NOVELS: Paris Under The Jackboot

 

PARIS UNDER THE JACKBOOT: A Story of Condemned Love

This story is based on real-life events. Some character names and locations have been changed.Marcel is a famous French singer. Brooding, rough-and-ready and from the wrong side of the tracks, he arrived in Paris in 1934 and was discovered singing in the streets by Gérard, one of the city’s leading impresarios. When the story opens it is 1944. Paris is under the Nazi jackboot and Marcel is star attraction at Gérard's nightclub, Levalle's, the most celebrated in town. When Gérard is murdered, Marcel's already complicated life falls apart. He ends his relationship with Lucienne, his girlfriend with whom he has been living for the past five years, and can no longer see Connie, his mistress, because her husband is home on leave. While trudging the streets, drunk after curfew, he is picked up by Jürgen, a young German lieutenant who has worshipped him from afar for some time. Initially their relationship is platonic. In the past, Marcel has always ridiculed homosexuals, primarily because Maurice Leclerc, the effete waiter at Levalle’s, once made a pass at him and got more than he bargained for. Jürgen is different, he is strapping and manly, and as time passes, a deep and passionate bond develops between the two men as Marcel fights his demons to rebuild his shattered career. Meanwhile, the Liberation approaches, bringing triumph and tragedy in equal measure

Warning: this story contains strong language and scenes of a sexual nature.

David Bret: Autobiographies

Paris-born David Bret is one of Britain's foremost show business biographers and has spent 50 years writing about the famous and infamous. Now, he dishes the dirt on himself!  He speaks affectionately about his long-suffering mother and eccentric family. He recalls celebrities who became mutual confidants: French singer Barbara, Dorothy Squires and Marlene Dietrich. He remembers show business friends with fondness: Damia, Serge Reggiani, Alice Sapritch, Melina Mercouri, Joey Stefano and recalls his meeting with Greta Garbo. He writes of his friendship with Peter Sutcliffe in pre-Yorkshire Ripper days. But while speaking of these people with affection, he takes no prisoners when discussing his enemies--especially the physically and mentally abusive father who make his childhood and youth a misery. Also he does not hold back when discussing his many love affairs. David Bret has never been less than honest in sticking his head above the parapet in his best-selling books and when expressing his opinions on a myriad of topics, and he is wholly unsparing when writing about himself.

Foreword

I’ve been around. One benefit of my life is that I never settled down. To date there have been nineteen homes and aside from Grange Farm, where I lived twice, once I left a place I never returned. Thus those I left behind have not changed because I was never there to watch them grow old or leave this world. This made writing these memoirs that much easier, though I have had to think long and hard who or what I should include here, and who or what I should not. In the end I decided to write everything and be damned, and to change a few names here and there to save a few blushes—primarily my own.

   I’ve had highs and lows, success, and thankfully and most gratefully in my professional life not that much failure. I’ve loved and lost, experienced joy and pain in equal measure, had friends and lovers who were ordinary men and women, and a few who were famous—if not bordering on the infamous. I’ve lived life to the full to make up for the miseries of my youth, but even then I grasped life with both hands to get me through the horrors of living with an abusive father.

   Were it not for the adoration and my need to protect my mother from this man, I would have been dead years ago. I guess that makes me a survivor. When I love, I do so unconditionally, but I bear grudges and when I hate—which is not often, and only under extreme duress—it is with every fibre in my being, which I guess makes me a formidable enemy.  Have I told the truth, from A to Z? Yes, I have! And would I do it all again, the good and the bad? You bet! Well, most of it!

David Bret

August 2016

David Bret is an Anglo-French biographer, novelist, historian and broadcaster, with over fifty published titles to his credit. This collection represents poems penned by him over a 50-year period. But minutely edited, they tell of his frequently complicated and controversial private life—his loves, platonic and otherwise, and his life-long involvement with the entertainments industry. The French chanson, pop and rock, opera, royalty, British and European comedy icons, Hollywood movie idols, matinee idols, porn stars and even a serial killer. David Bret has known and associated with them all!

Daddy Not So Dearest: My Parent From Hell

"Evil, cruel, contrived, nasty, homophobic, slimy, pathetic, puerile, poisonous, loathsome, psychotic, despotic, anti-Semitic, bigoted, adulterous and loud-mouthed. These are just some of the terms-and I'm sure there are more-that applied to George Spurr, my adoptive father. Add to this roster child-beater, rapist and crook, and this just about sums him up. It used to make me angry and confused, as a child, watching fathers hugging their sons, or seeing sons weeping for the fathers they had loved and lost. Mine never once hugged me, or showed the slightest affection towards anyone when he was a part of my life, or even suggested that he cared about anyone but himself. When at family weddings I watched fathers proudly lead their daughters down the aisle to give them away at their wedding, my heartfelt desire was to see mine laid out in a wooden box."
This is how celebrity biographer David Bret describes the man who adopted and raised him, in this harrowing story of his abused childhood and youth.

 

Rudolph Valentino

 Rudolph Valentino: A Dream of Desire

Rudolph Valentino was less ashamed of his sexuality than he was afraid of being trapped by the image of his public persona. In 1920s America, gay and bisexual men were stereotyped as feeble, effeminate degenerates. None of these terms applied to Valentino—a powerfully-built man who excelled at most sports, and boxing in particular. Yet it was his persistent and unnecessary need to prove his “manhood” which may have contributed to his early death. So, who were these men? Claude Rambeau was the chansonnier he met during his first visit to Paris, aged 18. Count Alexander Salm was an Austrian tennis ace, an exponent of the Argentine tango and a hero of World War One. Jules Raucourt was a Belgian stage -actor. Norman Kerry was the matinee idol who appeared in such silent classics as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Emmett J Flynn was the director who, though thrice-married, had a penchant for sporting types and whose career was blighted by alcoholism brought about by trying to hide his sexuality. Dublin-born Douglas Gerrard was a big name in Hollywood when he took Valentino under his wing, but is sadly forgotten today. Paul Ivano was a 19-year-old French cameraman, sent to America by his family to recuperate after being gassed while fighting at the Front, and who went on to much greater things. Frank Mennillo was an Italian businessman and aficionado of “button boys” who met Valentino when he first arrived in New York, and who would be the last of his lovers to see him alive. Thomas Meighan was an actor friend who was always there for Valentino to lean upon in times of trouble and stress. Robert Florey was a French publicist who came to America to work on one film, fell for Valentino, and stayed another 50 years to become one of the country’s most eminent producers. Valentino’s letters to him and Florey’s responses, which form a large and significant part of his story, are in turn touching and humorous. Jacques Hébertot was the French showman and Valentino’s guide during his second visit to Paris, in the summer of 1923. André Daven was the French actor-manager who went on to launch and manage some of the biggest names in French show business, and was unquestionably the great love of Valentino’s life. Luther Mahoney was a former New York cop turned factotum, and who provided Valentino with a shoulder to cry on and became his closest friend. Mario Carillo was a former Italian cavalry officer who achieved some success in Hollywood. Valentino’s partner at the time of his death, he was the only one of his lovers who lived with him. Barclay Warburton was the Philadelphia-born millionaire at whose home Rudy fell ill in August 1926. And the women? Coco was the Parisian music-hall demimondaine who mocked Valentino's performance in the bedroom, making him wary of women for the rest of his life. There were two lesbian wives, Jean Acker and Natacha Rambova, “baritone babe” members of Hollywood’s most notorious sewing circle. The former slammed the door of the bridal-suite in his face, but returned to support him at end of his life. The latter, rapacious and domineering, very quickly became Valentino’s and the studios’ very worst nightmare. Alla Nazimova was the Crimean born actress who ridiculed Valentino when they first met, but subsequently became one of his most cherished allies. Sheila Chisholm, aka Lady Loughborough, was the nymphomaniac Australian socialite who foisted herself on him during the last year of his life. Pola Negri was the quintessential vamp and teller of tall-tales, but who nevertheless cared very much for him towards the end. And finally there was June Mathis, the most important woman in Valentino’s life who became his surrogate mother and the keeper of his soul. With a wealth of documented evidence, rare photographs and previously unpublished recollections and correspondence from his friends and lovers, David Bret presents a unique, unflinching portrait of the real Rudolph Valentino.

Mario Lanza

 Mario Lanza: Sublime Serenade

Maria Callas called him the greatest tenor who ever lived. Vocally and technically, Mario Lanza was a genius. Like Callas, Lanza's was a phenomenal talent complimented by a more than monstrous ego. Suffering from what would today be diagnosed as bi-polar disorder, he lived virtually his whole life with his finger firmly pressed on the self-destruct button. Too undisciplined to remain in opera, Lanza found himself sucked into the Hollywood whirlpool, engulfed by the opulent lifestyle this offered: easy money, good living, and limitless food, sex and drugs, to which he became increasingly addicted. Lanza took his frustration out of others, frequently launching an uncontrollable temper on those around him and earning himself a reputation as one of the movie stars who were most disliked by their peers in the studio system years.

Lanza's scatological pranks were as legendary as his drinking, womanising and gorging sprees, each one followed by crash diets and periods of dark depression and self-loathing which made him virtually impossible to control. Yet he produced arguably the finest tenor recordings of popular music and opera of the last century as well as some classic films, including The Great Caruso and Serenade. 

In Sublime Serenade, David Bret uncompromisingly but lovingly, and in his unique and celebrated style, tells the Lanza story, from his birth in a poor district of Philadelphia, to his death in Rome 38 years later and his involvement with the Mafia. A must for all music and movie fans alike.