David Hartnell
Penguin
It becomes a trifle wearying since almost all the pictures show Hartnell not doing very much other than posing with a (usually) much better known individual, or "celebrity". So what is actually going on here: is Hartnell a celebrity?
He describes himself as a "celebrity journalist", so perhaps he is; I freely confess to knowing almost nothing about him but I believe he will be familiar to readers of trivia in women's magazines and of the shallows of journalism. He claims to have made a very successful career out of selling tidbits about stars, and so must be congratulated for his contribution to our GDP.
His memoirs tell us his professional career began, more or less (there was an early venture into drag queenism), by first successfully selling cosmetics and doing make-up for rich women, as well as being the huckster in retail cosmetic displays at a time when such a calling was highly unusual for the Antipodean male, even for a gay one. It says something for Hartnell's entrepreneurship that he was able to succeed, as he tells it, in Sydney, London and New York, before the siren of Hollywood beckoned and he found a way to make a second successful career by flogging gossip about celebrities back in New Zealand.
I found my chief interest in this book lay not with the photographs, or the stars or indeed the mostly tedious anecdotes peppered with swathes of exclamation marks, but with the various personal discoveries about his family (these will surprise many, as they apparently did the memoirist). He is very frank about his early years, especially the traumas of growing up in the homophobic New Zealand of the 1950s and 1960s.
His various encounters with the celebrities help pad out a fairly thin story, however, helped along by the very occasional shaft fired at perceived irritants. Generally, though, Hartnell is kind to his enemies, dead or alive, which says quite a lot about a character I judge to be kindly disposed towards those psychologically unstable, over-achieving unfortunates from whom he has made his living.
Memoirs of a Gossip Columnist is poorly written with the narrative flitting hither and yon, and little coherence after the early career; there is scant evidence of a firm editing hand. But I imagine brand David Hartnell will continue to thrive and the memoirs bound to trigger many a happy smile from his intended audience.
