Forty-Two Glamour

"Betty Bunch exemplifies the energy and talent that was so prevalent in showroom entertainment during the 1950s and 1960s. Ms. Bunch began dancing as a child in Austin, Texas and at the age of nine decided to make it her career. At 18, she began working in stock theater productions. Shortly thereafter, she joined the Moro-Landis Dancers in Los Angeles. She came with that troupe to Las Vegas in 1956 to open for Donald O'Connor at the Sahara."

"Christine Pevitt Algrant, author of Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France (Grove, 2002), writes for what one of the blurbs calls 'an intelligent popular readership.' The word 'popular' is what distinguishes this book from Nancy Mitford's insiderish consideration of Mme de Pompadour's career. There is none of Mitford's fine malice, and Ms Algrant does not appear, as Mitford so often does in the pages of her book, to identify with her subject. If you know little or nothing about French high life in the eighteenth century, Ms Algrant's is the book to begin with. Reading aloud to Kathleen last night, while she knitted, I found that I had to put down the new book and read from Mitford instead. Horrified by the ceremonies - daily, protracted, and quite meaningless - surrounding the King's Levers and Couchers, Kathleen couldn't say often enough how glad she was that life had spared her the ordeals of Louis XV's courtiers."