num_pages: 250
description: Dark, slapstick comedy rules in the hilarious I, An Actress . As a teen, Karen Hitler dreams of escaping her surname and her small town roots to become a real Hollywood starlet. When Karen's mother runs off to become a hobo, she and her father change their names and drive to Los Angeles. The young actress gets her start in a traveling minstrel show where she has an affair with the washed-up Fletcher Bisque and acquires a taste for sordid love. From there it's on to mobster Tony Tarantella, but when he catches Karen with another man, she gets shipped off Guatemalan revolutionary Juan Banana. Karen eventually returns to the United States and becomes a star long enough for Senator Joe McCarthy to haul her up before the House Un-American Activities Committee for Communist sympathies. After her fall, Karen bounces from one drug habit to the next until an improbable transformation makes her the star she always knew she was. Relentlessly doling out morbid humor and mercilessly skewering Hollywood clichés, I, An Actress is a rabid romp through the dark side of Hollywood fame.
language: English
title: I, An Actress: The Autobiography of Karen Jamey
titlecomplete: I, An Actress: The Autobiography of Karen Jamey
ratings_count: 15
publisher: Contemporary Press