Featured Player: An Oral Autobiography of Mae Clarke [Hardcover]

...will give the reader a very good idea of what a sensible and intelligent young actress, with no nonsense about her and no exaggerated notion of her own importance, had to do to make her way in Hollywood....lively memoir that corrects our myopic vision of Clarke and her contribution to show business.Mae Clarke, best known for her grapefruit-smeared appearance in Public Enemy, spent more than four decades in Hollywood, appearing in more than 100 feature films and nearly as many television appearances. In a series of candid and often poignant interviews during the last years of her life, she talks about her years in the movie and television business.To the American public, she will always be remembered as the woman who had a grapefruit ground into her face by James Cagney in the 1931 film classic Public Enemy. In fact, in an acting career that spanned nearly four decades, Mae Clarke appeared in nearly 100 feature films and logged in nearly as many television appearances. During the two years before she died at the age of 82, Mae Clarke spent many hours reliving those years. In a series of candid and often poignant interviews, she talks about her years in Hollywood, her failed marriage, and her health problems.James Curtis is the author of Between Flops, an acclaimed biography of Preston Sturges and A World of Gods and Monsters, the forthcoming biography of James Whale.