Such Mad Fun

The 1939 Cosmopolitan cover says it all: The lovely and glamourous Jane Hall with her beloved Kate, captured at the height of her successful career as a Hollywood screen writer. The real deal, an early writing genuis published at age 13 who ended up in an office next door to F. Scott Fitzgerald screenwriting writing for the cash desperately needed to support his daughter Scottie in private school and wife Zelda in the sanitarium. He became a mentor and friend to Jane.

An Arizonia small town girl orphaned early and raised by her New York City aunt and uncle, Jane attended a posh private school and 'came out' as a deb. Caught up in the mad fun of endless deb parties that lasted into the early morning hours and required long days of sleep before the cycle started again, she found deb life shallow but irresistable.

Jane's early success writing for magazines was based on her outsider/insider look at the glamourous life of her contemporaries. Attracking the notice of an agent she was hired by MGM where she wrote the screenplay for These Glamour Girls. Jane thrived in the exhausting long days and hobnobbing with Hollywood elite at night. She was a success.

She kept suitors at bay with a singleminded desire to write...until she finally succumbed to the charming and handsome Bob Cutler, a recovering alcoholic and divorcee. Jane thought she'd met her Prince Charming, the perfect man who would also whole heartedly support her career. His glamourous life and money beckoned. They were the 'prefect couple'. They had a quiet marriage and a glamourous life.

But with marriage came responsiblities and Jane found it harder and harder to write, the old stories were old and she couldn't get a grasp on new stories. Metro hired her for $850 a week to work on a picture that was never made; the Japanese attacked Pear Harbor and everything changed.

The magazines were clamouring for Jane to submit stories, but she was facing writer's block. And after a mere 18 months of marriage she discovered the real Bob, a man who retreated into himself while dependant and demanding. Jane gave birth to her only child, and found that family expectations took over her life. She managed to write several more stories but realized that her Hollywood career has been 'thrown away'. Jane, like many women, settled for good enough.

Robin Cutler has presented an interesting biography of her mother's carer, enriched by personal letters and details of her screenplays and stories. Tis is more than a family memoir; it is a hitory of Hollywood's movie business and the Golden Age's 'mad fun' society. She also considers her mother's life in context of social expectations and opportunities for women at that time. Today many female writers juggle personal and professional lives. Jane lived during a time that offered little support for women desiring careers; in fact the author points out that some successful women felt guitly about their careers.

You can read more about Jane Hall and her life and times at Robin Cutler's website at
https://robinrcutler.com/

Read my review of West of Sunset by Stewart O'Nan about F. Scott Fitzgerald's last days in Hollywood at
http://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/01/drugs-booze-and-women-fitzgerald-in.html

I recieved a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

This was a fascinating glimpse into the golden age of Hollywood. D'zaini is a wonderful character - as dazzling as any that she created and thus book breathes her wonderfully to life. It is easy to imagine Hollywood controlled and imagined purely by men. Jane's sparkling addition to that time is wonderful to discover, I knew very little about Jane before reading this book but the fine writing brought her back to life in front of my eyes. Her friendships with Clark Gable and F.Scott Fitzgerald - to name but a few- provide a wonderful insight into this era from a new and intriguing perspective. I'm glad that I found this book, Cutler writes so evocatively of this time, you can imagine itself right there alongside Dorothy Parker herself. I'm off to hunt down some of these vintage Cosmopolitan stories for myself. This tale of a "Glamour Girl" is a must read. I loved it.

I originally wanted to read this book because the blurb mentioned two of my favorite movies, The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind. I certainly enjoyed the peeks behind the scenes of those two films, including the story of the actor who "played" the talking apple tree in “Oz", a chat with Clark Gable and Victor Fleming, and the tidbits about Toto. But there was so much more to this book. It’s a fascinating look at old Hollywood, Cafe Society, and the “Glamour Girls” of the 1930, but also a subject that’s still topical—how the media affects women’s sense of themselves.

A Glamorous Coming of Age in the 1930s

Jane Hall began life in an Arizona mining town. She loved the freedom and adored her father who wrote humerus fiction for the Saturday Evening Post. However, her father's death and the subsequent death of her mother, sent Jane and her brother East to live with her mother's sister. The mining town life couldn't have presented more of a contrast to the Manhattan lifestyle of wealthy families and debutante parties.

Although Jane became a debutante and enjoyed the glamour, she craved independence and wanted to be successful on her own. She achieved this through writing stories about the debutante life for Cosmopolitan. Her success led to an offer to write for Metroo-Goldwym-Mayer where she met famous writer and formed a friendship with F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The war changed the public taste for light fiction, and Jane succumbed to family pressure to marry the right man from a social perspective. From then on, her writing suffered much to her dismay.

Robin Cutler has done a good job bringing her mother's era to life. The major focus of the story is on how girls, particularly from the upper and middle classes, were pressured to become wives rather than independent career women. The struggle to please her family, but also be independently successful permeates Jane's story.

Although the early chapters about Jane's life in Arizona and as a debutante move quickly, the book loses momentum when the author describes in detail each of Jane's literary works. The problem is that they are very similar and the retelling becomes tedious.

I enjoyed this trip back to the era of our parents and in some cases grandparents. The book emphasizes how much has changed in the opportunities available to women, but we're still our mother's daughters and often for the older generation, the mores of the 30's drive their desires for us.

I received this book from Net Galley for this review.

I was not familiar with Jane Hall's story. So reading this I couldn't help to think how glamours we make entertainers lives we never know what is really going on behind the scenes. It was defiantly a roller-coaster story.