(no subject)
One of my nurses brought in a power cord she owns, so now I am back online, but for the majority of the week, I was bored stiff, and slept most of the time. There is, after all, only so much tv a person can watch before their brain literally starts melting, and I was nearing that point daily.
Yesterday, one of the nurses offered to take me to the Gift Shop here in the hospital, and see if anything in the small book section grabbed me. I happily went, although when she said that the book section consisted of 'best sellers,' I was fearful I'd be looking at rows upon rows of modern novels.
Instead, the book section consisted of (obviously) books about physical and emotional health, a few novels (Dan Brown stuff, etc.) and a handful of books about true crime. As a TC buff, I was pleased to see this (though why books on the Mafia, the Craigslist Killer and other murders was in a *hospital* gift shop is beyond me... "Hey, grandma, while you're getting your hip replacement, read up on this case of a drifting truck driver who murdered prostitutes!")
So I decided to pick up two books, one being Robert Greysmith's latest, The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower and Michelle McPhee's A Mob Story. I haven't read the second book yet, but the first one caused a basic all-nighter for me.
Graysmith is probably best known for his two books on the Zodiac Killer, Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked. Among amateur Zodiac sleuths, he's fallen out of favour due to his obsessive, and seemingly erronous, focus on a gent named Arthur Leigh Allen, a petty thief and paedo as the Zodiac Killer. In the movie Zodiac, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Graysmith, and the film is based on Greysmith's investigations into the case.
After Zodiac, Graysmith's future was set in stone, and he became a writer of true crime books, since writing about the Unabomber, the murder of Bob Crane, the Trailside Killer, the Anthrax murders that happened just post 9/11, and plenty more.
The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower had its genesis in Graysmith being a dirty young man who collected Mens' Magazines. This was around the time that Playboy not only made such things legal, but almost respectable. One particular model caught his eye, a lovely redhead by the name of Marli Renfro. Graysmith became obsessed with this woman, and vowed to write a book about her. The results are uneven, at best, but still fairly interesting for those interested in the subject.
Before she caught Graysmith's eye, Renfro was a model, who enjoyed outdoor activities, supported herself at times by show-girl dancing and was an active member of nudist colonies, along with her boyfriend. It was through modeling contacts that she learned of Hitchcock's newest film, Psycho and his need for a nude body-double for the now infamous 'shower scene.'
Janet Leigh, the star of the film, was as we all know, to be murderered in the shower by Norman Bates dressed in drag as his 'Mother.' If any of this is a spoiler for you, please contact Doc Brown so you can get out of the late 50s and get on with the rest of the world. Here's another spoiler: Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. Oh, and Rosebud is a sled.
Leigh was not about to strip for the scene, though. This was still 1960, and the Hays Code ensured that there was no nudity in films. Hitchcock managed to get around these rules by putting word out that he needed a body double for Leigh. Renfro, a fiery redhead, had no qualms getting nude and her body was similar enough to Leigh's that Hitchcock could easily use it when shooting anything that didn't featre Leigh's face. The quick-cut, rapid action 'stabs' ensured that the audience was too taken aback by the sudden violence to notice the difference anyway.
Marli performed the scene and, after her body double work was done, she took her paycheck and left. The cruel irony was, she would soon achieve national fame as a model, being featured not only in Playboy but in numerous Playboy knock-offs, but her role in an iconic scene in American cinema was unknown, as both Hitchcock and Leigh, as well as all of the other actors, bit players, make up artists, etc. hushed up the body double info, making it look as if Leigh, and only Leigh, was the performer in the shower scene.
The narrative then switches to a man by the name of Henry Adolph "Sonny" Busch and his mother Mae. If the first part about Marli was for film fanatics and Hitchcock devotees, the story of Sonny and Mother play out like a real-life Norman Bates and his overbearing mother. Sonny was a gawky, timid, weak man, horribly shy around women, and in a love-hate relationship with his mother. The back cover states that Marli was thought to be one of Sonny's victims, but nowhere does Graysmith suggest this. It would be impossible, as Marli was filming Psycho and then, as the book later explains, spending her time dancing in Vegas and being a Bunny in one of the Playboy clubs, with sidelines into the creation of a couple clubs in Nevada, Hefner's early empire, the Rat Pack, etc.
Instead, Sonny comes across as a pathetic little man, a Korean vet with split personality disorder, who was certainly responsible for three murders, and possibly for more. There was a man, never actually caught, called the "Bouncing Ball Strangler," so-called because one of the few surviving witnesses remembered him bouncing a ball, and leaving the bouncing ball on her property after he'd murderered her friend.
The interesting thing about the BBS is that he had a penchant for murdering and sexually assaulting older and even elderly women. While he occasionally went after coeds, his 'bread and butter' was the older and elderly. Sonny did the same thing, due to his 'Mother' fixation, even going so far as to murder an elderly 'date' at his apartment after taking her out to see Psycho (now legendary as a classic date movie), although he generally only engaged in strangulation, not sexual assault.
We're promised in the back cover that these two stories, Sonny and Marli, collide tragically - the most famous unknown body double in cinema history and a real-life Norman Bates. These two leads, while interesting unto themselves, never collide, and after Sonny is arrested and executed for his crimes, that story line is completely dropped - no more Sonny, Bouncing Ball Strangler or obscure LA homicides. The rest of the book is a biography of Marli - her resuming dancing in Vegas, her starring in a 'nudie cutie' and her disappearance from the spotlight shortly thereafter, as well as some of the early movers and shakers in 60s Hollywood such as Russ Meyer and Francis Ford Coppola.
In the last 20 or so pages, Graysmith thinks he discovered that she was murdered but, spoiler alert, it wasn't her, it was the stand-in for Janet Leigh, and it took place in 1988, years after Sonny had been executed. Graysmith finally manages to be tracked down BY Renfro over ebay and she tells her story after her Hollywood days, of marriage, divorce and finally remarriage and happiness in the Nevada deserts. It's a sweet story, but the book is set up in such a way as to make us think the whole thing will end in tragedy.
What this book ultimately is, is a vanity project by Graysmith. He developed a crush on Marli early on in his life and, based on this crush, decided to ultimately write a book about her. If it had been a book about an obscure actress and dancer, that would be one thing, but Graysmith mixes in the real-life homicides of a man unrelated to her completely, his only connection to the narrative being that he was like Norman Bates and murdered a woman after seeing Psycho with her. It could have easily been an indepth investigation into the BBS and his possibly being Sonny Busch (who had numerous black-outs and could not account for his activities).
Instead it tries to combine the two, but does so poorly because there's no narrative structure here. The blurb on the back, that Marli was possibly one of Sonny's victims is not only not touched upon, but impossible given the dates. In fact, Sonny's first murder was the result of his anger at the execution of a a robber and rapist by the name of Caryl Chessman aka "The Red Light Bandit." The case became a cause célèbre because of opposition to the death penalty amongst weenies and wusses - completely unrelated to the Hitchcock classic.
At the end of the day, I personally enjoyed the book, but that's because I the type who doesn't mind taking the scenic back-road route, even if it doesn't specifically lead where I want to go, and that's what this book is. Graysmith is an obsessive, and wants to share all of this information, making the book feel bloated unless you're a fellow obsessive (i.e. me) who enjoys that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, it isn't a great book or even a good book, and I can understand why people have had very negative reactions to it. It meanders and has no real point. People like Sonny are introduced for no reason. It has the makings of an interesting true crime book, but the Sonny case is over all too soon, and it switches back to Graysmith's young lust for a redhead he saw in a mens' magazine decades ago.
If lust is too strong a word, be aware that the prose can be pretty wretched, with Graysmith waxing poetic over Marli's nipples, breasts, butt, etc. A no-nonsense editor would have done good work with this book, cutting out the "oh gee, girls have tits and they're NICE!" mentality and weaving the story together in a much more organic way. As it is, it is an interesting mess.
Barring the "oh gee, girls have tits" mentality, the bio of Renfro is interesting, if patchy, but no one would buy a book on "the body double in Psycho" and the story of Sonny Busch and the BBS, and any connections between the two, deserve a far closer examination than Graysmith's schoolboy crush vanity project will permit.
2 1/2 stars.
Yesterday, one of the nurses offered to take me to the Gift Shop here in the hospital, and see if anything in the small book section grabbed me. I happily went, although when she said that the book section consisted of 'best sellers,' I was fearful I'd be looking at rows upon rows of modern novels.
Instead, the book section consisted of (obviously) books about physical and emotional health, a few novels (Dan Brown stuff, etc.) and a handful of books about true crime. As a TC buff, I was pleased to see this (though why books on the Mafia, the Craigslist Killer and other murders was in a *hospital* gift shop is beyond me... "Hey, grandma, while you're getting your hip replacement, read up on this case of a drifting truck driver who murdered prostitutes!")
So I decided to pick up two books, one being Robert Greysmith's latest, The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower and Michelle McPhee's A Mob Story. I haven't read the second book yet, but the first one caused a basic all-nighter for me.
Graysmith is probably best known for his two books on the Zodiac Killer, Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked. Among amateur Zodiac sleuths, he's fallen out of favour due to his obsessive, and seemingly erronous, focus on a gent named Arthur Leigh Allen, a petty thief and paedo as the Zodiac Killer. In the movie Zodiac, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Graysmith, and the film is based on Greysmith's investigations into the case.
After Zodiac, Graysmith's future was set in stone, and he became a writer of true crime books, since writing about the Unabomber, the murder of Bob Crane, the Trailside Killer, the Anthrax murders that happened just post 9/11, and plenty more.
The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower had its genesis in Graysmith being a dirty young man who collected Mens' Magazines. This was around the time that Playboy not only made such things legal, but almost respectable. One particular model caught his eye, a lovely redhead by the name of Marli Renfro. Graysmith became obsessed with this woman, and vowed to write a book about her. The results are uneven, at best, but still fairly interesting for those interested in the subject.
Before she caught Graysmith's eye, Renfro was a model, who enjoyed outdoor activities, supported herself at times by show-girl dancing and was an active member of nudist colonies, along with her boyfriend. It was through modeling contacts that she learned of Hitchcock's newest film, Psycho and his need for a nude body-double for the now infamous 'shower scene.'
Janet Leigh, the star of the film, was as we all know, to be murderered in the shower by Norman Bates dressed in drag as his 'Mother.' If any of this is a spoiler for you, please contact Doc Brown so you can get out of the late 50s and get on with the rest of the world. Here's another spoiler: Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. Oh, and Rosebud is a sled.
Leigh was not about to strip for the scene, though. This was still 1960, and the Hays Code ensured that there was no nudity in films. Hitchcock managed to get around these rules by putting word out that he needed a body double for Leigh. Renfro, a fiery redhead, had no qualms getting nude and her body was similar enough to Leigh's that Hitchcock could easily use it when shooting anything that didn't featre Leigh's face. The quick-cut, rapid action 'stabs' ensured that the audience was too taken aback by the sudden violence to notice the difference anyway.
Marli performed the scene and, after her body double work was done, she took her paycheck and left. The cruel irony was, she would soon achieve national fame as a model, being featured not only in Playboy but in numerous Playboy knock-offs, but her role in an iconic scene in American cinema was unknown, as both Hitchcock and Leigh, as well as all of the other actors, bit players, make up artists, etc. hushed up the body double info, making it look as if Leigh, and only Leigh, was the performer in the shower scene.
The narrative then switches to a man by the name of Henry Adolph "Sonny" Busch and his mother Mae. If the first part about Marli was for film fanatics and Hitchcock devotees, the story of Sonny and Mother play out like a real-life Norman Bates and his overbearing mother. Sonny was a gawky, timid, weak man, horribly shy around women, and in a love-hate relationship with his mother. The back cover states that Marli was thought to be one of Sonny's victims, but nowhere does Graysmith suggest this. It would be impossible, as Marli was filming Psycho and then, as the book later explains, spending her time dancing in Vegas and being a Bunny in one of the Playboy clubs, with sidelines into the creation of a couple clubs in Nevada, Hefner's early empire, the Rat Pack, etc.
Instead, Sonny comes across as a pathetic little man, a Korean vet with split personality disorder, who was certainly responsible for three murders, and possibly for more. There was a man, never actually caught, called the "Bouncing Ball Strangler," so-called because one of the few surviving witnesses remembered him bouncing a ball, and leaving the bouncing ball on her property after he'd murderered her friend.
The interesting thing about the BBS is that he had a penchant for murdering and sexually assaulting older and even elderly women. While he occasionally went after coeds, his 'bread and butter' was the older and elderly. Sonny did the same thing, due to his 'Mother' fixation, even going so far as to murder an elderly 'date' at his apartment after taking her out to see Psycho (now legendary as a classic date movie), although he generally only engaged in strangulation, not sexual assault.
We're promised in the back cover that these two stories, Sonny and Marli, collide tragically - the most famous unknown body double in cinema history and a real-life Norman Bates. These two leads, while interesting unto themselves, never collide, and after Sonny is arrested and executed for his crimes, that story line is completely dropped - no more Sonny, Bouncing Ball Strangler or obscure LA homicides. The rest of the book is a biography of Marli - her resuming dancing in Vegas, her starring in a 'nudie cutie' and her disappearance from the spotlight shortly thereafter, as well as some of the early movers and shakers in 60s Hollywood such as Russ Meyer and Francis Ford Coppola.
In the last 20 or so pages, Graysmith thinks he discovered that she was murdered but, spoiler alert, it wasn't her, it was the stand-in for Janet Leigh, and it took place in 1988, years after Sonny had been executed. Graysmith finally manages to be tracked down BY Renfro over ebay and she tells her story after her Hollywood days, of marriage, divorce and finally remarriage and happiness in the Nevada deserts. It's a sweet story, but the book is set up in such a way as to make us think the whole thing will end in tragedy.
What this book ultimately is, is a vanity project by Graysmith. He developed a crush on Marli early on in his life and, based on this crush, decided to ultimately write a book about her. If it had been a book about an obscure actress and dancer, that would be one thing, but Graysmith mixes in the real-life homicides of a man unrelated to her completely, his only connection to the narrative being that he was like Norman Bates and murdered a woman after seeing Psycho with her. It could have easily been an indepth investigation into the BBS and his possibly being Sonny Busch (who had numerous black-outs and could not account for his activities).
Instead it tries to combine the two, but does so poorly because there's no narrative structure here. The blurb on the back, that Marli was possibly one of Sonny's victims is not only not touched upon, but impossible given the dates. In fact, Sonny's first murder was the result of his anger at the execution of a a robber and rapist by the name of Caryl Chessman aka "The Red Light Bandit." The case became a cause célèbre because of opposition to the death penalty amongst weenies and wusses - completely unrelated to the Hitchcock classic.
At the end of the day, I personally enjoyed the book, but that's because I the type who doesn't mind taking the scenic back-road route, even if it doesn't specifically lead where I want to go, and that's what this book is. Graysmith is an obsessive, and wants to share all of this information, making the book feel bloated unless you're a fellow obsessive (i.e. me) who enjoys that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, it isn't a great book or even a good book, and I can understand why people have had very negative reactions to it. It meanders and has no real point. People like Sonny are introduced for no reason. It has the makings of an interesting true crime book, but the Sonny case is over all too soon, and it switches back to Graysmith's young lust for a redhead he saw in a mens' magazine decades ago.
If lust is too strong a word, be aware that the prose can be pretty wretched, with Graysmith waxing poetic over Marli's nipples, breasts, butt, etc. A no-nonsense editor would have done good work with this book, cutting out the "oh gee, girls have tits and they're NICE!" mentality and weaving the story together in a much more organic way. As it is, it is an interesting mess.
Barring the "oh gee, girls have tits" mentality, the bio of Renfro is interesting, if patchy, but no one would buy a book on "the body double in Psycho" and the story of Sonny Busch and the BBS, and any connections between the two, deserve a far closer examination than Graysmith's schoolboy crush vanity project will permit.
2 1/2 stars.