Big Red
A Novel Starring Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles
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- USD 5.99
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- USD 5.99
Publisher Description
Narrated by a starry-eyed reporter, Big Red reimagines the tragic career of Rita Hayworth and her indomitable husband, Orson Welles.
Set amidst the noir glamour of Hollywood's Golden Age, Big Red reenvisions the life of one of America's most enduring icons: Gilda herself, Rita Hayworth, whose fiery red hair and hypnotic dancing helped make her the quintessential movie star of the 1940s. With narrator Rusty Redburn - a feisty second-string gossip columnist from Kalamazoo tasked with spying on Hayworth by Columbia movie mogul Harry 'The Janitor' Cohn - as our guide, we follow the meteoric rise and heartrending demise of the actress, encountering her exploitative father, Eduardo; her controlling husband, 'boy genius' Orson Welles; and notorious journalist Louella Parsons, among many others. Mixing his trademark screwball comedy and unerring tragedy, Jerome Charyn, with his 'polymorphous imagination' (Jonathan Lethem) reanimates film classics such as Cover Girl, Gilda, and The Lady from Shanghai. An insightful, tender portrait of a seemingly halcyon age before blockbusters and film franchises, Big Red promises to consume both Hollywood cinephiles and neophytes alike.
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. Rusty Redburn, "an actress who couldn't act, a dancer who couldn't dance, a singer who couldn't sing," struggles to make ends meet in Los Angeles. She takes a job in the publicity department of Columbia Pictures, tasked with digging up dirt on directors and actors, including those employed by the studio. Her adeptness in the role leads studio head Harry Cohn to plant her in the household of Hayworth and Welles to spy on them while working as their secretary. Redburn finds the assignment challenging, especially after she becomes aware of the shy, insecure personality Hayworth's assured exterior conceals. She sympathizes more and more with her quarry as she learns of Hayworth's past as a victim of abuse by Hayworth's own father and of her desire to improve herself intellectually to be a better match for 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.
