79 Park Avenue - Harold Robbins

"She's a special kind of broad," Joker quoted. "A whore with a code of ethics."

D'ya miss me out there? It's been a while since I've made a post, but I've been itching to get back here. It wasn't like I wasn't keeping up with trashy good fun, but October and November has been crazy busy for me. But you don't care about that, you're here because of the babe on the cover above, right? I'm sorry that I don't have this issue of the 79 Park Avenue by our pal Harold Robbins. I have the Pocket Books edition instead, printed in the 80's I think. The novel itself is one of Harold Robbins's earlier ones, first published in 1955, back when he had to keep the sleaze and language in check. No one in this novel gets called the "c" word, which is a nice change from some of his later novels. Also the sex, while there is a lot of it, is delivered in "fade-to-black" type of scenes. Still, the novel is risque enough for its time, and is a whole lotta melodrama to boot.

The story here is all about Maryann Flood, often referred to as a "hot-blooded polack" by some of her lower-class gentlemen friends. Maryann is on trial for running a high class escort service through Park Avenue Models, Inc., The girls of Park Avenue Models, Inc. are available for photography jobs, art exhibits, showrooms, runways, etc, but the real revenue comes from what the girls will do for their well-heeled clients behind closed doors. Everything is cool until one of the models dies in the hospital from a botched abortion. An investigation into the young woman's background leads officials back to Maryann Flood, president of Park Avenue Models, Inc. The book begins as Maryann is on trial for running a house of prostitution, bribery, and extortion. And, as things tend to go in books by Robbins, the lead prosecutor, Mike Keyes, just happens to be the same guy who was head-over-heels for Marja (Maryann) back when they were teenagers growing up together in the slums.

You know the drill. Boy from the slums makes good, girl from the slums goes bad. Only Marja isn't really the bad girl everyone has made her out to be. We get her story through three main sections of the novel. Her teenage years, her young adult years as she makes a living as a stripper and escort, and her mature years as the widow of a mobster with an escort agency of her own.

Marja quickly learns that a girl with no prospects has to take advantage of the stuff God gave her, if she wants to get anything out of life. Her stepfather is one of those creeps who always manages to spy on her as she's undressing, the guys at school are only interested in her for one thing, and her new boyfriend Ross doesn't seem to give a damn about her unless she's around to make him look like a bigshot in front of his hoodlum friends. What's a girl do? Meanwhile, there is Mike Keyes, working at the newstand and studying his schoolbooks all the time, pining away for Marja. Trouble is, Marja is dating his bigshot pal Ross. Only what Mike Keyes doesn't know is Marja digs Mike right back. Ah, teenage love. And things go like this, with Marja building a rep for being a fast girl, working as a dancing girl for extra bread, dating Ross, being friends with Mike and dodging her creepy stepfather's advances until one terrible night when she's raped by her stepfather. Marja reacts like any tough chick would, and cuts the bastard up with a razor. And is promptly shipped off to a reform school.

Part two of the novel picks up after Marja is released from reform school. She hooks up with another girl, Evelyn, who also did time in the reform school, and together with Evelyn's sleazy boyfriend Joe, head south to Florida for sun and fun. Evelyn and Marja (now known as Mary) have this little lesbian act in the burlesque circuit going that brings in the dough for Joe to spend. They honed the act together in reform school trying to cool their jets from not having any boys around for attention. Mary gets tired of the scene with Evelyn and Joe and meets a rich playboy named Gordon Payne one day on the beach. Gordon flips for Mary. He doesn't care that she works nights and seems to have no history. None of that matters to him. He's in love L-U-V and he wastes no time in proposing to Mary. Mary considers Gordon's proposal, remembering her love for Mike Keyes back in New York, and all, but decides things aren't going to get any better than they would with Gordon. What the hell, she'll be in the society pages and no more riding the sleazy strip circuit with Evelyn and Joe. The thing is, Evelyn and Joe got other ideas, like maybe a little blackmail from our rich and foolish playboy. They show up with pictures of Mary and Evelyn together, thinking that Gordon might be willing to by them for safekeeping from the society pages. And just like that, Mary's life with Gordon goes up in smoke. Left high in dry in Miami, she resorts to escort jobs to earn her way back to New York, where she's quickly busted by a vice detective for prostitution.

Part three of the novel brings Ross and the gang back. Ross is working his way up in the syndicate, and still has the hots for Marja. Mike is overseas doing the soldier-boy gig, fighting Hitler. Marja knows the score, and a girl's gotta eat you know, so she eases herself into gigs as a call girl. Ross has a stake in a new playground in Nevada, this little town called Las Vegas. Only Ross has been burning bridges and blowing dough from his pals in the syndicate. It's in this 3rd part of the novel that Robbins seems to have grown tired of the book, and collapses events up into a series of quick scenes of convenience. The characters get thinner and the dialog carries the tale. Everyone gets slapped a lot, and a couple of people get killed off. All of which leading to the final scenes in the trial which kicked the book off. We never really see Marja as president of Park Avenue Models, Inc. It's as if Robbins was ready to pack the story in and get it off to the publisher.

All in all, pretty much what you'd expect from an early Robbins novel. It ain't Faulkner by any means. The novel also made it into a mini-series back in the seventies. I remember it on TV but never watched it. Don't know if it's available online.

Goodbye, Janette - Harold Robbins

With one leap, he caught her arm before she reached the door. He dragged her back into the room. "It seems to me, Janette, that you're acting like a baby. And you know what they do to babies when they don't behave? They get spanked!"

He sat down on a chair and pulled her across his lap face down. His hand rose and fell with an even rhythm. At first there was pain, then she felt a warmth spreading through her buttocks into her loins. Her cries began to turn to a soft moan.

Pocket Books

This dramatic little scene between father and step-daughter occurs early on in Goodbye, Janette. Published in 1981 it got a deserved spanking by critics but still managed to sell well. I ripped through it in one weekend and, while I can't say I didn't like it, I can tell you that if you're going to read only one Harold Robbins novel, this one isn't it.

The action mainly occurs in Paris and is drenched in Eurotrash bad behavior and overflowing with characters with deep pockets and shallow brains. Janette is the daughter of Tanya, a survivor of WW II prison camps. Tanya is brought to Paris by a kindly German officer named Wolfgang, who is jettisoned from the novel rather quickly. In his place is the cad Maurice, who marries Tanya as a business arrangement of sorts. Right off the bat we can see that Maurice is a dick. And so can Tanya. But then she gets a glimpse his certain special (humongous) endowment and goes weak in the knees in expectations. Maurice, in addition to being a cad, is also bi-sexual. And he gets off on sadomasochism.

In addition to having Tanya to get freaky with, Maurice also has Tanya's daughter, Janette, to molest. It's not really clear who Janette's father is, or I missed that part in the beginning of the novel. Anyway, Janette grows up into a sullen teen who shares a twisted relationship with Maurice that eventually results in her becoming a sex slave to him and his transvestite boyfriend, Jerry.

He smiled, "Remember, Janette, without pain there is no pleasure." He put his hands under her buttocks and raised her toward him. 

Janette grows into a beautiful woman, and something of a ruthless headcase, thanks to her messed up childhood. Tanya leaves the novel in a failed attempt at killing Maurice. But before she departs, she gives Janette a younger sister, Lauren. Lauren is saved from the sexual abuse by Maurice by getting to live in America with Johan, Wolfgang's old business partner. Janette, meanwhile takes over control of various business interests involving cosmetics and fashion.

There is a lot of financial skulduggery and kinky sex talk that move the novel along, but none of it particularly interesting. Okay, maybe there are a few lines I might try out the next time I'm at a swingers party, but other than that, not much worth noting. Janette isn't a compelling enough character to make you really care what happens to her. Instead one reads the book mostly to see if Robbins is going to throw more crazy sex stuff into the game like he did in the first sections of the novel. Lauren returns to Paris to visit her big sister Janette, and gets involved with a creepy English fop in a doomed relationship. She also wows the fashion world, but decides that she's not interested in making tons of money like Janette. Instead she'd rather get high on the various recipes of weed her California boyfriend perfects.

All in all, it's rich people living life without consequence, looking for their next high, their next screw or their next conquest. And in the end, it's Harold Robbins looking for his next buck. That said, I did very much enjoy Joe Kenney's take on this novel at his terrific blog, which you can also check out here.

The Lonely Lady - Harold Robbins

“What’s she look like?” he echoed. “She’s sensational. Stacked like you would not believe, but very classy. Sort of a combination Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly. She’s the kind who when she comes into your office you want to bend down and kiss her pussy out of sheer reverence. So send me the script and I’ll get on it right away.”

Pocket Book, March 1977

Who knew this is how agents talked about their clients back in the 60s? Why Harold Robbins of course. And there is plenty more dialog like that nugget crammed into this thick blockbuster novel o’ trash by “the world’s best storyteller…”

The Lonely Lady by Harold Robbins is another paperback I’d picked up from a library sale. It’s, I think, the 5^th novel of his I've read in the past year or two and for sheer guilty pleasure it ranks second to The Carpetbaggers in enjoyment. Absent from this novel are the long passages of endless talk that marred The Betsy and The Inheritors. This novel is just as dialog driven as those novels are, but where this novel edges them out is that the dialog drives the story instead of just filling pages. If I were teaching a class in commercial fiction, I think I’d put The Carpetbaggers, or The Lonely Lady, on the syllabus and force all those earnest young English majors out there to check their lit-soaked baggage at the door learn how a master did it.

Yes, the novel is loaded with literary sins like shifting POVs and awkward transitions in time, characters introduced to be dropped without explanation. But if you’re reading a book like this, you’re not looking for something deep to sink your teeth into, you’re looking for something that has no more nutritional value then edible underwear.

The plot of the novel is simple. Nice girl from a small town in New York state named JeriLee has dreams of becoming a writer some day. Her father is barely home from WW II when he passes away suddenly. Luckily her mother meets a nice guy at the bank, John Randall, who falls in love and marries her. He adopts JeriLee and her brother Bobby and moves them all into his house as befits a young banker on the rise in his career. His devotion to JeriLee and Bobby is never in question, and soon the children come to love him as much as they would have their real father.

One day, JeriLee is riding the bus and notices a fellow traveler talking to himself in the seat across from her. She recognizes him as famous novelist and playwright Walter Thornton. Thornton is struck that this pretty high school girl actually knows who he is and strikes up a friendship with her. Thornton is in town working on a new play. He gives her some encouraging words on becoming a writer and a bond is made. From that brief meeting, JeriLee’s path is set. JeriLee is one of the prettiest girls in high school, is a cheerleader, of course, and one of the most popular girls in town. Her boyfriend Bernie plays football and is just as good-looking and popular as JeriLee. Together, they’re that high school couple that made the rest of us want to puke in our Cheerios. It’s all very Father Knows Best, only Harold Robbins decides that he’s got to make JeriLee the most frustrated, horniest girl on Main Street as well. She discovers masturbation and fantasizes about what’s packing under Bernie’s football uniform. Hey, Bernie is human too, and has his own longing for what’s under JeriLee’s skirt. But in spite of his advances, JeriLee manages to keep Bernie at bay. Then one night, she makes the mistake of accepting a ride home with a couple of ne’er-do-wells from the country club where she works. One of them just happens to be Walter Thornton’s teenage son. Along for the ride is Marian, the high school slut. JeriLee is beaten, burned with cigarettes and almost raped when she’s saved at the last minute by Bernie and Fred Lafayette, a young black singer gigging at the Country Club.

Apparently this is the notorious garden hose scene that the Pia Zadora movie adaptation is remembered for. I've not seen the movie, and unless it pops up on some crappy cable channel at some point, probably won’t. I know it has its fans though.

Anyway, JeriLee recovers from the attempted rape and beating, but her rep is shot to shit. She accepts the town’s rumors, decides to give the town and everyone in it a big Fuck You by dating and marrying Walter Thornton. “What is love, Mother?” she asked. “I like him, I admire him, I respect him, I want to go to bed with him.”

Part 2 of the novel is told in 1^st person, and it’s here that we learn that, surprise surprise! Walter Thornton has a lot of self esteem issues. He’s threatened by JeriLee’s burgeoning talent as a writer and an actress. Soon their Manhattan apartment is way too small for both their egos and they split. JeriLee decides that she’s not taking a dime in alimony from Walter, and proceeds to bang her head against closed doors all by her lonesome. She is “ The Lonely Lady” (cue cheesy music). She’s also a pothead and a pill-popper. She meets agents and producers and various sleazeballs, has a lot of sex, a lot of drama and gets fucked over by their bullshit. There is a also a dream she describes in which she is a naked human football, getting screwed and hiked and thrown around by all the guys she’s known, wearing “heavy padded pants” with “no fronts and their huge cocks hung out almost to their knees.” It’s a bizarre passage and Robbins’s attempt at one of those literary tricks professors get off on. Take from it what you will.

Part 3 of the novel we’re back in 3^rd person and witness JeriLee hitting the skids. The drugs, the booze, the sex and poverty have reduced her to stripping for money while writing by day.

The amber spot set in the ceiling over the tiny platform on which she was dancing blurred everything in front of her and the loud acid rock drowned out all the other sounds in the crowded club. Her face and body were covered with a fine patina and the perspiration ran in rivulets between her naked breasts. She gulped for air between smiling parted lips. She was beginning to feel exhausted. Her back and arms were aching, even her breasts were sore from the gyrations of the dance. Suddenly the music stopped in the midst of a wild movement, taking her by surprise. She stood for a moment, then raised both arms over her head in the standard gogo dancer’s bow, giving the customers one last free look as the spot died.

Nothing she turns out from her typewriter opens any doors for her, until a sleazy drive-in movie producer buys one of her “short stories” to turn it into a motorcycle movie. And, thanks to JeriLee’s great tits and ass, she’s the perfect star for the flick.  More booze, more pills, more sex (both straight and lesbian), more motorcycle movies, and soon JeriLee gets offered a shot at porn. Thankfully, sort of, she’s ensnared in a huge pot bust that sends her to county lockup. Luckily, her arresting officer has a soft heart and feels sorry for her. He gives her the name of a lawyer who gets her sprung and later buys an airline ticket back to New York for her, where she ends up in a psych ward. Talking here about a major downward spiral.

And this is where the novel collapses, sort of. Harold Robbins got tired of the story and wraps up the whole resolution of JeriLee’s fall and comeback (I’m sure it’s not a spoiler to say there is a comeback) in quick scenes of dialog and narrative summary. The ending is one of those scenes that can only happen in a trashy novel, proving once again that the reading public out there in the 70s was one weird collective headcase.

Lucky for me, and the rest of us who like this stuff, there is plenty more where this came from. 

Dreams Die First - Harold Robbins

"I have a contagious fungus," I said. "Sort of vaginitus of the hands."

Having gotten my Christmas duties done for the holidays, I found I had the whole day yesterday to do nothing but read another trashy bestseller from the typewriter of Harold Robbins. Dreams Die First, was the third book I started in the past week, and the first one finished. I don't know if that says more about my reading skills, my tastes, or just my state of mind for the holiday season, that I was able to knock this 408 page novel down in less than two days.

Pocket Books, September 1978

What I can say is that this is one of the more off the wall "bestsellers" that I've had the joy of reading. I've never read a mainstream commercial work of fiction before that has as many uses of the C-word in it for describing the anatomy of a woman's body. That and a plot that falls down all over itself with randomness and silliness; more so than the previous novels Harold Robbins novels I've read. Once again, this book must have had a place in a lot of bookshelves in the late 70's if the sales figures for Robbins's novels are to be believed. My question is, who exactly was reading them? Men, women, or horny teenagers?

The plot concerns an ex-Green Beret who decides, through the "help" of his shady uncle, to get into the publishing business. We meet our hero, Gareth Brendan, as he wakes up in his apartment next to a naked young man, with no memory of the night before. Gareth is unemployed and out of prospects. He tells us he's a Vietnam veteran who was forced to pull an extra year in the military to keep from bad mouthing the war, or something like that. Gareth's bio is sort of made up along the way, as if Robbins wasn't exactly sure himself. Gareth gets a ride from his loan-shark, referred to as "the Collector" to the unemployment office where he flirts with pretty clerk named Verita. Outside, Gareth gives his last unemployment check to The Collector, and is offered the possibility of a job by the Collector's boss, Lonergan. With no other means of support forthcoming, Gareth agrees to meet Lonergan personally after midnight that night. Until midnight, he'll spend the evening in Verita's bed giving her multiple orgasms.

Lonergan's offer to Gareth involves taking over an underground street rag named Hollywood Express that's fallen on hard times. Lonergan figures that he'll use the Hollywood Express for a money laundering operation. Gareth decides that he might as well turn the Hollywood Express  into a porno rag and make a lot of money. Oh yeah, and it turns out the Lonergan is Gareth's uncle. Oh yeah, and Verita is a CPA, but can't work as an accountant because "Chicanas" can't get work as Accountants. Oh, and Verita also has a law degree, but that isn't needed until later on in the plot. Also, Gareth is the son of rich mother living in Bel Air. Anyway, all that comes in handy as Gareth turns the Hollywood Express into a successful weekly porn magazine, with the help of some shady characters connected to a group "back east." Also, it turns out the boy Gareth woke up next to on page one of the novel is the son of a Christian guru type celebrity named Reverend Gannon, who is okay with all the hedonistic life-styles practiced by his son Bobby (who is gay) and his youth group, as long as they're cool with Christ in the meantime. The whole plot is a "seat of the pant's" ride with the distinct feeling that Robbins was literally making shit up as he typed. There is the insider's look at the business of publishing porno, a sex cult, tons of pure coke inhaled, Mexican drug lords, a gay "terrorist" organization, a Latino gang run by Verita's cousin, who also happened to serve with Gareth in Vietnam, and some shootouts, lots of sex, sex therapy, a couple of karate chops, some gay torture, and yes, by the end of the novel, true love overcoming all.

All the characters display the compulsion and self control of your average teenager, only with lots of money and  freedom with which to pursue their whims. Everyone falls in love instantly and has explosive orgasms throughout.

Now that I think about it, maybe all those readers back in the 70's were teenagers between Stephen King novels...who knows. As for me, will I read anymore Harold Robbins? Yeah, you can probably bet on it.

Retro Soap

The Inheritors by Harold Robbins, Pocket Books, February 1971
 

As a kid growing up in Florida I’d spend almost every day of my summers at the neighborhood swimming club. There were two swimming pools; one for families and one for adults. The family swimming pool was almost always crowded with teenagers and tots and, for all the kids under the age of twelve, mothers stuck with the duty of accompanying them while their husbands ogled firm, nubile, brightly bikinied over-21-year-old bodies over in the adults-only pool. Ever the observant little shit that I was, I noticed that plenty of these mothers carried in their beach bags thick paperback books along with their suntan oil, beach towels, cigarettes and sunglasses. And almost every day I’d notice the same name on these paperbacks: Harold Robbins.

I’d guess that the last time I’ve seen anyone reading a Harold Robbins novel was somewhere around the time one could still smoke cigarettes inside a shopping mall, or wear a mood ring. For all his immense popularity then, Harold Robbins’s books seem forgotten today. Something to consider when wading through the glut of novels by the Janet Evanovitch, Nicholas Sparks, and “50-Shades-plus” gang over-stocking the bookstore shelves now.

Over the past couple decades I’ve sampled a few Robbins novels and have found them to be, for the most part, horribly written, frequently boring and surprisingly light on the kinky sex stuff that he’s famous for. Perhaps I’ve not read the “right” novels by him. There had to be something that the public got from his novels.

The other day I found three of his titles; 79 Park Avenue, Never Leave Me, and The Inheritors, on sale at the library book shop. Liking the vintage covers, I picked them up for the price of a buck and a half.

The Inheritors is the story of two mavericks in the entertainment biz back in the mid-1950s and follows them through to the 1960s. Steve, an upstart go-getter, lands a job as president of Sinclair Television by insulting the company’s founder and owner in a ridiculous job interview, where he goes on to admit he’s also screwing the owner’s daughter. Sam is a publicity hound for a low-rung studio producing movies appealing to the grind house theaters along 42^nd Street. Together, these two gentlemen take the burgeoning television industry and Hollywood movie studios into the 1960’s while consuming boatloads of scotch and Martinis. The women in their lives serve mainly as props to provide drinks, have sex with, dump, slap, throw tantrums and use only for the purposes of furthering careers. A typical compliment for a woman in the novel is “Good girl,” or “Nice ass,” or something like that. I can’t for the life of me see what would attract female readers to novels like this but the sales numbers don’t lie. As for the sex, something Robbins was notorious for, the scenes here are pretty tame. I understand they got crazier and more over-the-top as his career stretched into the 70s and 80s, but here they’re pretty short and almost quaint. There is a kinky orgy scene with acid heads, hippies and junkies later in the novel, but its shock value is diminished when one of the characters is shown offering a joint, saying, “Light up and turn on.”

For its faults, The Inheritors was much better than The Adventurers and Where Love has Gone, the only other Robbins novels I’ve read. It was entertaining the way a prime time soap opera like Revenge is. So, if you’re in the mood for some retro pot-boiler action, maybe Robbins will fit the bill. Just don’t expect your brain to go along for the ride.