“Anna May’s is not exactly a rags-to-riches story, but it did start with dirty clothes, laboring as a young girl in her family’s laundry business in Los Angeles.
Something decidedly odd is going on at Blood Moon Productions, whose Babylon Series has recently released its latest Hollywood biography: Peter O’Toole: Hellraiser, Sexual Outlaw, Irish Rebel
To start with a softball of a metaphor (apt because perhaps the high point of her career to date is the 1992 film A League of Their Own), when it comes to getting her points across in her
“From page 435 onward, Spencer Tracy is an excellent biography indeed, albeit one that would have benefited greatly from losing at least a good 200 of those first 400 pages. . . .
“What we have here is a collection of vaguely amusing errata corralled together with the slightest of lassos, a book with all the organizational clarity of a stand-up act. . . .
“Throughout Rin Tin Tin: The Life of the Legend Susan Orlean presents a story that is as engrossing as it is illuminating, which is, of course, her special magic.
