn. Yet, when Monroe found her husband’s diary in 1956 and discovered how shameful he felt when she was around his intellectual peers, we’re able to feel how heartbroken she must have been over this shocking surprise.

“I guess I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really,” Monroe reveals in Fragments, later stating, “I think to love bravely is the best and accept-as much as one can bear.”

Despite that Monroe was desired by thousands of men as the dress flying “girl” or diamond-obsessed Lorelei Lee, the real life pinup suffered from the same sorrows that all women face when they’ve been betrayed.

While Monroe was one of the first actresses to launch a production company in spite of the star factories of Hollywood studios, Fragments shows that her accomplishments weren’t enough to fulfill what she always wanted: love.

It’s certain that loyal Monroe fans will instantly fall head over heels for Fragments. Even curious listeners can also learn a thing or two about the actress who continues to captivate audiences a century later.

There are still many unanswered questions, yet Fragments ultimately reveals how Monroe was a curious, hopeful and passionate woman willing to overcome the many obstacles that came her way by trying to control of her fate. Fragments exposes not the love goddess we’ve come to worship, but the misunderstood mortal who wouldn’t live long enough to find what she so desperately searched for.

Written by: Stephanie Nolasco, January 29th 2011

Somewhere

mandy — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Directed by Sofia Coppola

Focus Features

It’s hard to give a shit about the rich. The beautiful and the damned don’t stir much sympathy. All the angst of moneyed loneliness seems… slight, when compared to poor and ugly people who feel lonely. Pity should be reserved for people the world shuts out, not those who shun the world’s embrace. Sofia Coppola’s new movie, Somewhere, is about the sadness of having everything. Luckily, it’s not as bad as you might think.

At the Chateau Marmont—an opulent hotel with an edgy reputation—we meet a famous actor (Stephen Dorff) who is feeling isolated. He spends his days by the pool, or watching pole dancers perform for him in his hotel room. He receives anonymous text messages telling him he’s an asshole. He drives his fast car, in circles, on a deserted race track. And he tries, fitfully, to be father, though there’s a sense in which he thinks his daughter is too good for him. She, fortunately, loves her dad. And together, they are charming.

As the dissolute dad, Dorff looks like a men’s fragrance advertisement. He’s got so many stomach muscles. His tattoos are winningly rebellious. His looks devil-may-care when he smokes. Even though he’s a scarcely-articulate douchebag with the intellectual life of a palm tree, you still want to hang out with him.

Elle Fanning has been in showbiz since an agent cut her umbilical cord (she had her first major screen credit at age two), so it really is a stretch for her to play a non-actor. She’s innocent as a lily in Somewhere, and she easily presents the strongest argument as to why anyone should care about Dorff's character. Her role is to be authentic; a real person in a morass of phonies. Thankfully, she isn’t given the kind of precocious wisdom children are often endowed with in this kind of movie. Instead, Fanning gets to play a girl who seems entirely normal, who doesn’t see her uncertain future or how painful adolescence is going to be.

The photographer Helmut Newton died, age eighty-three, when the Cadillac he was driving crashed into a wall outside the Chateau Marmont. After a lifetime celebrating excess, even his death seemed glamorous. Not many octogenarians die in this way. The fact that Somewhere is set in the cloistered walls of a celebrity retreat, and not in a mall in Boise, Idaho, is because Coppola knows depression is easier to look at when it’s dressed in pearls. Her movie is elegant and perceptive. But poor people have it worse.

Read the full review at Movie Waffle

Written by: James Tatham, January 11th 2011