Johnnie Ray & Miss Kilgallen

Rating:
Summary: A good read
Review: A good read. Kilgallen was a looker though it is hard to tell from watching the old kinescopes of What's My Line? She was a great reporter who had many successes but is best remembered for her Voice of Broadway column in the old New York Journal American. Johnny Ray was a so-so singer and never could believe the rumors of his affair with DK. Anyhow, not a bad read for those who remember Kilgallen, Ray, and What's My Line?

Rating:
Summary: A surprising and intriguing book.
Review: For anyone who remembers Johnny Ray and Miss Kilgallen of What's My Line fame, this story is a must read. Not only will it create nostalgia for a different time, it opens a surprising window for the reader to peep through.

The fact that Johnny Ray and Dorothy Kilgallen had an affair is only the beginning of the surprises in this book.

The husband and wife team of Bonnie Hearn Hill and Larry Hill have created a fascinating work revealing an unknown side of two celebreties of a past era.

Rating:
Summary: The Most Unlikely Relationship Since Wilber and Mr. Ed
Review: If you're under sixty, you probably remember Johnnie Ray and Dorothy Kilgallen (if at all) from corney pop songs (his) and the worst game show in TV history (What's My Line.)

Pity!

Bonnie Hearn Hill and Larry Hill will introduce you to an immensely talented singer (25 top ten hits in the '50s and a passionate jazz interpreter) and the intrepid journalist who covered Lindberg and Sam Shepherd and, had she not died under surious circumstances, might have broken the story of JFK's assasination wide open. They will offer you a voyeur's tour of the unlikely affair between a bisexual vocalist and the columnist (15 years his senior) that Sinatra loved to hate. And as you cut through the alcoholic haze surrounding their extended relationship, you'll find yourself captivated by and caring about both of them. And you may come to realize that it was never, really, only about the sex.

Just don't let the characters distract you.

Bonnie Hearn Hill and Larry Hill are writers of talent and style who will captivate you and carry you along, shifting smoothly from Johnnie's hipster rap to the objective third person presentation of Dorothy's pov that, you suspect, might have been the way she looked at her life before JR.

If Johnnie Ray and Miss Kilgallen doesn't send you searching the web for his tunes and her columns, as well as anything written by the Hills, I'll be surprised.

Rating:
Summary: Fiction Stranger Than Truth
Review: Mr. and Ms. Hill are vivid writers, but the logic they use when they create fiction leaves something to be desired.

Let's see if I understand the scene at the Washington, DC fundraiser on the night before John F. Kennedy took the oath of office. Would the next reviewer please tell me if I got it right ?

Dorothy Kilgallen became physically ill while she angrily accused her boyfriend Johnnie Ray of cheating on her. Dorothy was shouting and wailing into a coin telephone inside a Washington, DC building where Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford and their many friends were singing and laughing and drinking. Dorothy had the right to be angry because a few moments earlier Frank Sinatra had uncharacteristically treated her nicely.

Kilgallen and Sinatra had been enemies for several years at this point, and he regularly told his audiences in Las Vegas that she was as ugly as a chipmunk, but he decided to be nice to her at the inaugural celebration. Dorothy figured out that the reason he was being nice was that his ex - wife Ava Gardner had forced him to act that way after Johnnie Ray had issued the order while having sex with Ava. They had that roll in the hay on his New York City hospital bed where he was emaciated and deathly ill with cirrhosis of the liver. And that's why Frank Sinatra's good manners made Dorothy so angry that she got sick.

Say what ? Even John Charles Daly never used such feeble - minded logic on the many occasions that he answered Dorothy's intelligent questions. It is true that reading well - written books can enhance one's verbiage more successfully than basic cable TV can. But there is also such a thing as truth. You will get more of it by tuning in to the Game Show Network on which Dorothy Kilgallen does her job every morning at 4:30.

Rating:
Summary: Back to the 50s
Review: This book transported me back to the 1950s--the Copa, seedy gin mills and tony cocktail parties in New York penthouses, as well as recording studios peopled by some of the old legends. What great portraits of Dorothy Kilgallen, the sweet innocent we all knew from What's My Line, and pop singer Johnny Ray, the "Elvis before there was an Elvis," and one of the original hipsters--and all told from the inside! As I read, it was hard to believe this was a novelization rather than a memoir from each of their points of view. We baby boomers thought we invented sex in the 60s. If so, then Dorothy and Johnny Ray were WAY ahead of their time. The entire country knew and loved the public identities of these two people--now, to get a glimpse at the real behind-the-scenes incidents, and the very human drives that led them through sex, drinking, a sampling of drugs, all the way to the doorstep of the Kennedy assassination mystery, is an exhilerating experience. I felt like I was down on the street with them, smelling the smells, hearing the music, tasting the vodka, waiting for What's My Line to come on the tube.

Rating:
Summary: A good read
Review: This one really surprised me. I was intrigued by the pairing of Ray and Killgallen, but didn't figure on such a well-written treatment of the unlikely duo. Tough to put aside. Very cinematic.

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Rating:
Summary: Gripping and Sexy
Review: This one really surprised me. I was intrigued by the pairing of Ray and Killgallen, but didn't figure on such a well-written treatment of the unlikely duo. Tough to put aside. Very cinematic.

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