Big Red, a novel by acclaimed writer Jerome Charyn looking at the lives of Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles, is chalking up some impressive reviews.
In this Publishers Weekly Summer Reads Selection, Hayworth’s story begins in 1943, in a roomette at the Hollywood Hotel, where narrator Rusty Redburn―an impetuous, second-string gossip columnist from Kalamazoo, Michigan―bides her time between working as a gofer in the publicity offices of Columbia Pictures, volunteering at an indie movie house, and pursuing dalliances with young women on the Sunset Strip. Called upon by the manipulative Columbia movie boss Harry Cohn to spy on Hayworth. Rusty becomes Rita’s confidante, accompanying her on a series of madcap adventures with Welles.
Here is a sampling of reviews:
Kirkus Reviews: A fictionalized telling of the troubled life and storied film career of Rita Hayworth and her marriage to Orson Welles, as seen through the eyes of a sympathetic outsider …. Tracing Hayworth’s sad decline through films including Cover Girl, Gilda, and The Lady From Shanghai, the novel has a good time with cutthroat gossip columnists; the ego-driven female film editor who chopped Lady; and crass hustlers including Eddie Judson, Hayworth’s first husband, who altered film history by having her hairline raised and the color of her hair changed to her trademark fiery red. –
Wall Street Journal: (Charyn’s) like the last man standing behind the shattering fun-house mirrors in The Lady From Shanghai. His novel, with its multiple layers of fiction and fact, resurrects the vanished world it celebrates and explicates it in all its grand illusion.-
Publishers Weekly: Charyn (The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King) plausibly recreates another chapter in American history in this affecting and searing portrait of Silver Screen superstars Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles…. Charyn offers rapid-fire dialogue and slapstick action (“So it’s a bit of blackmail,” Orson says at one point, “lunging” at an adversary though he “wasn’t much of a gladiator with his big flat feet”) along with affecting character development. It’s a rewarding paean to some of cinema’s greats.
The Book Reporter: Reanimating such classic films as Gilda and The Lady from Shanghai, BIG RED is a bittersweet paean to Hollywood’s Golden Age, a tender yet honest portrait of a time before blockbusters and film franchises — one that promises to consume both Hollywood cinephiles and neophytes alike.
Chicago Review of Books: Written with love and affection for its subject, Big Red is an entrancing work of historical fiction that serves as a glimpse into Rita Hayworth’s life far beyond her stardom. Big Red serves as a long-form love letter from author Jerome Charyn to Hayworth (nicknamed Big Red by Columbia Pictures studio head Harry Cohn), through the eyes of our narrator, a fictional character named Rusty Redburn, a self-proclaimed ‘actress who couldn’t act, a dancer who couldn’t dance, and a singer who couldn’t sing….’ Using Rusty as narrator serves as a successful framing device for the story, as her perspective affords readers a behind-the-scenes glance at two of the most beguiling figures of mid-20th century American cinema. Her descriptions are vivid, humorous, and perceptive… Charyn’s love for film history shines through.
New York Sun: One of the supreme strengths of Big Red is that Jerome Charyn finds exactly the right voice for the novel in Rusty Redburn, a cinephile and double agent hired by Harry Cohn to spy on the couple even as she falls in love with them… Mr. Charyn does not merely present what a reader might already know about Welles and Hayworth; instead, what we know, and don’t know, is angled through Rusty’s exquisite sensibility.
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