Coast to Coast
A Family Romance
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Nora Johnson was a young child when her parents' marriage collapsed. Her father, Nunnally Johnson, the writer, producer, or director of many acclaimed movies, such as The Grapes of Wrath and The Dirty Dozen, remained in California, where he would continue to be a major Hollywood presence for more than three decades. Nora's mother, Marion, a beautiful but unsettled woman, took her to New York to start a new life -- one surrounded by her mother's lovers and eccentric literary friends instead of movie stars and studio heads. Coast to Coast is Nora's account of a childhood spent shuttling between Manhattan and Hollywood. What emerges is a marvelous portrait of American life in the 1940's and 1950's -- from the movie lots of California to the cocktail parties of the Upper East Side -- and also a touching story of a shrewd, observant girl who would grow up far too fast. Nora shares the colorful details of a childhood spent in privilege, but also captures the painful loneliness of changing schools, four-day train trips from one coast to the other, and never being quite sure of where she belonged. She also brings to life her droll, charming, talented father -- a Thurberesque character in Hollywood -- and her beautiful and erratic mother, a woman who fled the Los Angeles movie colony life but was unable to forget the husband who took her there. Coast to Coast is a wonderfully written portrait of a fascinating era and a child who came of age in it, who had everything she wanted -- except a place to call home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Daughter of Hollywood producer/ screenwriter Nunnally Johnson and actress Dorris Bowdon, the author spent her childhood, after her parents' divorce, shuttling between parents and coasts. She eloquently evokes the 1940s and '50s: the war years and postwar Communist paranoia, bombed-out London and the enormous pressure on women to marry. Johnson also vividly contrasts New York, with its cocktail parties and cabs, and Los Angeles, with its swimming pools and chauffeurs. Intelligent, curious and troubled, the adolescent Johnson is absolutely privileged, except she doesn't feel at home in either family. This is a book full of superstars, and the confusion and loneliness of a child of divorce are amplified by the proximity of celebrities. When the teenaged Johnson and a pal attend a grown-up party, mean, drunk Johnny Mercer insults Johnson's bulimic girlfriend, and Humphrey Bogart comes to the rescue. At Smith, Johnson and Sylvia Plath attend a class together. Her descriptions of the poet are convincingly disturbing, as are those of talented classmates who abandoned bright futures for marriage. Eventually, Johnson herself succumbs, and in surprising contrast to the rest of the book's dreamy impressionism, she ends in high suspense, walking down the aisle in her bridal gown toward a man she doesn't love, unable to figure out how to say no. should attract a literary and film-oriented audience.
