Lives and letters

Lives. Tallulah Bankhead

Sarah Bernhardt

Bruno Bettelheim

Bing Crosby

Serge Diaghilev

Minou Drouet

Isadora Duncan

Eleonora Duse

Douglas Fairbanks

Margot Fonteyn

Judy Garland

Lillian Gish

Francine Du Plessix Gray

Katharine Hepburn

Harry Houdini

Joseph Jefferson

Elia Kazan

The Mitfords

Scott Peterson

The royals

Porfirio Rubirosa

Diana Vreeland

Mae West

The Windsors

Anna May Wong

Letters. Who was Charles Dickens?

The years with Thurber

The house that Gershwin built

Max and Marjorie

Becky in the movies

Parsing the Thirties

Analyze that: H.D., Bryher, and Freud

Astaire to Zopy-Zopy

Fast-talking dames

The hitmaker: George S. Kaufman

The storyteller: Rudyard Kipling

Lit-flicks

The case of John Steinbeck

White House whodunits

Scrutiny bound

Coda. Personally speaking: Am I Judith Krantz?

My New York City Ballet

Ms. Adler, The New Yorker, and me.