Hometown Angel by Reita Lambert ~ 1940. This edition: Triangle Books, 1942. Hardcover. 272 pages.

My rating: 8/10 – To be taken with a grain of salt, please – this rating merely reflects my opinion of this story’s merits among others of its narrow genre – vintage American light romantic fiction.

*****

Handsome, urbane Gerry Miles, a modestly successful short story writer and aspiring novelist, and the deeply devoted beau of moderately successful and keenly aspiring stage actress Lola Leighton, is waiting at the train station in New York City for an unkown-to-him girl. Eudoxia Abbott is Lola’s old school friend from way back in rural Ohio, and is on a first-ever visit to the big city. Gerry’s been detailed to waylay Miss Abbott and let her know, tactfully of course, that Lola is in no position to act as hostess to a little country bunny, no matter what their prior close relationship.

Gerry surprises himself by being immediately quite taken with Eudoxia – Doxie – who shows herself to be self-possessed and sensible – as well as a pretty little thing – but he rembers his instructions and rather shamefacedly fulfills his commission, telling Doxie that Lola is so exceedingly busy with auditions and rehearsals that she’ll have no time for shepherding Doxie around New York, but that there are some good hotels nearby. But first a quick visit to dear Lola is in order, before Doxie finds herself on her own.

The bitter truth is that Lola is on her uppers, and is too ashamed to admit it to Doxie. Her last play has folded and she’s now jobless in the harsh city. Her chosen profession has no place for losers, and Lola’s getting desperate. A play that she thinks would be perfect for her has made the rounds, but no producer wants to touch it – it’s a bit of a dud, if truth be told, though all Lola can see is her potentially glorious starring role as the titular “Linda”. She’s got one last call out to a prospective backer, and the last thing she wants to do is to waste her time showing Doxie about; Lola can’t afford to feed herself at this point, let alone sponsor a non-theatrical friend temporarily in town.

When Gerry and Doxie arrive at Lola’s apartment, she’s made a supreme effort and appears perfectly poised and beautifully dressed (in a costume left over from a stage production), with newspaper clippings of glowing reviews from her two-plays-back success scattered carelessly about, and a profusion of flowers she’s somehow cadged from the reluctant florist to whom she already owes a huge debt.

“Golly, Lola, you’re living such a glamorous life! I always knew you’d be a famous actress!” gushes admiring Doxie, and Lola basks happily in the uncritical praise, while remembering to maintain her noncommittal attitude towards Doxie’s visit.

Lola is just edging Doxie out the door to seek that hotel room when Doxie blurts out her own big news. She’s just inherited a handsome sum of money from her recently deceased foster grandfather back home, and this trip to the city is by way of being a celebratory binge.

Lola freezes for just a moment, then effusively turns on the charm. Why, darling Doxie must stay with her! Why is silly old Gerry suggesting an impersonal hotel room in a strange city, when Lola just happens to have an empty couch? Why, if it makes Doxie feel better, she can contribute to expenses with a modest boarding fee, but goodness! – what’s mere money between friends?! “Darling, you must stay with me!”

Gerry, speechless at the about-face, meekly goes along with Lola’s change of heart, but can’t help but wonder if Lola’s motives aren’t just a mite self-serving. He secretly decides to keep an eye on innocent Doxie and keep her from being too badly fleeced by his egotistical girlfriend.

Gerry has few illusions as to Lola’s hyper-ambitious nature. He’s been proposing marriage for some time now, asking her to give up the stage, but Lola insists that she needs one more hit play first, so she can walk away from the stage on a high note. She just needs the right opportunity, the perfect starring role. But as far as Gerry’s concerned, a continued run of unemployment will drive Lola into his arms, so he’s not too upset about her failure in getting Linda into production.

Well, predictably enough, Doxie is almost immediately buffaloed into backing Linda, and she embraces her new role as a theatrical “angel” with gusto. Gerry, a bit stunned by Lola’s rapid grasp of this unlooked-for opportunity and her immediate willingness to part her old friend from her nest egg, lurks around predicting doom and gloom, and sharing his conflicted concerns with his friend Nigel Tucker, a wealthy and cynical party boy with a casual interest in the theatre. Nigel was at first condescendingly kind to, and then increasingly taken with this fresh little number from the wilds of Ohio; Gerry is initially relieved at Nigel’s protective stance towards Doxie, but then starts to wonder why he feels almost, well, jealous of Nigel and Doxie’s growing closeness. But there’s no reason for jealousy, because Gerry loves Lola! And if Doxie ends up broke, the happy solution would be a marriage to immensely rich Nigel. Right? Right. Okay then, no worries.

As the Linda rehearsals progress and the off-Broadway opening approaches, it is evident to everyone except Lola and Doxie that the play is indeed a right royal mess. Gerry and Nigel are becoming increasingly short with each other as Doxie gushes on about her newly fledged theatrical enthusiasms to both of them, and they both realize what a disastrous effect Linda‘s coming almost-certain flop will have on her – not to mention Lola’s – psyche.

Tension builds, the tangle gets more tangly, and Gerry attempts to deny his growing romantic feelings for Doxie by pressuring Lola into a formal engagement. Lola brushes him off again and again, and insists on setting her sights higher by the day, envisioning a trip to Hollywood once Linda brings her the inevitable (she is convinced) critics’ applause and her long-deserved artistic success.

Up, down, around and around the four main characters chase each other – much drama plays out on and off stage, until the very end when (almost) everyone reshuffles their attachments and priorities and ends up where they really wanted to be in the first place.

*****

This is a true light romance – “pure eiderdown” as a Kirkus reviewer called another of this author’s fluffy creations. Effortless to read, deeply predictable, and surprisingly enjoyable, despite the inner groans of readerly despair at the frequent sheer obtuseness of the characters. The author also isn’t taking any of this too seriously, and she plays her characters freely upon her own little stage, with a wink and a nod to the audience. The result is, as I’ve just said, fluff, but fluff is welcome occasionally, to lighten the mix.

Lambert herself was modest in her literary claims, and did not pretend her works were anything other than for sheer amusement, her own and her readers’. If that was her criteria for success, this story succeeds. Though the characters are almost universally one-dimensional, and occasionally ill-behaved, they are reasonably well drawn, and the sweet and innocent nice-girl heroine has us on her side from start to finish. (I still think she ended up with the wrong man, though. Though I knew it wouldn’t happen, I willed her to take the one who truly appreciated her the most.)

Reita Lambert was a prolific writer of her time, and apparently quite well-known, though I wasn’t familiar with her before I researched her work after reading Hometown Angel. She wrote hundreds of short stories for the popular magazines of the 1910s through the 1940s, as well as a number of successful novels, among them Beauty Incorporated, Lines to a Lady, Yesterday’s Daughter, They Who Have, Right to the Heart, and others. Lambert also wrote stage and screen plays, and was involved in New York’s theatre scene. She was married to American composer Arthur Nevin, who had a successful career of his own in composing operatic scores based on American Indian folklore; his work was particularly well received in Germany in the pre-WW I years of the 20th Century.

Hometown Angel certainly demonstrates Lambert’s easy familiarity with the theatre scene, and her portraits of the various Theatrical Types of the time are well drawn and amusing. She definitely keeps a humorous eyebrow cocked in this book. I quite enjoyed this read, and would gladly tackle another, though, as I’ve said in other contexts, it would have to come to me easily and affordably. The few Reita Lamberts available through ABE seem rather high-priced for the non-literary popular fiction that they are, and I suspect at those prices would be of most interest to collectors of  the vintage light romantic fiction genre versus the casual reader.