Like Venus Fading

Like Venus Fading

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Availability: in stock at our Tullamarine warehouse

Condition: SECONDHAND

NB: This is a secondhand book in very good condition. See our FAQs for more information. Please note that the jacket image is indicative only. A description of our secondhand books is not always available. Please contact us if you have a question about this title.
Author: Marsha Hunt

Format: Paperback

Number of Pages: 320


A great rollercoaster rags-to-riches-to-rags tale based on the amazing life of Dorothy Dandridge, Hollywood's first black sex goddess. Like Elvis, like Marilyn, the first black film superstar didn't die tragically, but lives among us still, changed out of all recognition... This is the story of the tragic rise and redemptive fall of Hollywood's first black sex symbol Propelled out of Depression-era poverty by the ambition of her mother and her own talents, young Irene O'Brien finds she attracts attention easily - both welcome (she is talent-spotted from Mississippi to Harlem to Hollywood) and unwelcome (at six, a fat, over-friendly storekeeper gets altogether too excited when she sits on his lap...) She blazes a trail no other black performer has taken before and becomes an international sex symbol in the 1950s - 'the black Monroe' Fame and fortune come running: she is the first black woman to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress But happiness eludes her: her celebrity marriage never works; her daughter is autistic; and the studios soon tire of her as she ages Her descent into drunkenness and derangement ends with her very mysterious 'death' in the mid-1960s at the age of forty-three. But, beaten but not bowed, Venus Johnson rises from the ashes of Irene O'Brien to tell her tale and live out her days in tranquillity...



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Description
NB: This is a secondhand book in very good condition. See our FAQs for more information. Please note that the jacket image is indicative only. A description of our secondhand books is not always available. Please contact us if you have a question about this title.
Author: Marsha Hunt

Format: Paperback

Number of Pages: 320


A great rollercoaster rags-to-riches-to-rags tale based on the amazing life of Dorothy Dandridge, Hollywood's first black sex goddess. Like Elvis, like Marilyn, the first black film superstar didn't die tragically, but lives among us still, changed out of all recognition... This is the story of the tragic rise and redemptive fall of Hollywood's first black sex symbol Propelled out of Depression-era poverty by the ambition of her mother and her own talents, young Irene O'Brien finds she attracts attention easily - both welcome (she is talent-spotted from Mississippi to Harlem to Hollywood) and unwelcome (at six, a fat, over-friendly storekeeper gets altogether too excited when she sits on his lap...) She blazes a trail no other black performer has taken before and becomes an international sex symbol in the 1950s - 'the black Monroe' Fame and fortune come running: she is the first black woman to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress But happiness eludes her: her celebrity marriage never works; her daughter is autistic; and the studios soon tire of her as she ages Her descent into drunkenness and derangement ends with her very mysterious 'death' in the mid-1960s at the age of forty-three. But, beaten but not bowed, Venus Johnson rises from the ashes of Irene O'Brien to tell her tale and live out her days in tranquillity...