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BY NOEL I. GARDE

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BOOKS

THE LIGHT WENT OUT, BUT THE SHADOW REMAINED

THE IMMORTAL, by Walter Ross. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958; 245 p., $3.50. Reviewed by John Logan.

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As a latent homosexual who at times was not so latent, Johnny Preston emerges in this new novel from a background to a pinnacle in Hollywood and New York theatrical life and finally to a violent death in the California desertand the whole business is grimy. This story, told from a number of points of view (press dispatches, a girl's diary, studio interviews, a psychiatrist's case history, etc.) some times gets gruesome in detail as it describes a career that is obviously based upon the life and legend of the late James Dean.

That connection appears obvious because the hero is a handsome, young, strangely dynamic movie star who is killed in a plane accident at the same point in his career at which Dean was also fatally injured in a sports car wreck. Widespread adulation by teenagers, necrophilic rituals, and the press which keeps the dead Johnny alive seem to serve one purpose: that of fanning the flames of publicity for the studio which has Preston's last film in the can and ready to brighten Cinemascope screens across the land when the dollar-sign is just right.

But Johnny, perhaps, was blameless in all of this. He was born into the crazy, mixed-up beat generation. His ability to convey emotion on the screen made him one of its leading representatives in a short time. Only adulation wasn't enough for him he had to move faster and live wilder than everyone else. He had to drive his car hard and fly a plane carelessly, for kicks.

Author Ross has hewn the Preston personality with no stones unturned, no secrets kept. That kind of reading, it seems, has be come mighty popular these days.

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mattachine REVIEW

marriage below zero:

the very first one?

MARRIAGE BELOW ZERO, by Allan Dale. New York: Dillingham, 1889. 319`p., 50 cents.

Alfred J. Cohen was born in Birmingham, England in 1861 of a prosperous middle-class family, was educated at Oxford, and came to the United States while still in his twenties, where he began a career as a journalist, as music and drama critic for the New York Evening World from 1887 to 1895 and subsequently for the Journal and the American. In between his journalistic assignments he Wrote a number of novels under the pseudonym of "Alan Dale" (originally "Allan"), the last of which was published in the 20's. He died in 1928. The second of his novels was published only as a paperback selling for 50¢, although this was not customary for most of Dillingham's books – the greater the pity because the nature of the binding and the poor quality paper make it unlikely that

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