Billie Burke Book Review

[George Kincaid]

http://www.examiner.com/x-4129-LAOC-The ... llie-Burke

[The Harold Lloyd Book Review is is the Silent News Section.]

The actress well remembered as the fluttery scatterbrain of films like Dinner at Eight and Topper—and immortalized by her role as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, in The Wizard of Oz—is the subject of an entertaining new biography. Grant Hayter-Menzies searches for “the real woman behind the caricature” in Mrs. Ziegfeld: The Public and Private Lives of Billie Burke, producing a book that is as readable as it is scholarly, which is no mean feat; he makes ample use of Burke’s memoirs but goes well beyond them, and is not hesitant to question their veracity. While the book discusses her stage and screen appearances at length, it more fully examines her most challenging role, as the wife of legendary showman Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.—and the reality of her marriage to a habitual gambler and perpetual philanderer. (Available from McFarland & Co. in hardcover.)