Susan Bernard’s father, the great Hollywood glamour photographer Bruno Bernard, will be forever remembered as the photographer who discovered Norma Jean who would become better known as Marilyn Monroe. He left Susan his files and photographs. The result is a coffee table size book, Marilyn: Intimate Exposures by Susan Bernard with forwards by Lindsay Lohan and Jane Russell.
  
Marilyn was a luscious 18 when Bernard saw her walking down the street. He introduced himself and told Marilyn he would like to photograph her for a magazine. And did he ever as she was on the cover of more than 50. She wanted to be a star like Betty Grable but her subsequent contracts with the studios amounted to nothing. Included in the book are her agreements with Bernard for the photos and his diary entries about their friendship (or was it more?). When he took her to Palm Springs for a photo assignment, while on a diving board, a short little man was also taking photos-- Johnny Hyde, VP of the William Morris Agency. On one page, there is an unforgettable shot of Hyde and Marilyn and the look on the latter’s face was of a cat who swallowed the canary.

Under Hyde, she had plastic surgery to make a film face, he ordered no more two piece bathing suits or pin ups. By 1950 she was in Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve and on the verge of stardom when she called Bernard in hysterics because Hyde had a heart attack. Her career continued and Bernard took the famous Seven Year Itch photos of her white dress blown up around her throat as she stood on the subway grill. Standing over to the side is an unhappy Joe DiMaggio with Walter Winchell.

 This is just the tip of the pictures in this book. Susan Bernard has written in a novelist’s voice and has had readings by actors in various theatres. In order to set the facts out about Marilyn’s death and Robert Kennedy, she pursued the John Bates family where Bobby and his family were spending the weekend. There was no way he could have been in Los Angeles that day as shown by the camera shots from the Bates farm. On the other hand there are folks for hire and who knows?

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Stephen Maitland-Lewis has followed up Hero On Three Continents with Emeralds Never Fade (Glyd-Evans Press $25.95). As well as emeralds, friendships last as do memories. For Leo, his mother’s emerald pendent used to press into his chest when she hugged him close had belonged to his grandmother and was the talisman of his family. Leo had been taught to play the piano by Bruno Franzman while his father tutored the latter in math.

Leo was living with his cousins in Nice, where he had been sent for safety at the rise of the Nazis in Germany. His parents were academics in a secular world where being loyal Germans came before being Jewish and eventually joined their son there. Leo began learning about Judaism from Rabbi Aaron who trains him for his Bar Mitzvah. As the Nazi strength gets strong in Vichy France, the British with Churchill’s help will allow an unlimited number of Jewish children into Palestine. Leo is sent on the boat where he meets Uri who will become his lifelong friend. They go to the Kibbutz and Leo joins the British Army. He is sent to Britain where he meets the DeSola family with the beautiful daughter Elizabeth whom he marries after the war.

The second story in this novel belongs to Bruno whose club foot  kept him out of the German army. During one of the riots against the Jews, he stole the emerald pendent. It did not keep him out of Dachau where he was in charge of bookkeeping which the Germans highly praised. As the Germans are losing the war, Bruno with the help of the Catholic Church escapes to Argentina. Thanks to his record book, he is able to blackmail Germans who are there. He, too, will make a great success in banking.

Years later Leo has been a banker is Switzerland until he realizes he has been used by the bank to smuggle German money and art to Italy which was used to get Nazis to Argentina. No one wants to do anything about this and Leo returns to England and New York. How Leo and Bruno meet again and the history of the emerald pendent is a thriller, murder mystery.

When I did ask Stephen (who had been a banker in Europe) about this plot, he seemed reticent to discuss the Swiss involvement. Instead, this excellent writer and story teller was happier talking about his friendship with jazz musicians.

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