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player ready...Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years
By Cari Beauchamp
Knopf, 506 pages, $35
Meet the financier who created — and destroyed — actress Gloria Swanson, bought his own film studio and created a political dynasty, imparting some of the lessons he learned as a tycoon, bootlegger, ambassador and philanderer. Cari Beauchamp, author of a previous book about women of early Hollywood, understands so well that the lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous aspects of the story recede as the emergence of the film business gives the book its narrative drive and importance.