Opposite attraction

About this book

This is the first joint biography of Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front, the most famous war novel of all time, and Hollywood screen legend Paulette Goddard. Following the overwhelming success of All Quiet, Remarque was forced to flee the Nazis in 1933. Though he escaped, his sister Elfriede would meet a horrific end. Always restless and haunted by his state of exile, Remarque moved between Switzerland, Hollywood, where he womanized and wrote screenplays, and New York, where he worked on his novels and dabbled in cafe society. The excerpts from his never-before-published diaries document his continuing anxiety about his work and the most intimate accounts of his affairs, particularly those with Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. In the early 1930s, propelled by her own ambition and that of her mother, Paulette Goddard arrived in Hollywood, where Charles Chaplin put her in Modern Times. Vivacious, glamorous, and shrewd, she married Chaplin and Burgess Meredith, starred in over forty films, and was linked romantically with John Wayne and Clark Gable. The list of her admirers was long, ranging from H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, and George Gershwin to Anita Loos and Diego Rivera. Gilbert traces the lives of Remarque and Goddard from their meeting in the 1950s to their marriage in 1958 and Remarque's death in 1970, which set off Goddard's tragic and shocking decline.