Libby

by Milt Machlin

Book Overview

Libby: The Murder Case That Shocked the Nation! by Milt Machlin. Milt Machlin presents his view of the real life story of Libby Holman, who had a voice as sweet as honey when she sang the blues. She... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0505515334
• ISBN13: 9780505515339
• Release Date: July 1980
• Publisher: Banner of Truth
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

First of the Red Hot White Mamas

Libby Holman was the first of the white torch singers, a famous Broadway star of the 1930's whose sultry voice--it was compared by the important New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson to a "dark purple flame" and highly-publicized offstage shenanigans kept her in the papers even before the marriage and murder mystery that made her front-page news. For Libby, a Jewish girl from Cincinnati, surprised most everyone by marrying handsome young(younger than she was, quite unusual back then) Smith Reynolds, heir to the tobacco fortune. And a few months later, when he was shot dead, she was in the dock charged with his murder. Charges were eventually dropped, though she was not cleared, and suspicion followed her ever after, in a melodramatic life that was as remarkable for its lows as its highs. (Many of those who were closest to her, including Reynolds' son, her only child, died violently.) In this, the first biography of Libby, Milt Machlin, longtime editor of Argosy, a men's magazine, and author of "The Search for Michael Rockefeller," and "Ninth Life: the Caryl Chessman Story, " each the standard book on its subject, took his finely-honed investigative skills to North Carolina, scene of the drama, and managed to shed some new light on a case that was one of the sensations of the thirties. Libby Holman was the first American woman to wear bright red nail polish. She tootled around town in a Ford "flivver" with uniformed chauffeur, then in a 16-cylinder Rolls Royce convertible given her by her great and good friend Louisa Carpenter du Pont Jenney, heiress to de Pont millions. Libby wore her brightly-colored pajamas out to play, then wore nothing at all and got herself arrested on the beach at Deauville, France, while visiting her legendary friend, the black American singer who'd taken Paris by storm, Josephine Baker. She also stunned society by wearing men's evening dress and identical bowler hats on her outings with Louisa and the rest of the chums: Tallulah Bankhead, Bea Lillie, Clifton Webb, Eve Le Gallienne, who passed away quite recently -- sexual adventurers all. Without doubt, she preferred girls to boys-- she lived with Jeanne Eagels, the original "Sadie Thompson" of Somerset Maugham's Broadway play "Rain," until that emotionally fragile young woman killed herself. But she liked boys too, if they were young enough, pretty enough, and fragile enough. Her last long relationship was with that beautiful movie star of the 40's and 50's, Montgomery Clift. Libby liked nightlife in Harlem and Cuba, sex, booze, and anything else that could make a girl feel good. She made, spent, and gave away a lot of money. She became an influential theatre liberal and so could look down upon Monty's other closest good friend, Elizabeth Taylor, as merely "Hollywood." She announced her engagement to Smith Reynolds, said she was leaving the fast life, and scandalized her new neighbors at Barker's Point, Port Washington, Long Island, N.Y. when Louisa Jenne