Leading Lady - Hardcover

Women of three generations, from the 1930s to the present, wrangle in this snappy novel about Hollywood. Laverne is the domineering stage mom, red-haired Bunny the exploited child star, and Chelsea the neglected granddaughter. To begin, Laverne is so bent on advancing Bunny's career that she sends her eight-year-old daughter to the bed of a powerful movie mogul. Later she destroys Bunny's marriage and feeds her narcotics. She even hires a cosmetician to serve as gigolo and "put a glow" on the dejected Bunny to ensure that she give a peak performance in an arduous film. Laverne, the doughty, unstoppable "Mother Witch," emerges as the best-realized of the characters, as well as the most flamboyantly diverting. The more sympathetic Chelsea plays a close second: after a brief dip into crime--cheating an insurance company and selling bogus jewels--she falls in love with an English earl and purveys gems to the British royal family. In contrast to the savory portrayals of Laverne and Chelsea, the rendering of actress Bunny--pawn and victim of her mother's mania--is pale. Coscarelli ( Fame and Fortune ; Pretty Woman ) displays a secure grasp of the film industry and the stresses of star-making. Her novel offers crackling entertainment, not the least bit of which arises from the refreshing notion that women can get away with a little villainy.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

By the author of Pretty Women (1989) and other foaming gossip/romance groaners, the story of a stage mother who has done, and will do, just about anything for her darling's career--while her granddaughter, ignored in all the household storms, struggles to find her own way. Laverne Thomas, deserted by her husband years ago and viewing all men as lower than a snake's belt buckle, catches the dream in the 1930's--she will hoist adorable daughter Bunny to Hollywood stardom. And she does, even when it means condemning Bunny to overnights, as a child, with a pedophile Big Director. Eventually star Bunny will marry a studio-approved Ivy League lawyer, Frank Hunter. But Frank gives up on the marriage (during which Laverne has no qualms about barging in on their lovemaking), then splits, and Bunny's daughter, Chelsea, will not know her father for years, thanks to awful Laverne. Meanwhile, Bunny's career is a roller coaster, while Laverne oversees Bunny's nympho needs (even once preps her with heroin for the camera) and ignored Chelsea enters both the shady and sunny side of jewelry-making and falls in love with the son of an earl. It all winds up with a pregnancy and birth, violence and three deaths. A bit of dirt, a trace of trash, and routine romance--but, still, the novel has that Hollywood-pop pull. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.