Kathleen Rooney's "From Dust to Stardust"

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She teaches in the English Department at DePaul University, and her recent books include the national best-seller Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (2017) and the novel Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey (2020). Where Are the Snows, her latest poetry collection, was chosen by Kazim Ali for the X.J. Kennedy Prize and published by Texas Review Press in Fall 2022.

Here Rooney dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, From Dust to Stardust:

What’s funny is that the real-life person (Colleen Moore) that the heroine (Doreen O’Dare) of my novel From Dust to Stardust is based on is herself the real-life inspiration of the oft remade Hollywood classic A Star Is Born.

During the silent era, Colleen was good friends with Hearst reporter and screenwriter Adela Rogers St. Johns who wrote the script for the 1932 pre-Code drama What Price Hollywood? directed by George Cukor and starring Constance Bennett and Lowell Sherman. St. Johns based the story loosely on Colleen’s marriage to the alcoholic producer John McCormick who helped her become the star she always wanted to be but also made her life miserable through his addiction and erratic behavior.

St. Johns’ script inspired the original 1937 A Star Is Born starring Janet Gaynor, which has gone on to be remade three times, including in 1954 with Judy Garland, in 1976 with Barbra Streisand, and most recently in 2018 with Lady Gaga.

If From Dust to Stardust gets adapted into a movie, I’d cast Saoirse Ronan as Doreen O’Dare for her skill in period dramas and for her ability to convey so much intelligence in addition to whatever other emotions she’s communicating. And I’d cast Nicholas Hoult as Jack Flanagan for his combination of energy and charm mixed with a slight air of instability. My dream director would be Greta Gerwig.

Visit Kathleen Rooney's website.

The Page 99 Test: Live Nude Girl.

The Page 99 Test: For You, for You I Am Trilling These Songs.

My Book, The Movie: For You, for You I Am Trilling These Songs.

My Book, The Movie: Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk.

The Page 69 Test: Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey.

My Book, The Movie: Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey.

The Page 69 Test: Where Are the Snows.

The Page 69 Test: From Dust to Stardust.

--Marshal Zeringue