From Dust to Stardust
Fans of the early Hollywood era will enjoy this fictionalized treatment of actress, collector, and philanthropist Colleen Moore, whose Fairy Tale Castle – an elaborate miniature house – the author saw in Chicago as a girl.
Rooney imagines Moore as starlet Doreen O’Dare; the story begins in 1968 as O’Dare is invited by the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry to record a narrative to accompany the upcoming exhibit of her famous Fairy Castle, a labor of love she constructed as an escape from the stresses of the early film industry. Describing the origins of each lovingly decorated room of the elaborate miniature house gives Doreen an opportunity to reminisce about her madcap career – a career she abandoned to devote herself to touring with her “Fairy Castle” around the country during the Depression.
Fictionalizing the subject allows Rooney to imagine O’Dare in conversation with most of the luminaries of the silent screen: Mary Pickford, Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin, and especially journalist Adela Rogers St. John and actor/philanthropist Marion Davies, among many others. Rooney presents a fairly sanitized portrait of the film industry; O’Dare escapes the casting couch and other exploitative traditions while acknowledging her luck in doing so. The most she suffers along the way is some annoying Irish stereotyping. The plot is a little thin and consists mainly of a speed run through some famous film productions before pausing on O’Dare’s troubled marriage to an alcoholic press agent.
As she observes the toll Hollywood takes on personal lives and relationships, O’Dare chooses to retire at the height of her fame in favor of lavishing her considerable personal fortune on touring her Fairy Castle. This allows her to meditate on the obligations of the rich and privileged, but ultimately, this is a diverting but shallow portrait of one woman’s pursuit of escapism through art.
