Little Me

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Summary: Not to be missed!
Review: Everyone knows Auntie Mame, but Patrick Dennis (Edward Everett Tanner, III) outdid himself with this humorous classic, with ample assistance from Cris Alexander's detailed and devastatingly funny photographs. This book is one of the twentieth century's humor classics, and deserves a home on your bookshelf. After reading Little Me, you will never take a movie star biography seriously again!

Rating:
Summary: LITTLE ME by Patrick Dennis
Review: In this day of celebrity and People Magazine, Entertainment Tonight and E! tv, it is a wonderful delight to read Patrick Dennis's classic LITTLE ME. It is the funniest...book ever written. It is time for it to be reissued.

Read it!!! And laugh your socks off.

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Summary: Dear Publisher- PLEASE Bring This One Back!
Review: You think Patrick Dennis' 'Auntie Mame' is funny? It is indeed, but it's amateur work compared to this Dennis classic. This book is a hysterically funny fake autobiography of one Belle Poitrine, star of stage, screen, and television. First published in 1961, the book not only details Belle's fabulous career and five marriages, it has over 150 cleverly faked photos that show Belle's movies, loves, and friends. Belle's adventures are a scream, beginning with her show-business debut in a blue movie, and moving on to such plausible improbabilities as a trans-Atlantic trip by steerage wearing diamonds and chinchilla. We get the scoop on all Belle's silent films- including 'Plutarch's Wives'- and her sound movies, too- ranging from her Western, 'Caw Girl', to her classic 'Viva Tequila' and her college musical remake of 'The Scarlet Letter'. Belle's pals are just as wonderful as she is; there's co-star Letch Feeley, co-workers Helen Highwater and Lyons Maine, and Belle's dear old Momma.

What's best about all this is Belle herself. Where Auntie Mame got by on sheer indomitability, Belle makes it because she's too wrapped up in herself to know the odds are stacked against her. She's as egotistical and untalented as a movie star could possibly be, and yet she conquers Hollywood, five husbands, the British peerage (as Lady Baughdie!),and Southhampton before she's done. Detours along the way include singing in a dive called 'Le Baiser du Mort' (hope your French is good!) and the studio Belle ends up owning being closed down by creditors while she's performing a number called 'Gemutlichkeit'. Belle doesn't notice anything wrong until the fake studio Alps start moving away from her.

You really have to see this one! The photos are superb; they were done by Cris Alexander, who was a protege of Tiffany window designer Gene Moore. Belle is portrayed by Jeri Archer, who also found all the incredible period clothes that make Belle's pictorial adventures look real. Archer's talent extended to portraying not only Belle, but her Momma, her daughter Baby-Dear, and her granddaughter Presh- and Alexander captures them all in one shot. Patrick Dennis' friends helped with the photos; since his friends included people like Rosalind Russell and Peggy Cass, the results are all the more 'real' for their assistance.

If this all sounds too incredible to be true- it IS, and anyway, I'm not making this stuff up. We have Patrick Dennis to thank for that, and I recommend his book- and Belle- to you.