Suicide Blonde: The Life of Gloria Grahame

Description

Written by a friend and co-worker, Suicide Blonde is the biography of a quintessential figure in the great American film noir of the 1940s and 1950s. Starring in such films as Crossfire, The Big Heat, In a Lonely Place, and The Bad and the Beautiful—for which she won an Oscar—Gloria Grahame was a legend offscreen as well as on. As part of the Hollywood dream factory—which made as well as destroyed careers overnight—Gloria Grahame was a survivor. She had enormous successes in such films as It's a Wonderful Life and The Greatest Show on Earth. And she had loyal fans who eagerly followed her strange private life—including her controversial and shocking fourth marriage to her stepson. Then, after the completion of the film for which she is most immediately remembered, Oklahoma!, she was blackballed by the industry that created her. Like so many of the characters she brought to life, Gloria Grahame was left down on her luck and out on her own. She was mysterious and enigmatic-she was a devastating beauty. But Gloria Grahame paid an enormous price to combine her personal life with her art. She suffered through a breakdown, battering husbands, disfiguring surgery, and a courageous eight-year battle with cancer, yet always she fought to work as an actress. Anyone who talks about classic movies ends up talking about Gloria Grahame. And eight years after her death, Suicide Blonde remembered her for what she really was, a woman on a collision course with the stars, and with herself, and a vastly underrated classic actress who will never be forgotten.