This is a personal email from my mentor of long ago and one hell of an author. Gwen Davis was catapulted to fame and some fortune with her Novel, "The Pretenders". Her literary accomplishments are too numerous to list but I thought you’d like this. As far as I’m concerned she fills the empty pages left by Dominick Dunne.
"Scandal" is her latest offering at Amazon.com listed along with her many other novels.
Here is a recent email from best selling author Gwen Davis.
So I had lunch with my friend Ellen, very grounded and much a part of the reality scene (such as it is) in Beverly Hills, and she told me about her little grandson, when he was three, laying out a line of balls and toys in one long line across the room, and saying to her when she seemed puzzled, "But Grandma, don't you know: we are all connected." It brought tears to my eyes, in the South Beverly Grill yet. Much of my life has been spent trying to get a real bead on this puzzle, and it is a conclusion I often come to when I am in the more illuminated part of my search, which has taken me to Rocky Mountain National Park, where I first met Jack, my Jewru as Don called him, to silent retreats in the desert, to a hilltop in the south of France, and most recently to Bali.It has been subtly in play, in a name-droppy way, through some of my most glittery friendships: Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Marlon Brando, Gene Kelly(my dancing teacher in Pittsburgh when I was two,) all the historical moments I had access to in Washington when I was writing a novel about Watergate, culminating with a knock on my front door on Rembert Lane, and on opening it I found my new neighbor, the occupant of the house they had been building next to mine, John Dean. So I felt, in a way, like Zelig,further underlined by my office mate at the Comedy Development Program at NBC when I was 20, the only job I have ever had, being Woody Allen, already smarter than me, as he only came into work the day we got paid.
Now, to my great surprise, I am older, something we never think about being until it overtakes us, and am recovering from WHAT?... Me?... hip replacement surgery at Cedars, and my physical therapist is Joe Mankiewicz' grand-daughter. He was the director I admired most(think ALL ABOUT EVE, which still stands up) and our paths, happily, crossed, when he went to a dinner party at Bennett Cerf's, and Joe said that of all the bestselling writers, the one that could really write was Gwen Davis. (I hadn't met him, but I did meet Bennett, the head if Random House, who was bidding for my next book, and told me what joe had said, adding "That's going to cost me money." Not enough, by the way, he lost me to Doubleday, where my troubles were to begin.)
Many years later, I met Joe, and we became true friends,--- I tour-guided Joe and his wife through San Francisco, where he came to visit me. I had been friend-ish with Pamela Mason, the sharp-tongued ex-wife of James, and frequent argumentative guest of Johnny Carson, whose producer, Freddy de Cordova, was probably the father of Morgan Mason. (She told Zsa Zsa Gabor they feuded because Zsa Zsa was jealous because she had ugly children, and if she was smart she should make one with Freddie.) I had asked Pam who had been the best lover she had had, and she said "Joe Mankiewicz." I told him that, and he looked up into his recollection, and said "Oh, yes. Lovely woman... until you got to know her."
So I appreciate and applaud the confluence of the universe, that his descendant should be the one walking me down the hall. Let us never forget that Herman Mank was the writer of Citizen Kane, so something must run through the blood. I asked his grand-daughter why she had chosen a healing profession, and she said her father, also a writer, told her this business and town were too hard, and she was too sensitive, so should go into something that helped people, and didn't just hurt your feelings. Actually, that's harder to handle than your hip.
