Leading Lady - Softcover

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.

A Literary Guild selection and Doubleday Book Club featured selection in cloth, this entertaining tale of a domineering stage mother, her exploited daughter and her neglected grand-daughter displays Coscarelli's secure grasp of Hollywood.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.