Reading it again after all these years . . .
“Adored by some, abhorred by others, actress Vilma Valentine is presumed dead after a fiery automobile collision in Mexico, her body never recovered. In the intervening years the fabled star is sighted more often than Bigfoot. Is it her ghost that crashes a party for Ronald Reagan in Juarez, appears at the deathbed of her estranged father in Rome, flees from Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst at the Parthenon? In 1969 Virginia Dofstader wins the Valentine lookalike contest publicizing ‘The Curse of Vilma Valentine’ by literary heavyweight Gerald Carstairs. In the course of the book's promotion, it is discovered that Virginia's mother looks even more like Vilma than Miss Dofstader does. As notorious in death as in life, Vilma haunts the imagination of aficionados of 1940 movies. Did she really kill all those husbands? Was she a Nazi spy? Was she truly responsible for the bombing of Pearl Harbor? Her story, a suspenseful stew of WWII saboteurs, stolen European artworks, murders and massacres, is told in the words of major Hollywood figures - lovers, friends, enemies, and Vilma herself. It's all seasoned with a knowing dose of romantic comedy.”
So goes the jacket copy (also used on Amazon) of my late friend Tom Canford’s comic novel The Curse of Vilma Valentine. I’ve just read it again after all these years. I probably last dipped into at it after Tom’s author copies arrived om 2006, but my last thorough reading was in manuscript before it went off to publisher iUniverse. I was seriously tired of it by then, for I had been reading and editing drafts of it for more than a decade, and I recall my feeling being as much exhaustion as anything else. Now 20 years later I appreciate it more as a (at least for me) remarkably funny work.
Yes, it does have its problems. There are times, particularly in mid-book, when the research shows rather than underlies. At times the plot seems unduly convoluted, but somehow for me that becomes part of what’s funny. In general, the voices of real and imagined people are well done. It’s not an accident that the first voice we here are those of Groucho Marx and William Faulkner.
The voices, as becomes apparent later on, come from interviews by Gerald Carstairs in 1969 for his titular book. In addition to those mentioned we get bits from Robert Mitchum, George Balanchine, Yakima Canutt, and others, included some invented. These are interspersed with newspaper articles and headlines, gossip columns (yes, both Hedda and Luella, among others), fan magazine pieces, and other such collected by Carstairs as part of his research. The Big Reveal to the public mid-book about the relationship between Virginia Dofstader and Vilma comes in the transcript of a Today Show interview with Carstairs and Ginny on the book tour. On this read I was impressed with how well that reveal had been prepared for.
Reading it for fun rather than work I found myself liking the characters more than in the past. Vilma herself, her sidekick/assistant Betty DaTodi (think Thelma Ritter), Vilma Dofstader’s husband Harry, Ginny, friend/nemesis Clydette White and her villainous mother, and others along the way friendly or otherwise. Vilma’s “curse’ had begun on that October 31 night when she was born and the delivering doctor fell hitting his head against a cabinet and dying at the moment Vilma drew her first breath. And then all those lovers and husbands who had met mysterious deaths . . . Will Harry survive?
In the past I had doubts as to whether the finale at the opening of a wax museum exhibit featuring Valentine was successful. Now I think it is.
My own contribution to the work was mainly editing, although I did suggest to Tom that he might bring in a movie in which George Balanchine directed Fred Astaire, someone whom Balanchine considered the finest American dancer.
For years I have been thinking that with the title alone and all the outrageous Incidents from the 1940s and the late 1960s and early 1970s the book would make a great source for a miniseries on Netflix or some such. Reading it again now convinces me that I was right. It would need to be restructured. Let’s see:
Start with the announcement of Gerald Carstairs beginning work on his forthcoming book on Vilma . . .
But that’s as far as I will go. Too old for this sort of thing!
So goes the jacket copy (also used on Amazon) of my late friend Tom Canford’s comic novel The Curse of Vilma Valentine. I’ve just read it again after all these years. I probably last dipped into at it after Tom’s author copies arrived om 2006, but my last thorough reading was in manuscript before it went off to publisher iUniverse. I was seriously tired of it by then, for I had been reading and editing drafts of it for more than a decade, and I recall my feeling being as much exhaustion as anything else. Now 20 years later I appreciate it more as a (at least for me) remarkably funny work.
Yes, it does have its problems. There are times, particularly in mid-book, when the research shows rather than underlies. At times the plot seems unduly convoluted, but somehow for me that becomes part of what’s funny. In general, the voices of real and imagined people are well done. It’s not an accident that the first voice we here are those of Groucho Marx and William Faulkner.
The voices, as becomes apparent later on, come from interviews by Gerald Carstairs in 1969 for his titular book. In addition to those mentioned we get bits from Robert Mitchum, George Balanchine, Yakima Canutt, and others, included some invented. These are interspersed with newspaper articles and headlines, gossip columns (yes, both Hedda and Luella, among others), fan magazine pieces, and other such collected by Carstairs as part of his research. The Big Reveal to the public mid-book about the relationship between Virginia Dofstader and Vilma comes in the transcript of a Today Show interview with Carstairs and Ginny on the book tour. On this read I was impressed with how well that reveal had been prepared for.
Reading it for fun rather than work I found myself liking the characters more than in the past. Vilma herself, her sidekick/assistant Betty DaTodi (think Thelma Ritter), Vilma Dofstader’s husband Harry, Ginny, friend/nemesis Clydette White and her villainous mother, and others along the way friendly or otherwise. Vilma’s “curse’ had begun on that October 31 night when she was born and the delivering doctor fell hitting his head against a cabinet and dying at the moment Vilma drew her first breath. And then all those lovers and husbands who had met mysterious deaths . . . Will Harry survive?
In the past I had doubts as to whether the finale at the opening of a wax museum exhibit featuring Valentine was successful. Now I think it is.
My own contribution to the work was mainly editing, although I did suggest to Tom that he might bring in a movie in which George Balanchine directed Fred Astaire, someone whom Balanchine considered the finest American dancer.
For years I have been thinking that with the title alone and all the outrageous Incidents from the 1940s and the late 1960s and early 1970s the book would make a great source for a miniseries on Netflix or some such. Reading it again now convinces me that I was right. It would need to be restructured. Let’s see:
Start with the announcement of Gerald Carstairs beginning work on his forthcoming book on Vilma . . .
But that’s as far as I will go. Too old for this sort of thing!
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