Love Life of a Hollywood Mistress by Florence Stonebraker. Quarter Books (1950), 120 pp.
Beautiful Wanda Russell, an elevator operator in a cheap downtown L. A. hotel, is in a panic. She had been having a few drinks with a seemingly harmless guest in his room when he made a pass at her. Still saving herself for some better opportunity, she fought back. In the ensuing tussle he fell out the window. Now Wanda fears she’ll be accused of murder. For help she goes to Chet Barbour, a scummy bartender who reputedly has contacts with the police. He’s willing to get her off the hook, but only if she becomes a call girl in service to Hollywood big shots. Desperate and a little bit curious, she agrees.
The book’s first two chapters, outlined above, seem to provide a prologue to the story. The title suggests that Wanda will quickly head to Tinseltown for a series of sexual encounters. She gets there, all right, but not until p. 93. In the meantime Stonebraker introduces several additional characters -- notably Wanda’s sometime date Danny Hedges and lecherous movie star Shelby Stevens -- and explains quite a bit about them. After so much exposition Wanda has only a few pages left to get something done in Hollywood. The first chapters, with their grim descriptions of downtown and their cynical observations about life in Los Angeles, have some real punch. The rest of the book seems flabby in comparison. The ending relies on romance-novel conventions that may not have been completely congenial to readers of digest-sized paperbacks.
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