Books & Java

A Touch of Stardust: A Novel

by Kate Alcott

Synopsis:

When Julie Crawford leaves Fort Wayne, Indiana, for Hollywood, she never imagines she’ll cross paths with Carole Lombard, the dazzling actress from Julie’s provincial Midwestern hometown. The young woman has dreams of becoming a screenwriter, but the only job Julie’s able to find is one in the studio publicity office of the notoriously demanding producer David O. Selznick, who is busy burning through directors, writers, and money as he films Gone with the Wind.

Although tensions run high on the set, Julie finds she can step onto the back lot, take in the smell of smoky gunpowder and the soft rustle of hoop skirts, and feel the magical world of Gone with the Wind come to life. Julie’s access to real-life magic comes when Carole Lombard hires her as an assistant and invites her into the glamorous world Carole shares with Clark Gable, who is about to move into movie history as the dashing Rhett Butler.

Carole Lombard, happily profane and uninhibited, makes no secret of her relationship with Gable, which poses something of a problem for the studio because Gable is technically still married—and the last thing the film needs is more negative publicity. Julie is there to fend off the overly curious reporters, hoping to prevent details about the affair from slipping out. But she can barely keep up with her blond employer, let alone control what comes out of Carole’s mouth, and—as their friendship grows—Julie soon finds she doesn’t want to. Carole, both wise and funny, becomes Julie’s model for breaking free of the past.

In the ever-widening scope of this story, Julie is given a front-row seat to not one but two of the greatest love affairs of all time: the undeniable on-screen chemistry between Scarlett and Rhett, and offscreen, the deepening love between Carole and Clark. Yet beneath the shiny façade, things in Hollywood are never quite what they seem, and Julie must learn to balance her career aspirations and her own budding romance with the outsized personalities and overheated drama on set. Vivid, romantic, and filled with Old Hollywood details, A Touch of Stardust will entrance, surprise, and delight.

My Review:

If you are a fan of the movie Gone with the Wind (which I am) you will sincerely enjoy this book. The book is about the filming of Gone with the Wind and all of the drama that surrounded this highly controversial attempt at film-making. The story focuses on Julie. A mid-western, starry-eyed but confident ingenue on the set of the film. She's not interested in the lights of Hollywood but she wants to be a screen writer. On her first day on the set, she meets Andy - one of David O. Selznik's right-hand men.  Andy is torn between the fact that he is a Jew prior to WWII when Jews around the world were cautious about the environment of impending war. In Hollywood, prominent Jews would hide their ancestry but Andy would not do that. Julie falls in love with Andy but understands that the fact he is Jewish would be difficult for her with her closed-minded, mid-Western family. Throughout the story, Julie becomes Carole Lombard's (Clark Gable's lover and then wife) assistant and friend. From that friendship, we see just how "normal" people like Lombard and Gable in a place like Hollywood where appearances and publicity are everything.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I'm a fan of "old" Hollywood and I absolutely love everything about Gone with the Wind. However, I could not give this book a higher rating because I was never quite clear about whose story this was. Was it about a Jew in Hollywood during hard times or was it about Gone with the Wind? There just seemed to be no to little connection between the two, yet I kept looking for that connection to be more clear.  In the end, I found it to be a simple little story using the grandeur and drama of the making of a blockbuster (Gone with the Wind) as the backdrop to drive the story. It just didn't convince me fully. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy it and it was very well written with appropriately dramatic dialog accurate to the time in which the events take place. An enjoyable read, just not a blockbuster work of historical fiction for me. I will definitely read others by Kate Alcott as I did enjoy her writing style.