From: adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Donald Spoto on Dietrich et al.
Date: 31 Aug 1992 13:53:31 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: mizar.usc.edu

In article <1992Aug31.200403.9546@PacBell.COM> 
rjwill6@pbsdts.sdcrc.pacbell.com (Rod Williams) writes:
> There's a great, dishy interview with Donald Spoto (by Warren
> Sonbert) in the current issue of the (San Francisco) Bay Area
> Reporter (BAR).  Spoto's latest book, a biography of Marlene
> Dietrich, has just been published.  He's also written well-
> known biographies 

Thank god you didn't characterize them as "good", or "insightful",
or "well-written".  I think Spoto's Photoplay-approach to biography
is pretty loathsome, if you want to know the truth.

>                    of Alfred Hitchcock, Lotte Lenya, Tennessee
> Williams, and, most recently, Laurence Olivier (including the
> revelation about Olivier's 10-year affair with Danny Kaye).
> I feel like typing, so here it is...

[...]
> BAR:    Why do you suppose some people refuse to acknowledge
>         this side of the artistic personality -- that fluidity
>         and adventurousness?  In American schools they teach
>         that Olivier was perhaps the greatest actor of the
>         20th century.  

Truly moronic question.  First of all, "they" don't teach any
such thing in American schools.  Second of all, it's American
culture that crowns people the best of something.  So we had
the world's greatest actor (Olivier), world's greatest tenor
(Pavarooni), world's greatest soprano (Beverly Sills, once; now
Kiri te Kanawa, perhaps), world's greatest sports event (the
Super Bowl), world's greatest TV show (whatever), etc. etc. etc.

>                        And I feel that if mention is made that
>         "he was British" then "he was bisexual" should also be
>         underscored, but it isn't.  Gay students need to be
>         alerted about artistic role models.

Although I'm in sympathy with this sentiment, it strikes me that
Olivier's Britishness -- particularly his British training -- is
hundreds of times more important in any even rudimentary assessment
of him as an artist than is his bisexuality.

> Spoto:  That's what's so horrible about Hollywood; it's so
>         homophobic and yet all they indulge in is gay sex!

Oh puh-leeze.

> BAR:    I love the outing rampages in your books.  The Olivier-
>         Danny Kaye affair and in the Dietrich the stuff about
>         Mary Martin and Janet Gaynor going off on vacations
>         together, leaving their homosexual husbands alone to
>         console each other.  

For god's sake, what kind of outing is this?  Anyone with half
a mind knew about Mary Martin and Janet Gaynor *years* and *years*
and *years* ago.  It was no secret.

>                              By the way, where have I been
>         that I didn't know about Kay Francis, Jean Arthur,
>         Edna St. Vincent Millay, Willa Cather, Anna May Wong,
>         Tilly Losch and Eva Le Gallienne?

I don't know where you've been, but wherever it was you weren't
paying any attention.

[...]
> Spoto:  The "hausfrau" image was cultivated out of guilt for
>         the maternal neglect of her daughter Maria (who's now
>         writing "Mutter Dearest" by the way) on the one hand,

This Freudian voodooism is just so distasteful.  And Maria Riva has 
already written her book -- she's just updating it and putting 
finishing touches on it.

>        and a reflection of her idea of what a man wanted.  She
>        would be the servant slave who would cook, clean and
>        attend her master if necessary. 

[blah blah blah]

> Spoto:  I love my subjects.  But genius derives from the human
>         point; these were frail, needy people suffering from
>         their neuroses -- from petty slights, infantile demands
>         and intense megalomania.  Yet they were capable of
>         transforming their craziness and perversities into some
>         of the greatest art of this century.  Capturing that
>         tension interests me.

So that's what genius is.

Arne

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