New Projects

Kathryn Jordan is busy writing the sequel, STEAM, which takes up right where HOT WATER left off. Can't say more or it would give away the ending for those who haven't yet read HOT WATER.

GLADYS AND CAPONE : A Novel Based on the True Love Story of Silent Screen star, Gladys Walton and Al Capone

Kathryn Jordan wrote GLADYS AND CAPONE for John Walton, Gladys Walton's son - Al Capone's son too, his mother told him. Gladys Walton did more than 40 films for Universal in the 1920s, an instant star at 16 when she parachuted off the wing of a Spads XIII biplane for a circus movie called Pink Tights.

Two years later Capone showed up at her dressing room door with two dozen red roses, and they drove her 1923 Stutz Bearcat to Venice Beach. Their stunning first date turned into a week at his desert hideout, Two Bunch Palms, then south to the Tijuana Jockey Club. She was 19, he was 23, on his way to becoming the world's most famous gangster, but in 1922 no one outside Chicago knew the name, Al Capone.

 

GLADYS AND CAPONE captures a Capone never before seen in fiction. Jazz, Prohibition, the Roaring Twenties, an array of Silent Screen stars, Pickford, Fairbanks, Swanson, Chaplin, Marion Davies, Hollywood scandals, it's all here. And Rudolph Valentino, "the world's greatest lover," his tragic private life stark contrast to the screen heros that brought him unprecedented fame and fortune.

In 1919 at a glitzy party at Fannie Ward's Italian mansion, Gladys danced the tango with an unknown bit actor named Rudolph Valentino, while other Hollywood legends watched. Six years later, on a break from filming his last movie, "Son of The Sheik," Valentino and Gladys rode horses across the desert and spent a night at Two Bunch Palms. In fact, if Valentino had lived, Gladys's story might've had a whole different ending.

Excerpt Chapter 12    Excerpt Chapter 39


© 2005 - 2009, Kathryn Jordan