Word: selinko
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...being hailed as "a real drag-'em-in big-tenner like nobody since Clark Gable." And his pictures have won loud, critical huzzahs as well as some stentorian box-office grosses. Last week Brando completed a seventh, Désirée, a film version of Annemarie Selinko's 1953 bestselling novel, in which he plays Napoleon. Twentieth Century-Fox boldly predicts that it may take in up to $10 million. "Two more like Brando," said one producer, "and television can crawl back in the tube...
With a few exceptions, the top-selling novels of 1953 were set in the long ago and far away. Danish Novelist Annemarie Selinko's Désirée, a sentimental historical about the adventures of an early mistress of Napoleon, fought it out for first place for several months with a holdover from last year, Thomas Costain's The Silver Chalice. At the end, both were overhauled by a new edition of Lloyd Douglas' The Robe, which, boosted by the movie, recovered the top place on the list that it first won in 1943. With similar...
...Robe,* Lloyd C. Douglas Désirée, Annemarie Selinko The Silver Chalice, Thomas B. Costain Battle Cry, Leon Uris From Here to Eternity* James Jones Beyond This Place, A. J. Cronin
With that for a start, most bestselling historicals would be off on a snappy story of boudoir doings in the First Empire, with a lusty cannon counterpoint to the mattress melody. In Desiree, however, Danish Novelist Annemarie Selinko has accepted the rational notion that historical novels must have some relation to historical fact. The historical facts in the case are these: that Napoleon (he later Gallicized his Corsican name) as a very young man was actually engaged to Desiree Clary, the daughter of a Marseille silk merchant, that he broke the engagement to marry Josephine, and that Desiree later married...
...Novelist Selinko tells this story straight, with about as much verbal gusto as a court calendar. Nevertheless, her 594-page novel is already a bestseller in Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and other countries, and her publishers confidently expect that it will do as well...