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A Dark Lady.

BUT--GENTLEMEN MARRY BRUNETTES. By Anita Loos. Boni and Liveright, New York, 1928. $2.00.

AFTER Lorelei Lee has married Henry Spoffard and become a family woman in a small way, she settles down to give a waiting world the low down on Dorothy, the tart brunette who sang bass in the earlier story. She traces Dorothy's education from her childhood in a carnival company to New York and the Follies and eventually to the altar (twice).

Dorothy is snaked out of her carnival by a Deputy Sheriff, who takes her to his home (where his mother is, so it's all right) to bring her up. They fall out after the D. S. hears her say her prayers in her nightgown one evening, and Dorothy goes off and learns about Life from a California trouper. Next she encounters a polo team and Charley Breene in particular. Charley hangs himself around her neck like the albatross, and she never does get rid of him.

This book is longer and, we think, better than "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." Writing about herself, Lorelei was too close to her subject. Writing about Dorothy, she loses much of the tinkling prattle and gains that large and impartial frankness one affects in criticising one's friends. The difference is, that this is biography, where the other was autobiography. Personal confessions are always good, but not so good as revelations made by somebody else.

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