Norma

One from the heart, and about as personal as celebrity bios get, as Quirk limns his friend Norma Shearer, who was his uncle James Quirk's love while he was editor-publisher of Photoplay (1914-1932). Despite this closeness to his subject, Quirk writes warmly but unworshipfully, always giving Shearer's performances the compliment of honest opinion. A Scot-English Canadian from Montreal, Shearer was first trained as a pianist, then won a beauty contest (despite poor teeth and a cast in her eye) and slipped into acting. She, her sister Athole, and mother Edith dumped their despairing failure of a…