It Happened One Fight

All in all, "It Happened One Fight" is a nice-enough novel. Specifically the character of Dash was way less problematic than I had thought from seeing someone who looked very much like Clark Gable - a charming actor but from what we know about his behavior towards people like Loretta Young and Charles Laughton, he might not have been someone to romanticize. And Maureen Lee Lenker certainly doesn't do that. Dash is not a misogynystic hero in his own mind dropping microaggressions wherever he goes. Instead he is quite a sensitive man, whose main problem might be that he tends not to speak enough about his emotions and intentions. That is also true for Joan, the protagonist, who is a sensual but also a thick-headed actress. I am not sure who she is supposed to be modeled after. I don't know enough about Claudette Colbert, Gable's "It Happened One Night" co-star, but I actually thought more of Katharine Hepburn. Joan is engaged to a secretly gay actor, who is frequently praised for his sensitivity, and there is also Leda, a scheming actress-cum-tabloid journalist, obviously in the vein of Hedda Hopper. While the novel is entertaining, it suffers a lot from "why don't you just talk about it?" At some point Leda blackmails Joan regarding information that might be important to Dash. Joan decides to go along because she could not bear for Dash to find out about it. A few chapters later she tells him after all, and it all feels badly constructed. Of course, this is not supposed to be top-level literature, but a little more regard for psychological plausibility would have been nice.