In case you haven’t heard, our Summer Learning Odyssey theme for this year is “Hollywood.” The official title is “A Reading Star is Born.” I’ve been gearing up for this by reading books about Hollywood... more specifically old Hollywood. I love watching classic movies, so when I think of Hollywood it’s the “Golden Era” my mind turns to.
I recently read the novel “Goodnight from Paris,” by Jane Healey. For as many old movies that I’ve watched over the years, I never heard of the actress Drue Leyton prior to reading this book. The novel covers her war years in France.
Drue Leyton was a Hollywood movie actress who married a French actor and found herself in France right at the outbreak of WWII in Europe. Instead of taking the easy way out, and going back to America to make another movie, she decided to stay in France. There she worked with the American Embassy and the French to broadcast via radio what was happening in Paris, at the beginning of the war. She risked her life many times, ended up in an internment camp, and still worked for the French Resistance afterward. I really loved this book. Jane Healey wrote another book set in WWII, where John Wayne and Julia Child make appearances. Its title is “The Secret Stealers.”
