Playland

Playland Read Free Page A

Book: Playland Read Free
Author: John Gregory Dunne
Tags: Fiction, General, Historical
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singer in New York before she vanished from the public eye. In 1979 an item in the
National Enquirer
reported that Tyler had been arrested in Ypsilanti, Michigan, on drug charges. Bond was allegedly posted by an unnamed secret admirer, after which, according to the
Enquirer
, she promptly jumped bail. Her whereabouts are currently unknown, although there are unconfirmed reports that she died a few years ago in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she is said to be buried in an unmarked grave in a potter’s field.
    Q .
I have heard that billionaire tycoon Hugh Broderick disinherited his son, screenwriter John Broderick. Is this true? What happened to John Broderick after his brother, Father Augustine Broderick, and John’s former wife, Leah Kaye, were murdered together in San Francisco?—V.V.B., McAllen, Texas
.
    A . John (“Jack”) Broderick is a Hollywood scriptwriter (the remake of
Mildred Pierce
is his best-known credit, and his most recent the box office dud
Metro Vice II
). Broderick’s first wife, left-leaning lawyer Leah Kaye Broderick, and his brother, liberal cleric and presidential adviser Father Augustine (“Bro”) Broderick, were assassinated in San Francisco in 1984 by former Vietnam vet and disappointed local political candidate Richard (“Richie”) Kane. (Contrary to rumor at the time, there was never any evidence of a relationship between Kaye and Father Broderick.) Kane was convicted and sentenced to a mental institution in Napa, California, where he committed suicide (by hanging) in 1987. Broderick’s father, billionaire Hugh Broderick, died that same year of complications from a stroke. His fortune was left to a number of foundations and trusts. Although not named in the will, John Broderick was well compensated by his father during his lifetime. He lives with his third wife (and his father’s onetime nurse), the former Elizabeth Innocent, and is currently working on a number of film projects.

I
    Y ou see where we made
Parade
this morning?” All I got was the back of Lizzie’s head. “You, me, and Blue Tyler.”
    I tried again. “Wasn’t that her picture you were watching the other night on the tube? The one you said was a piece of shit?” But preferable, it seemed, to talking to me. That night, and apparently this one, too.
“Carioca Carnival.”
    Lizzie kept staring out the window of the Porsche, as if she were trying to memorize all the houses on this particular stretch of Sunset. A mental map of enemy territory to report to her confederates in the feminist maquis. That she was always identified as my father’s former nurse never bothered her; indeed she took it as a point of pride, because it seemed to embarrass the people, mainly professional friends—correction, acquaintances—of mine, with whom she most often came into contact, and who preferred not to be reminded that they, like her, had come from circumstances more modest than those to which they had become accustomed. She hated Los Angeles—correction again, Hollywood, third correction, the movie business—hated the way women in The Industry (she equally hated the way she claimed I used those two words, with an upper-case
T
, and an upper-case
I
, as if The Industry was some kind of superior life-givingforce; I thought I was only being ironic) were relegated to the categories of wife or fuck. Or development slut. Her term. Meaning those women—
girls
was a word one used in front of Lizzie at one’s peril—with looks (the overweight need not apply, nor those with moles or the faintest palest shadow of downy mustache), drive, and no discernible talent, to whom the studios would sometimes give a housekeeping fund for an office and a secretary and some development money to work with would-be and never-will-be screenwriters whose primary virtue was that they were not in the Guild, and thus not eligible for minimums and benefits. Occasionally a screenplay might actually be written, perhaps even put into production, by which time the

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