The Lives of CHANG and ENG : Siam's Twins (Siamese Twins)

Looking for a freak show? This isn't it. As you might tell from the publisher (University of North Carolina) and the corrected subtitle ("Siam's Twins" not "Siamese twins"), Joseph Andrew Orser's book is a serious undertaking.

It has to be; there's usually no intimate revelations from hidden diaries or outrageously erotic love-letters when it comes to famous figures of the 18th or 19th century. A letter to the wife of Chang or Eng asking for "how is it done...does the brother close his eyes...") would not likely get a detailed reply.

Instead, author Orser fills his 280 pages with rich detail on the obvious (the origins of Chang and Eng and the sideshow career that gave them the money to settle down and raise families) and the uproar (just how do freaks from Siam fit into white rural North Carolina?)

Most books on sideshows, freaks, or "very special people" simply devote a few pages to a photo of the twins and the amusing details of births (between them, they had 21 children) and death ("Then I am going," Eng logically said, after his brother's heart stopped beating).

Orser's book studies the sociology of the times. When Adelaide and Sarah Yates married Chang and Eng in 1843, the girls' neighbors "threatened to burn down [their father's] crops if he did not promise to control his daughters." Cries of bestiality went up, and the town was labeled "a community sunk below the very Sodomites in lasciviousness." It was well enough for people to gawk at the twins up on a stage as freaks of nature...but the idea that they could marry...raise families...come and live among ordinary people? They were, after all, "monsters!"

Much of what went on inside the households remains private, although we do know some of the logistics, for example, that Chang and Eng alternated and stayed with one wife and family for half the week, and then the other wife and family. There are also some details on the nature of their physical connection (and how if Chang was tickled, Eng would also react). The fascination here is how the strangest couple of all time, from the other side of the world, came to adjust to North Carolina living. Freaks? Well, they considered themselves higher up the social ladder than that, and even owned slaves.

In handling the story of the twins, Orser strikes a necessary balance between the curiosity factor of their physical existence and the reality of their daily lives in North Carolina.

New BOB HOPE bio: Thanks for the Re-Hash of the Memories

"Hope: Entertainer of the Century" has arrived...but the question is this: does anyone still care about the memories?

Apparently on a slow news day, the N.Y. Post does. It's almost quaint that in this era of Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian, viral leaks of dirty movie star photos and the sordid world of reality shows...there's this headline:

"Bob Hope, sex machine, 'often cheated' during his 69-year marriage."

This is news? We're 14 years into the 21st Century, most people barely know the man who died in 2003, and his better films are from the 30's and 40's, which are in black and white and therefore unwatched by anyone under 50.

The Post breathlessly offers a quote in the book from Sherwood Schwartz (yes, the "Gilligan's Island" producer) saying of Hope, "We'd go to a hotel, I swear to you, outside his room were three, four, five young, beautiful girls waiting to be picked by him to come in...He was a star enjoying his stardom."

Let me now quote from page 170 of "The Secret Life of Bob Hope," written by Arthur Marx and published in 1993:

"'I remember,' says Sherwood Schwartz, 'there were always five or six pretty young girls hanging around in the corridors outside Hope's room - sort of like today's groupies. Since I was a virgin, I was pretty envious of all the action he seemed to be getting.'"

Yes, over 20 years ago, a book was published detailing Hope's well-known wolfish behavior. In Marx's book, Hope was not only open about all this, but comical, too. That same page, 170, has an anecdote from Gene Lester, a photographer. Gene was covering a celebrity junket and "While we were playing Dallas, Hope had two girls flown in from Houston...these two good-looking young chicks arrived." Hope dead-panned: "These are my cousins from Houston."

In 1993, Bob Hope was not welcome as a TV talk show guest. Johnny Carson had already retired. The best Hope could do was get some tribute or other for his movie work, with Woody Allen telling the world how good those films were. It was the small, maverick Barricade book publisher (run by the legendary Lyle Stuart) that offered Marx's bio of Hope. One of the vague selling points, beside the usual list of Hope conquests, and a very strong helping of Bob's ad-libs and comedy, was that Arthur dug up the marriage license for Bob and his vaudeville partner Grace Troxell. In case anyone cared. Yeah, Bob married someone, briefly, before Dolores.

The application for the marriage license is printed, in full, in the photo section that begins after page 160. The NY Post in reviewing this new tome:

"...Hope's 1933-34 marriage to former vaudeville partner Grace Troxell, which Hope's publicists denied ever took place...was revealed in a 1993 biography." Yes, by Arthur Marx. Which you can buy on Ebay or Amazon for a fraction of what the Richard Zoglin book is selling for.

Another "blockbuster" bit of news in this new book? "No marriage license for Bob and Dolores Hope has ever turned up.The lack of any record of the Hopes' marriage (not even a wedding photo) led some Hope family members to speculate over the years that a wedding may never have taken place."

Oooh. How exciting. We're supposed to be shocked or excited by something that happened about 80 years ago? And that was already mentioned in the Arthur Marx biography:

"There no record of the Hopes getting married." Marx did add that "there's no denying that Hope and Dolores are actually married. And if they're not they've been getting away with murder on their joint tax returns for years."

I recall speaking with Marc Eliot, who knew Phil Ochs and was able gather enough of Phil's "small circle of friends" to write a very vivid bio of him. He then parlayed this into some kind of career as a celebrity biographer. I asked him why, after there had been so many bios already, he had just knocked off a new one on Cary Grant. The answer was pretty much...it was something to do. The older ones were out of print.

So it is, that there have been film buffs, fan boys and publish-or-perish college professors, who scan a list of celebrities and biographies and see if they can come up with a match. As in: oh, it's been a while since a W.C. Fields book came out, or Groucho, or...Bob Hope? Unfortunately in most cases, these new bios don't have exceptional new information to offer, and there are no "juicy" anecdotes because everybody who knew the dead star is either also dead or quite senile. Who, in Bob Hope's inner circle, is still alive and was hanging around the bedroom door when he had an affair with Barbara Payton? A paragraph about this is supposed to interest people who aren't even re-playing the Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson video?

Next up from Richard Zoglin? Maybe an expose of how nasty Arthur Godfrey was? No...a little too obscure. How about how nasty Bing Crosby was? Some people might've forgotten about Gary Crosby's book, or Zog can convince a publisher that old people go to bookstores beause they don't know how to buy a used copy of a better bio on Amazon. But I wanna tell ya...

Billy Joel - From Autobiography to Biography

When I interviewed Billy Joel, back during his tour with "The Stranger" album, I found him honest and interesting. He told me he was just an "ordinary schlump from Long Island. I wake up with crud on my teeth like everybody else." When I mentioned some of the poetic lines in his lyrics, he quickly shook his head: "I wouldn't call myself a poet." He was as down to Earth as a rock star could be.

What followed after "The Stranger" was a leap into superstardom (his marriage to Christie Brinkley) and then the seemingly inevitable star-fall: the fascinating, frustrating years when he retired and seemed to do nothing but drink and get into car accidents. 9/11 saw him return to live audiences at charity events with songs uplifting his beloved New York. The climb back continued thanks to hit tours with Elton John and a public that still wanted to hear his enduring songs...now filling up Madison Square Garden once a month for the privilege.

Six years ago, HarperCollins was willing to toss a million dollars at him for an autobiography. "The Book of Joel" was heading toward completion when he backed out. Several things were going wrong in his life: another divorce, the death of his father, and a bunch of physical aggravations and health issues. One thing about writing an autobiography...it's a "jinx" that indicates there's nothing left of your career. Another, is that you're responsible for every word...first person singular. The manuscript was shelved, with ghostwriter Fred Schruers ready to move on to other things. But two years ago, he met with Joel, and they decided to re-tool the book from autobiography to biography. The result is satisfying to them...and it will be more than satisfying to all of Billy's fans.

Billy's fans tend to believe that his music is closer to his idol and influence Paul McCartney, and not the kitsch and cringe of, oh, Jimmy Buffett, Neil Diamond, or others that critics have disliked for filling arenas with feel-good ballads and easy rock. While it might've been unseemly and even egotistic for Billy to discuss his songs in the first person, here, they are analyzed in the course of biography...and their worth, lyrical and musical skill given proper due.

Billy's fans may be familiar with some infamous anecdotes of his high times and low moments, but the official versions here separate fact from legend, even if they sometimes take a jokey tone. Yes, he did try to kill himself in 1970, wracked by misery and a failed relationship: "The bleach didn't look too palatable, so I drank the Old English Scratch Cover. I ended up sitting there, polishing my mother's furniture by farting a lot."

Those looking for more information on the music will find plenty of interesting trivia bits. One of his songs, "We Didn't Start the Fire," was inspired by...Sean Lennon. The kid wasn't too big on history: "You grew up in the fifties when nothing happened." Billy's response was "Are you kidding me?" Followed by jotting down all the awesome events and people that helped shape and mis-shape the world.

Being the ordinary kid from Long Island...some of his stories take on a "wow, I can't believe this" tone. This is especially true of his ability to score with superstar models. He didn't consider himself particularly good looking (neither do most of his sober fans) but his soulful eyes and pugnacious (he was a boxer for a while) rough looks did get him into rarified company. Elle Macpherson and Christie Brinkley both wanted to get their hands on him, exclusively. When they almost squared off (Brinkley escorted by Joel to his apartment...Macpherson already there), Billy was delighted: "Part of me thought, 'Oh god.' Another part of me was going, 'Holy crap, kif my friends could see me now!'"

You can see him now...not Billy Joel the autobiographer, but via this authorized biography. If you agree with me, that Billy Joel is comfortably on the platform with Dylan and McCartney...you'll be glad to get a copy of this one, which lives up to the title. It's as "definitive" as it gets.

Serial Killer JOHN CHRISTIE of RILLINGTON PLACE

"Christie was the murderer, and the judge and jury too!"

The song, sung by Judy Collins and most recently Irish folk singer Karan Casey, was written by Ewan MacColl. The powerful anti-capital punishment song was written in response to the execution of Tim Evans for a crime most believe was actually committed by his neighbor at 10 Rillington Place, John Christie. Curiously, there's no mention of it ("The Ballad of Tim Evans," aka "Go Down Ye Murderers") in what is the most recent but not completely definitive or satisfying book in the Christie case. Jonathan Oates is not an interesting writer at all, but his selling point is being factual, and uncovering details that he insists were either missing or slanted by previous authors.

So what do all these facts produce? Not much. The main controversy (was it one murderer or two) continues. Oates in his "Conclusion" chapter even points out the various writers who believe a) Evans killed his wife and child, b) Evans only killed one of them, c) Evans conspired with Christie, d) Christie killed two women before Evans and his wife and child arrived at the fateful house, killed them, and killed four more women before he was captured.

There's some interest in Christie because physically, he's an unlikely-looking mass murderer. Hardly a Manson, with wild-eyes and a psychotic credo, Christie, 5'8" and 150 pounds, was soft-spoken, balding, and seemingly nothing more than an office drone and petty martinet,

The book, only 186 pages (if you don't include the notes and index) thinks so little of Tim Evans that there's no picture of him...while there are shots of such lesser players as Derek Curtis-Bennett and Beresford Brown. Is this due to some "rights" issue? The same reason not a single line of the famous song (which would be "fair use") is quoted?

Or wasn't there room for such thought, when the author was so seriously involved in such less-than-pithy summations as this one: "Although long dead, Christie has not been forgotten."

No, Christie isn't forgotten, because his balding, bland "just like anyone else" wax figure stands in a Madame Tussaud's, the song about Tim Evans is still played, and the film "Ten Rillington Place" based on the Ludovic Kennedy book is on DVD (with John Hurt as Tim Evans).

The main interest in the case is not really the crimes (Christie was no gruesome "Jack the Ripper" in a top hat) but the nagging question among conspiracy buffs, as to Evans' involvement. While Ludovic Kennedy's book (like MacColl's song, mainly aimed at proving Evans innocent and that capital punishment is not reversible) remains Exhibit A for "Christie did it all," others, especially Jonathan Oates, aren't comfortable with the amount of times both Evans and Christie outright lied, or offered impossibly confusing recollections. Evans, an acknowledged dimwit, who was also a loudmouth stuck in an increasingly hapless marriage, confessed several times in detail but ultimately recanted. Christie's "the more the merrier" confession to killing Evans' wife may have been part of a campaign to get off on an insanity plea...while his denial of killing the Evans baby could've been to save himself from vigilante justice within prison.

This volume, concerned as it is with Christie, his childhood (50 pages of bland detail) and his periodic petty crimes and the last series of murders (which included his own wife), tries to be sympathetic. "Christie was not evil, though he was capable of evil deeds," writes Oates, "nor was he a sadist, as were Brady and Hindley and the Wests (the author seems baffled but persistent in dragging in other serial killers and comparing them and their motives). "He was, in many ways, the ordinary man, on the surface, similar to our neighbors and colleagues, who was nevertheless a mass murderer." From a convoluted, comma-stricken line like that, you can see how this author tends to be a cartoon of Sherlock Holmes, his magnifying lens on the floor, walking around and around in circles. "To label him as a monster is simplistic and emotive," we are assured, "for Christie was just a sexual inadequate who murdered to sate his lusts." There is, it should be noted, conflicting testimony on that last statement, as semen stains were found on the murderer's clothes, and his own confessions included necrophilia...having sex with the women after they were strangled.

In the end, this book has some merits; the author's dug up some fresh quotes, pulled some facts out of dusty files, and offered some photos of some of the victims and bystanders. There's even some disturbing sociology not mentioned by others; that Christie's pathetic dwellings were also home to Jamaican musicians and other blacks who he detested for their noise and their lack of civility. The author doesn't use Christie's hatred of his neighbors and his poverty as an excuse for violence or vengeance...he's careful to let motivation remain the province for amateur psychologists. Oates might even be commended for resisting an author's temptation to color in some details, if only to make the book a more vivid read. But after 182 pages, his alternating smugness and confusion lead to this confession:

"Most readers will, by now have added to their knowledge of John Christie, the mild-mannered man who made a mortuary of the house in which he lived. There is, however, much that we will never know for certain."

The most eye-opening factor here, is his belief that Evans was guilty, so for "fans" of Christie, it's a must-read to try and figure how he came to such a conclusion, when it's so opposite several other respectable opinions.

There's no paper shortage, to my knowledge, in Great Britain. The book could have been extended another 20 or so pages, to examine in detail Ludovic Kennedy's contentions about the timeline involving Evans and construction done at the house, discuss the testimony of Evans' half-sister Mary Westlake in leading the government to overturn the Evans conviction in the slaying of his wife Beryl, and to examine more closely theories of why a man with no background of violence and murder (Evans) should be considered guilty while living in the house of someone who had killed twice. Tim's sister, Eileen Ashby, is also not given a chance to voice the arguments on behalf of her brother. Many readers will remain hopelessly lost in trying to determine where Evans, Christie and his wife were at the time of Beryl's death, what motive is strongest, what kind of coincidence it would be for two men in the same house to choose strangulation as the means of crime, and what facts (or fallacies) led to Evans' death being found a "wrongful execution." It would not have taxed "fair use" to summarize some of Ludovic Kennedy's arguments on behalf of Evans and debunk them.

One thing untouched here, which was so important to Ewan MacColl and Ludovic Kennedy, is the question of capital punishment. Should it be abandoned, or at least restricted in cases as confusing as this one? Perhaps one can form a conclusion based on how Christie, most definitely the killer of six women, met his death. As described here by the executioner, he did not beg for mercy or call his approaching death a murder: "Faltering pitifully, his moevements were not so much a walk, as a dfrifting forward, his legs stumbling. I thought he was going to faint."

ANOTHER SIDE OF BILLY GRAHAM

For the past few years, there have been some health-scare news items on veteran Evangelist and TV personality Billy Graham. The man who has served as an inspiration for thousands, if not millions over his long career, now seems to be inspiring authors to hurry up and write a book about him. He's 95, and has written some fairly current books about himself and his philosophies, so at this point, what more is there to say?

Billy Graham's grandchildren have come up with a cut-and-paste job called "Thank You, Billy Graham," which assembles inspirational stories told about him from people all over the world. It's obviously preaching to the converted.

Hanspeter Nüesch has come up with a more substantial angle: "Ruth and Billy Graham: Legacy of a Couple." It's got a foreward by Gigi Graham. That, and the Switzerland-based Mr. Nuesch being a member of "Campus Crusade for Christ International," should alert readers that this is not a tell-all, but a celebration. "At times I had to laugh because he seemed to know more about me and my family than I did," writes Ms. Graham. "Hanspeter's focused enthusiasm and obedience to what he felt God called him to do have paid off. This book is the finished product."

For those whose choice of reading is usually secular, there are still some interesting anecdotes and inspirational moments to explore as Ruth and Billy faced their challenges, which include being so visible as role models, and in raising their children. This love-letter book includes over 100 photos. The author lists ten traits that served this couple well, and that (well, without necessarily #4 on his list) any couple need to work on, if not master: "partnership, authenticity, humility, intimacy with Christ, focus, integrity, faith, global responsibility, empowerment, and grace."