Splashing around in pools with movie stars can lead to serious heartache…
Manhattan in the 1930s proves irresistible for a young gay man in the Midwest, who makes his way there only to discover that Gotham’s glamour is distinctly tarnished, and love comes at a very high cost. Before long, he’s broke, brokenhearted, and on the verge of a breakdown—before he reinvents himself all over again in Hollywood.
Armed only with cocktails, cigarettes, and a winning sardonicism, he encounters movie stars (who hate him), doyennes of society (who adore him), and a few men who fall somewhere in between. Before long, he’s on a collision course with true love in the gay underworld of pre-Code Hollywood, a town where anything goes…except possibly being happy.
Spanning the Depression to the well-heeled 1950s, from Grant’s Tomb to Hearst Castle, Jagged Sophistication tells the remarkable story of a most peculiar young man, one on the cusp of realizing he’ll have to plan more for his life than just escapes.
A Doodad Kind of Town 