monday, September 22, 1975
daily nsbraskan
Bogart and Garland :
Legendary figures
By Bill Roberts .
Humphrey Bogart, by Nathaniel Bench
ley, and Judy,y Gerold Frank, provide
two examples of different ways to write
a biography of a famous entertainer. Each
one is only fairly successful because of the
limitations of each approach.
Benchley's biography is written casual
ly. The author encourages the reader to
have a good time with the book. He keeps
Bogart 's memorable performances in the
reader's mind, which is made easier by the
generous supply of good photographs of
Bogart's personal and public life.
The book is even printed to seem casual.
The right margins are not squared off, and
there's a double space between paragraphs.
The effect is often similar to that of a big
hard-cover fan magazine, written the best
way it could be done.
Author too present
Unfortunately, such a thing can only be
done so well. The reader sees and hears the
author too much. Too many times the
manner seems too casual, the author's
opinions inaccurate, the author just seems
to be showing off.
The reader wishes Benchley would have
been more careful in his generalizations, es
pecially about Bogart's "great intelligence"
and "class," to make them square with
specific incidents. Bogart comes across as a
hard working actor, dedicated to his pro
fession, but not particularly smart or
dumb. And though Bogart sometimes does "
seem to have had grace and kindness, he
would also be insulting and rude.
But Benchley's style can work well. He
presents the beginning of Bogart's realtion
ship with Laruen Bacall, his last wife and
the only woman he really loved: "The
first words he spoke to his leading lady,
after their meeting the previous year, were,
'I saw your test, and then he delivered
himself of one of the thundering under
statements of the century: WeU have
a good time together'."
The reader can almost hear Bogart
speaking. Benchley's hyperbolic pause re
creates the effect of watching 20-foot high
faces on a movie screen.
Dissection, not re-creation, is the
purpose of Frank's biography of Judy Gar
land. Judy, the reader should always keep
in mind, is the authorized biography, with
all the facts as remembered by those who
knew Garland.
Whenever there were conflicting
versions of some event, Frank recorded
them all. The reader gets all sides of the
story, but the effect is finally of no story
at all. It's as if the index to the book were
written first, and the author stepped in
merely to make complete sentences.
There may have been mythic qualities
to Garland's life. She was always in show
business, rocketed to stardom but was
dragged back down by th drugs she took
.to get there. She needed approval, needed
privacy, all this could have been handled in
some way so as not to exploit her life.
Boring
But Frank is content to make a detailed,
exhausting study of her life and leave it at
that. The reader is given all the facts, but
no sense is made of them. Incredibly, a
book about Judy Garland turns out to be
boring.
Benchley's biography of Bogart is the
better of the two books. Accuracy is
certainly a virtue in a biography. But there
is an accuracy more important than precise
wordings of quotes and exact dates and
places.
Humphrey Bogart recreates, revitalizes
the life of its subject in a way that seems
right. Judy is a dissection of die parts of a
life, each properly labeled, but giving no
clue to the shape of the person who lived
it. .
Humphrey Bogarthy Nathaniel Benchley
Little, ErownS 12.50
JudyBy Gerold FrankHarper & Row
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- JP 19 (!.
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"'--- - Photo by Karsh
fepj C; yf- '.Humphrey Bogart
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Judy Garland
Portrait by Roberto Garill
KIMBALL fX
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