Books

At two a.m. on Saturday, March 22, 1958, a Lockheed Lodestar carrying biographer Art Cohn and mogul's mogul Mike Todd crashed in a valley in New Mexico. Neither man lived to complete the last chapter of The Nine Lives of Michael Todd (Random House, $4.95). That, in the form of an epilogue, is supplied by Art Cohn's widow. This burly bio is neither an apologia nor an indictment, but rather a rare and rowdy account of the roller coaster career of a showman who was a blend of P.T. Barnum and the Don Quixote Todd never finished filming. Yeah, there are bits of sentimental corn sprouting in the book, but in a field as large as Todd's, some of it was bound to grow. At eight, Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen (Todd's real handle) was a shill for a carny pitchman; at 18, he was prexy of a two-million-dollar-a-year construction company; at 20 he was stony broke, existing on his wife's dole of a dollar a day. At 37, he had four plays running at once, netting him 20 grand a week. The following year he went bust again, but still managed to cajole half a million dollars from believing backers to launch two more shows. He was the gent who took the G-string off the banjo and hung it on Gypsy Rose Lee, and he was also the wheel behind the longest-running Hamlet ever to hit Broadway. While his enemies cynically grumbled that Todd had one more 'd' than God, he produced 16 plays during his life that grossed a hefty $18 million; but the gross on Around the World in Eighty Days may run to a whopping $100 million all by itself. Asked why he took a liking to Todd, author Cohn recounts a day during the shooting of World, when Todd stood on the deck of the paddle-wheeler that was bringing Phileas Fogg back to England, and noticed hundreds of sea gulls following the ship. "They're following us for the garbage," the first mate explained. "Garbage!" shrieked Todd. "No sea gulls following my boat are going to eat garbage. Toss them some decent food. We go first class." He did, all the way.

After taking time out for two books devoted to his famous father, Nathaniel Benchley is back with another of his astringent novels about what goes on behind those brownstone fronts in Manhattan. The title: One to Grow On (McGraw-Hill, $3.95). For his theme he has slyly chosen one of the favorite formats of the women's mags – and relentlessly twisted its tail. It's the one about the Friendless Waif in the Big City who, when faced with a crisis, finds that her flint-faced neighbors are simply oozing with the Milk of Human Kindness. Just to get things off on the wrong foot, Mr. Benchley picks an illegitimate pregnancy as the crisis, and though the assorted Samaritans rally round, the results are a choice blend of the ironic and the sardonic. Sample: after the gal has had her baby and gone happily off with a reporter, the delinquent father shows up, hoping she's had her abortion and is ready for more fun-and-games – whereupon he's coldly informed that she died in childbirth. "Happy memories, you son of a bitch!" says the No.1 Samaritan. If you like your Manhattan very dry with a twist of lemon, this is for you.

Once upon a time, to judge by Rona Jaffe's first novel, The Best of Everything (Simon & Schuster, $4.50), there were not one, not two, but five Little Red Ridinghoods, who set out from the typing pool of a big publishing house to make their way through the stone forests of Manhattan to Grandmother's Matrimonial Bureau. Each had carefully oiled and baited her tender trap; but though they all chose different paths, hardly any of them escaped the slavering wolves which are known to lurk behind every glass-topped desk. Career-minded Caroline luckily met a harmless one (he was impotent) and then a tame one (his goodnight kiss was long but chaste) – yet it was she who, after a double jilting, let herself be carried off by the slinkiest breed of all, the saber-toothed gynivorous genus Hollywoodus. Unstable Gregg fell foul of a smooth, short-hair Broadway type and made the mistake of trying to domesticate him. She jumped or fell to her death. Sunny April encountered the close-cropped socialite species and went through the classic cycle: deception, conception, abortion, desertion. The other two actually made it to the altar, so their stories aren't very interesting. In fact, though Miss Jaffe does her best to make it all very brittle and modern, it's like listening to five soap operas in a row.

Being a professional humorist, H. Allen Smith is a tricky man with a title, so when he comes up with something called The Pig in the Barber Shop (Little Brown, $3.95), it's not too surprising to find that it's a Mexican travel book. Seems H. A. was getting a haircut in Taxco during a brief sub-border sojourn when a porker came barreling in and nearly wrecked the joint. This so endeared the place to him that he determined to return, with Mrs. S., for a longer stay. With a former Mexican soccer star as guide (something like touring the U.S. with Red Grange calling the signals), they blanketed the Federal Republic like a poncho, doing all the wrong things, like drinking tap-water, and meeting all the right people, from Cantinflas to Bill O'Dwyer. It was obviously a lot of fun, and Smith's account ranks high as a tongue-in-cheek travelog. So if you're in the mood for a little chairborne peregrination through the land of fiesta and siesta, with a yok at every stop, this is your cup of tequila. If not, Mr. Smith is casting his swine before churls.

In The Quiet American, Graham Greene got off his sex-and-sanctity kick to hurl some barbed lances at the politicos. Now, with Our Man in Havana (Viking, $3.50), he's back in the cloak-and-dagger groove where he first started. But his penchant for the trenchant is still with him, and he's not content to offer just another crime, another chase. The suspense is edged with satire as he details the antic adventures of Jim Wormold, a British vacuum-cleaner salesman in Cuba whose chronic overdraft forces him to sign on as a Secret Service agent. There follows a sportive romp involving a toothsome assistant, counterspies, a German refugee, homicide, fake intelligence reports, a climactic gun duel larded with British drolleries and a final "well done" from the home office. It will be news to none that Greene is a master of huggermugger, but in this one he's so busy pulling comic rabbits out of the hat that he seems more interested in hareraising than hair-raising.

Writing wacky captions for classic works of art is an old pastime (we did it in Etchings Revisted back in December of 1956) but it's always good if done right. Done right is a little book called Captions Courageous (Abelard-Schuman, $2.50), in which Bob Reisner (author of this month's Sinatra) and Hal Kapplow hitch "You forgot to bring the marshmallows" onto Manet's Luncheon on the Grass, "Slip into this; it's a raid" onto Botticelli's Birth of Venus, "Who's minding the store?" onto Goya's King Charles IV and His Family, "It all started out as a poetry reading" onto Couture's Decadence of the Romans, etc. Fine fun for cheek-to-cheek page-flipping; a cute casual gift.

Strike Heaven on the Face by Charles Calitri (Crown, $3.95) is a first novel by a N.Y. high school principal which seems likely to ruffle more tail feathers in PTAviaries than anything since Blackboard Jungle. Based on an actual incident, it details the stalwart effort of a New England high school dean to cope with something new in extracurricular activity – the Modnoc Club (spell it backwards) which meets for secret orgies which would do credit to the Marquis de Sade. It's obviously a juicy setup, but Mr. Calitri is not interested in milking its sensationalism. His Walter Davis is an earnest educator, new to his job, replacing his best friend, recently dead, whose shoes he feels unable to fill – but whose bed he finally does. This brief interlude gives him the courage to scotch the Modnocs in a way that will do least harm to the school, the town, and the kids themselves. It's by no means simple, for Mr. Calitri poses his problem against the social tensions and political pressures in one of those communities where first families and last arrivals are constantly clashing. But compassion is the keynote, and while his book may win no literary prizes, it shows a deep understanding of the teenage psyche. Give the teach an A for effort.