Bookish expectations

The Innocents from Indiana, Emily Kimbrough
...It Gives Me Great Pleasure, Emily Kimbrough
Bottoms Up!, Cornelia Otis Skinner

I'm working on a theory about book expectations: often it seems that the higher my expectations, the more disappointing the actual book.  But on the other hand, I am frequently surprised and delighted by books of which I know nothing going in, or those I think will just be a pleasant diversion.  I'm considering calling it "The Law of Inverse Bookish Expectations."  I've had this theory confirmed lately with books by Emily Kimbrough and Cornelia Otis Skinner.

My recent Emily Kimbrough read-athon was sparked by Water, Water Everywhere, an account of a trip she took to Greece in 1955, which I bought with extremely low expectations.  Instead, it became one of my favorite books of the year.  The one I read next, Through Charley's Door, was very different but just as compelling.  The emotional heart of both books for me was Emily Kimbrough's mother, who taught her daughter the Greek alphabet and raised her on the Greek myths, then later pushed her toward work and a career in the 1920s.  I had previously read EK's first memoir of her childhood in Muncie, Indiana, How Dear to My Heart. After reading these other two books, I was most anxious to get my hands on her second memoir of childhood, The Innocents from Indiana.  I knew that it was an account of the family's move to Chicago, one of my favorite cities.  I was looking forward to a tour of the city in the 1910s, and I was hoping for more about EK's mother.  On both counts, I found the book a disappointment.  The first half focuses on her younger brother (known to everyone as "Brother"), and his boyish escapades.  It's mildly amusing family comedy, along the lines of "Leave It to Beaver."  In the second half of the book, EK is enrolled in an exclusive girls' school, where she is mocked and bullied as a hayseed country girl.  The most interesting part of this book for me was the family's acquisition of a series of electric automobiles, which EK learned to drive at a young age.  I had never heard of models like the Ohio and the Waverly.  Nor did I know that in these cars, the driver sat in the back seat, with the passengers in the front - sometimes facing back toward the driver, but always I would imagine obstructing the view.

I did not have high expectations when I picked up ....It Gives Me Great Pleasure, a series of short pieces about her experiences on the American lecture circuit in the 1940s.  In part, that was because I've been less than impressed with similar books that her friend and co-author Cornelia Otis Skinner wrote, around the same time.  The book they wrote together, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, I first read thirty years ago or more, and it still delights me today.  It was reading COS's memoir Family Circle that sent me off in search of her other books.  In part I was hoping for more stories about her parents, particularly her father Otis Skinner, one of the most famous actors of his generation.  Instead, they're mostly observational pieces about American society, with some accounts of her tours as an actress and monologist, with some domestic pieces about her husband and young son - in the Jean Kerr vein, but with less children.  The only one that stands out at all in my memory is "In Quest of Tea," a rant about the poor quality of tea served in restaurants and hotels in the United States, which is sadly just as true today as it was in 1941. (It appears in Soap Behind the Ears.)

Once again, my expectations were confounded with ...It Gives Me Great Pleasure.  For many years, Emily Kimbrough spent several weeks each winter on a lecture circuit, crisscrossing the United States by train, speaking to women's clubs and organizations.  Her most requested talk was on her experiences in Hollywood, where she and Cornelia Otis Skinner worked on a screenplay for the film of Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (which EK wrote about in We Followed Our Hearts to Hollywood).  These essays, written between 1945 and 1948, recount her experiences (and frequent mishaps) in traveling and in public speaking, as well as sketches of the people she met along the way.  It's hard to picture now this web of women's groups, welcoming all sorts of speakers at their monthly teas and luncheons.  I suppose the closest equivalent today would be book clubs, though I think only those hosted by bookstores bring in speakers.

I enjoyed this book very much.  It's a quiet book, with some funny moments, but also some very touching ones.  EK seems to have been genuinely interested in the people she met, often in waiting rooms between trains (the subject of one chapter, "A Railway Station, Every Time").  I heard about another chapter, "The Evening Train," on an NPR podcast (you can listen to it here).  EK was due to speak in a small Pennsylvania town called Shamokin.  Her hostess rather rushed her through the program, to be sure she would finish on time.  Afterwards, she explained,

"I'll tell you now why we were so anxious about getting started on time.  I didn't want to say anything about it earlier for fear it might upset you.  We had to be sure you'd get through before the evening train comes in because they're bringing back on it to-night the bodies of the boys from overseas.  All the church bells in town are going to ring when the train comes in, and everybody has been asked to stand in silent prayer for three minutes."

EK joined the women outside, standing with them in silence, waiting for the bells to ring.  It's marvelously done, heart-felt but not mawkish.  It seemed a bit like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life.  And after reading this, I felt like I understood a little more of America in the 1940s.

After finishing it, I decided it was time to read the one last book of Cornelia Otis Skinner's on the TBR stacks, Bottoms Up!  And of course, the first chapter is about a theatrical piece that she performed with her father.  I don't know if I was just in a more mellow mood, but I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would.  Like Emily Kimbrough's, it is partly about life on the road, in her case as an actress.  There are several chapters about living in Paris, including one on the "ugly American" abroad, and another about researching at the Bibliothèque Nationale (I kept wondering if she ever ran into Nancy Mitford there).  Others concern life in the United States, specifically in New York City and on Long Island.  The last really took me by surprise: an address that she gave to the American Gynecological Society at their annual convention in June of 1953.  It's a humorous hymn of praise to gynecologists, whose care she often needed, apparently.  It just reads really oddly to me, and the frequent reference to stirrups made me squirm a bit.  So did the illustration to the chapter, which shows a female patient (resembling COS) in a hat and garters (and nothing else) facing an older male doctor sitting at his desk.

Cornelia Otis Skinner wrote a biography of Sarah Bernhardt, as well as a book about Paris in the Belle Époque.  If I come across those books, I will probably read them, but I haven't been in a rush to find copies.  Emily Kimbrough's books seem more to my taste, because she writes about interesting people and places, though to my mind none of their books will ever measure up to Our Hearts Were Young and Gay.  I wonder if they ever felt that themselves.

Two innocents in Hollywood

We Followed Our Hearts to Hollywood, Emily Kimbrough

Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough published Our Hearts Were Young and Gay late in 1942.  It is a hilarious and endearing account of a trip they took to England and France in the early 1920s, when they were both 19.  Shortly after its publication, they received a call from Hollywood.  The book had been optioned for a film, and Cornelia and Emily were invited to come to California to write the dialogue.  Though neither had any experience in writing for films, they said yes - and then immediately regretted it.  As Emily wrote,

"And why should I think that I could go to Hollywood and run up a scenario - I must have been out of my mind - I would back out - Cornelia could do it.  I heard her voice, slightly hysterical in pitch, and apprehensive. 'Oh Lord, Emily, you and I are going to take another trip together.'  And I knew that nothing would induce me to back out."

We Followed Our Hearts to Hollywood is the story of that trip.  Where the first book was a collaboration, told in Cornelia's voice, this second book was written by Emily alone, and she is the narrator.  It is the story not so much the physical journey, but of the five weeks they spent at Paramount Studios working on dialogue.  When they went through the gates onto that famous lot, they entered a completely new and alien world.  Though Cornelia once had a small part in a film her father the actor Otis Skinner made (a story she told in her memoir Family Circle), that was in 1920.  They knew nothing about the business of making films in 1943, but at Paramount they had a front-row view of the business. Cornelia and Emily could poke into every corner of the sets and watch every step of the process, including a visit to Edith Head's costume department - and they did.  And then there were the stars.  On their first day at work, they saw Bob Hope riding by on a bicycle and Ginger Rogers strolling past in a mink skirt, and they met Ray Milland over lunch.  But Emily observed that to film actors, Cornelia was theater royalty, and they could be just as star-struck to meet her as she was with them.  Being Cornelia and Emily, they also managed to wreak a bit of havoc from time to time.  Emily's account of her unexpected appearance as a Godzilla-like figure in So Proudly We Hail is particularly memorable - and hilarious.

I love classic films.  My television stays set to the Turner Classic Movies station, and I will watch almost anything with William Powell and Myrna Loy, Barbara Stanwyck, Ronald Coleman, Claude Rains, or Dana Andrews.  I loved this tour of 1943 Hollywood, which includes a description of the Academy Awards complete with paparazzi (all of whom ignored Cornelia and Emily) and long boring speeches.

But this book is not just a travelogue or an account of their adventures in Hollywood; it has a serious side that I did not expect but found very interesting.  Emily used her experience as a magazine writer and editor to analyze the motion picture industry and to identify problems that she saw.  She also looked at the diversity of population in California, finding at least in Hollywood an "indifference to any race or nationality or color" that contrasted with the racist attitudes towards particularly Jews and African Americans that she found more prevalent in the east.  (I am not sure that the film industry was all that color-blind, or actresses like Butterfly McQueen would have had more roles available to them than maids and nannies.)  Emily also looked at Hollywood's role in World War II, in making patriotic films, in touring with the USO and selling war bonds.  She and Cordelia made time to visit the celebrated Hollywood Canteen, where Cordelia performed some of her famous monologues for the soldiers.

One day on the Paramount lot, Emily and Cornelia met a fellow writer who was struggling with a plot point: why a young man would want to buy a particular house.  Cornelia came up with a reason, and she went on to play a part in the film that resulted, The Uninvited (which I just recently watched, in part to see her).  Emily would also return to Hollywood, as a technical advisor on the film of Our Hearts Were Young and Gay.  I've never seen that film, but I really enjoyed reading about it and about the further adventures of Emily and Cordelia.

"Delightfully gay little sketches"

Excuse It, Please!  Cornelia Otis Skinner

And now for something completely different.  After struggling through War Within and Without, which I posted about yesterday, I feel very much in need, not of mindless reading, but of something that isn't quite such a depressing slog.  Excuse It, Please! certainly qualifies.

Back in July, I read Family Circle, a family biography that Cornelia Otis Skinner published in 1948.  I enjoyed it so much that I started looking to see what else she had written, as I tend to do when I discover a new author (or in this case, re-discover).  I found a biography of Sarah Bernhardt and a book about Paris in the Belle Epoque.  I also learned that she wrote short articles for magazines like The New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and The Ladies' Home Journal.  These articles were collected into books that apparently sold very well.  The first, Excuse It, Please!, was published in 1936 and went through eleven printings by 1937. 

I thought the essays would be a good place to start, and I can see why they sold so well.  The jacket copy praises the "delightfully gay little sketches."  They are indeed brief and funny, and they cover a variety of topics.  If you can't relate to "The Paintable Type," about having one's portrait painted, there's "Med to Mum," about the joys of wandering through the miscellany of the encyclopedia (lost to us now in the days of Wikipedia).  One of the funniest, "Wednesday Matinee," about "the actor's Day of Atonement," when attendance is heavily weighted to the "members of a nation-wide secret sorority of American coughers - The Daughters of St. Larynx," obviously came from her own career on the stage.  But she's not just laughing at people; many of the jokes are at her own expense, as in "Ground-Minded," about her fear of flying.

Small slices of American life in the 1930s, maybe, and definitely a pleasant diversion.

Two innocents abroad

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, Cornelia Otis Skinner & Emily Kimbrough

As I mentioned in my last post, about Cornelia Otis Skinner's Family Circle, I first read this book probably thirty years ago.  I've read it many times over the years, and found it just as hilarious and endearing each time.  It's been a while since I've re-read it, though, in part because I know it so well, and in part because I don't seem to re-read books as much as I used to.  There are just so many fascinating new unread books that I want to get to.

But reading Family Circle made me think so much of Our Hearts Were Young and Gay that I picked it up again as soon as I'd finished the other.  This book, published in 1942, is an account of a trip Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough, who met at Bryn Mawr, took to England and France when they were nineteen, sometime in the early 1920s.  It was a great adventure of their lives, because they were traveling independently for the first time, on their own with no chaperones, though Cornelia's parents were also sailing for England:

"but on a different ship, and from New York. They had no idea of cramping Emily's and my style, but they thought it just as well to be in the same hemisphere as we. They would be in England when we were and we might look them up if that wasn't too much of a strain on our independence." 

The narrative voice here is Cornelia's, of course.  In my background reading on the Skinners' theatrical careers, I learned that Cornelia was an innovator in that she wrote and performed dramatic monologues.  She later collected these monologues into book form.  These is an easy flow to her writing, which carries the story along.  Emily Kimbrough had a later career in journalism, and she wrote several books about her own travels.  I've read one of these, Forty Plus and Fancy Free, and it is entertaining enough but to me lacks the vitality of Cornelia's.

Their voyage from Montreal got off to an unfortunate start when their ship ran aground within hours of sailing.  This set the tone for their travels, with mishaps galore, including measles, bedbugs, those unfortunate white rabbit evening cloaks, and an encounter with a house of ill-repute.

Reading this book again after several years, and after Family Circle, gave me a new light on it.  Both Cornelia and Emily felt like old friends met again, except that now I knew Cornelia not just as that nineteen-year-old, but as if I'd known her all her life, because I'd just been reading about her childhood and teenage years.  And her parents weren't simply supporting characters, but people in their own right, whose stories I also knew.

Two things especially caught my attention.  While they were staying in Paris, Cornelia wrote up a solo sketch about a young American woman visiting the Louvre.  She read it to Emily, who thought it was wonderful and asked why she couldn't do something with it as an actor. Monologue wasn't theatre, Cornelia told her, but "something Emily had said had given me an idea and gradually I began to say to myself, 'I wonder. Maybe someday I might do monologues in a theatre.'"  With hindsight, now I know that this was the germ of one of her greatest successes as an actor.

Also in Paris, Cornelia met a veteran of the Great War, hopelessly maimed and institutionalized.  She and Emily helped him sell the bead jewelry that he was able to make, to supplement his pension. The women also visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, at the Arc de Triomphe.  These reminders of World War I, of the human cost, struck me differently this time, after reading Vera Brittain and Helen Dore Boylston.

A great theatrical family

Family Circle, Cornelia Otis Skinner

I can't remember the first time I read Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough.  It had to be thirty years ago or more.  I've read it so many times over the years that I can visualize some of my favorite scenes, like Cornelia and Emily's arrival at the Trocadero in London, wrapped in their new, tent-sized white rabbit evening cloaks. Emerging from their taxi in billows of white fur, they discover Cornelia's father helpless with laughter. "'Oh my God!' he managed to choke forth. 'How could you get so many rabbits?'"  I never really thought much about Cornelia's parents, they were there in the background for help with bedbugs and financial crises.

I picked up Family Circle at Half Price Books a few years ago, because it was written by Cornelia Otis Skinner (my copy, which may be a first edition, is even autographed).  But it sat on the TBR pile for years, until this past week, when for some reason I took it off the pile and sat down with it.  I found it a bit slow going at first, as it starts with a biography of Cornelia's mother, Maud Durbin, who grew up in a large family under unstable conditions, with an alcoholic and often absent father.  Maud, who showed talent in private theatricals, wanted a career in the theater, and she found a mentor in the Polish actress Helena Modjeska.  And by the point that Maud joined her theater company, I realized that I was reading in part a history of American theater.

This wasn't a subject I know much about, except for the tragedy of the Booth family.  That's pretty clear by the fact that I never realized who exactly Cornelia's father Otis Skinner was.  The second strand of Cornelia's book is his story, how a Unitarian minister's son became one of America's great actors, in a career spanning fifty years. Otis Skinner was often under contract to theater companies, like Helena Modjeska's, where he met Maud in 1893 (it was mutual indifference at first sight).  But between seasons, he loved to tour, despite the hardships of travel and the primitive conditions of many local theaters.  This part of the story reminded me so much of other well-loved books, Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy series.  Touring companies bring excitement and glamour to Deep Valley, Minnesota, in the 1910s, and there is even a reference to Otis Skinner in the books; and Cornelia quoted a letter from her father dated from Mankato, the real-life Deep Valley.

Cornelia herself entered the story she was writing a third of the way into the book, when it became the family's story.  Maud retired from the stage at that point, and she made a home with Cornelia while Otis continued his career.  At times mother and daughter joined him on tour, and the three also traveled to Europe for work and pleasure.  All three of them were such high characters, and Cornelia a most unusual child, that there is so much humor just in their daily lives.

Maud had many great plans for Cornelia's future, none of them involving a career on the stage.  Cornelia, who had a firm conviction that she going on the stage, never bothered to argue with her about it. Otis supported her decision, gave her much wise counsel, and arranged her debut in New York in one of his plays.  The book ends after she takes a curtain call with him, then retreats to the wings to watch as he returns to take still more.

I finished the book last night feeling very much part of their family circle, and wanting to know more, what happened next.  I did learn that Our Hearts Were Young and Gay takes place the year following, and I knew I'd need to read it again, now that Maud and Otis have become so real to me, much more than just the parents in the background, the supporting characters.