There have been other books about the immigrant diaspora that providentially landed in Los Angeles and enriched American culture for decades, but Donna Rifkind’s idea to use Viertel (1889-1978) as the focus for a moving, mournful new biography, The Sun and Her Stars, was a particularly brilliant idea. Viertel was the best representation of both her country and her sex imaginable—a combination of mother hen, chef, career counselor, referee and, in her own right, artist ... One of the few flaws of Ms. Rifkind’s book is that she doesn’t quote from these letters; another is occasionally taking her eye off the ball by spending pages writing about extraneous locations—the German colonies in other places, for instance ... performs an act of spiritual as well as cultural resurrection ... a feat of daunting research and appropriately passionate writing. Translating quantities of letters and diary entries from the German would put off many biographers, but Ms. Rifkind sailed ahead. It’s the story of a valiant earth mother who transcended an emotionally nomadic existence and devoted her energy to providing for others while managing to write Queen Christina in what seems to have been her spare time. Like the multitudes who came to 165 Mabery Road, you’ll be glad you met her.

As one expects from a widely admired literary journalist, Rifkind writes engagingly and often passionately, though her book’s introduction—Salka’s reconstructed reveries in old age—may strike some readers as a bit strained, as will a few overly poetic flourishes ... Yet Rifkind can also capture a complex character with a single snapshot-like sentence ... Throughout these pages, Rifkind returns again and again to her serious central themes—anti-Semitism abroad and at home, the rescue of refugees through the efforts of the European Film Fund, and Salka as a Hollywood mother-confessor and wheeler-dealer. Still, the book does have its lighter moments ... [Salka's] had been a remarkable life and she had been blessed with extraordinary friends, as Rifkind again shows us, with much additional detail, in The Sun and Her Stars.

Viertel is, in short, a terrific subject for a biography, and the veteran book reviewer Donna Rifkind has done well to focus her first full-length effort on this fascinating if little-known personality. Rifkind sees the worldly yet unassuming Viertel as at once an extraordinary character and a telling representative of something larger than herself. She’s right to ... Rifkind clearly means to hold a mirror to our stranger-suspecting moment ... A labor of love and careful research, the book gets off to a shaky start. Rifkind’s prose can be clumsy ... Something startling and powerful happens, though, midway through the book. As the historical situation Rifkind describes grows increasingly dire, she snaps to: Her writing sharpens ... Rifkind draws skillfully from multiple sources.

Rifkind makes a passionate case for rescuing her subject from anonymity ... Rifkind focuses her book on Salka Viertel’s years in Hollywood, skipping her subject’s early life almost entirely. It’s a defensible choice—many biographers chafe at the de rigueur recitation of grade-school accomplishments. Still, knowing where a person comes from, especially an exile, is important ... Rifkind laments in her biography that researchers have mined Salka’s book for anecdotes about her more famous acquaintances while ignoring the memoirist herself, but it’s easy to see why—the anecdotes are wonderful ... Rifkind argues strenuously for Salka’s significance in shaping the motion-picture industry...But it’s a stretch to call Salka a filmmaker: she seems to have been mainly a screenwriter and consultant, although it’s hard to tell, since some of her work was uncredited ... It is a distinct challenge to write the life story of someone who has already written it so well herself. Rifkind’s main contribution is providing historical context, filling in details that Salka herself didn’t know ... Rifkind’s wide-angle view is also useful in examining what happened to Salka during the years immediately following the war, when she was 'pink-listed' owing to what some people misinterpreted as her sympathy for the Soviet Union ... 'Whoever touches your heart does not foresee that he is unleashing an avalanche!' Berthold told her after witnessing her distress over her breakup with Reinhardt. If something is missing in Rifkind’s book, it’s a sense of Salka as avalanche. While others have written of her sharp tongue and her eccentricities, in Rifkind’s telling she comes across as nearly saintly ... But Rifkind has done an enormous service in spotlighting the life of Salka Viertel: not only by telling a story that deserves to be better known, but also by implicitly making the case for more such books.

... an engaging glimpse into a fascinating woman’s life, it is also an important reference for anyone trying to learn more about history outside of the usual white male hero tale ... Rifkind does a wonderful job of telling the multifaceted and somewhat tragic life story of a brilliant woman.

While she always denied rumors of an affair with her friend the screen legend Greta Garbo, Viertel did have a long extramarital liaison--just one aspect of a multifaceted, heroic and outrageously neglected life to which Rifkind does munificent justice ... Rifkind proves with The Sun and Her Stars--her first book and the first English-language biography of Viertel--that she's a superlative chronicler of Old Hollywood. Rifkind also demonstrates, through her accounts of various émigré artists' harrowing escapes from the Nazis, that she's a formidable storyteller. The exhaustively researched The Sun and Her Stars, which relies in part on Viertel's memoir, among other plum sources, includes nearly 30 black-and-white photos, some of Viertel's esteemed émigré friends. 'Without immigrants, there would be no Golden Age of Hollywood,' writes Rifkind. And without Salka Viertel, Old Hollywood's lights would have shone less brightly.

Rifkind offers an overdue appreciation of a neglected figure ... This is a study of a complex, openhearted woman who had a key role in saving the displaced while shaping mid-20th century Hollywood. Rifkind has penned a perceptive, exhaustively researched contribution to social and film history.

... impressive ... Rifkind chronicles in meticulous detail Salka’s substantial career in a hostile Hollywood studio system that regularly ignored the contributions of women ... An impassioned and revelatory biography occasionally hampered by excessive detail.

Rifkind brings a forgotten female figure of Hollywood’s Golden Age back into the spotlight in this expansive, engaging biography ... a detailed, vibrant, invaluable portrait of Viertel’s life and the remarkable community of European exiles to whom she offered refuge and friendship.

... immersive ... Chock-full of scandalous affairs and wartime atmosphere, this sparkling account brings overdue attention to a woman who helped make Hollywood’s golden age possible.