Long before Taylor Swift may or may not have folded herself into a suitcase to avoid the paparazzi, Luke Perry hid in a laundry hamper to avoid a frenzied mob of teenage girls in a mall department store in Bellevue, Wash.
In May 1991, in what came to be known as the Bon Marché incident, a publicity appearance by Perry, star of the hit Fox show “Beverly Hills, 90210,” went sideways, writes pop culture journalist Margaret Wappler in her hybrid biography-memoir, “A Good Bad Boy: Luke Perry and How a Generation Grew Up.” The crowd swelled to 20,000, by some estimations, and quickly spiraled out of control. Several fans were injured, and the junior section had to be evacuated.
When a similar incident happened later in Florida, Perry apologized (“I want all those people out there to know that it wasn’t my fault, for one”) and phoned most of the injured young fans in the hospital, because that was the sort of thing Luke Perry did.
It is impossible to overstate the influence of “Beverly Hills, 90210,” watched by 20 percent of American teenagers during its early-’90s peak. A soapy, supremely watchable drama about teens at the fictional West Beverly Hills High that was unafraid to tackle then-third-rail issues like teen sex, eating disorders and sexual assault, it belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Gen X culture alongside Nirvana and John Hughes.
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Perry, who played brooding, attractively damaged Dylan McKay, complete with a Porsche and a decidedly un-’90s pompadour, was the show’s breakout star, a phenom among phenoms, as much of an icon of his time as Leo DiCaprio or Harry Styles.
Like everyone else in the show’s core cast, Perry (23 when the show first aired in 1990) was a 20-something who looked like a 30-something playing a teenager. His sideburns and famous “corrugated forehead wrinkles” heightened the effect.
Out of two unrelatable archetypes — rich guy and James Dean-like rebel — Perry fashioned a solemn, soulful character somewhere between a hero and an antihero, “the platonic ideal of the sensitive man hiding his wounds behind a shield of cool,” writes Wappler.
“A Good Bad Boy,” its release tied to the fifth anniversary of Perry’s death from a stroke at 52, chronicles Perry’s small-town Ohio childhood; his struggling-actor era, when he toggled between roles on soaps like “Loving” and manual-labor jobs; his vertiginous rise to teen idol-dom; and its bruising aftermath. His “90210” audition went badly, a former girlfriend of his recalls to Wappler. Perry was in the car to the airport headed back home, possibly done with acting for good, when the call came that he had landed the part.
Although no one in Perry’s immediate family would consent to be interviewed for the book, nor would any of his “90210” co-stars, “A Good Bad Boy” doesn’t necessarily suffer for it. Wappler relies on existing interviews with Perry and firsthand accounts from old friends, roommates, ex-lovers and co-workers.
According to those interviewed, Perry was a doting father to two children and a potbellied pig named Jerry Lee. He was a gentle lover and a good listener who never lost his Midwestern humility. His presence helped bring close friend and former co-star Jason Priestley out of his coma after a car crash. He punched Tori Spelling’s bad-news boyfriend in the face at the annual Spelling Christmas Eve party, much to the delight of his castmates. He was a doer of good deeds who spent time with dying fans and unhoused people. He could calm strangers’ crying babies. “He seemed pure,” writes Wappler. His fellow actors adored him. “He was somebody who I could look to as an oracle,” claimed his “Riverdale” co-star Madelaine Petsch.
Perry left “90210” after Season 6 and struggled to avoid typecasting (“I’m going to be this guy forever,” Perry once correctly predicted). He landed recurring roles on “Oz” and “Riverdale,” and, in one of his last performances, played a television cowboy in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” for Quentin Tarantino, who was a fan.
The book’s portrayal of Perry can veer dangerously close to cardboard sainthood. Wappler does her best, despite being robbed of a biographer’s most useful tools: Perry’s life was both extraordinary and, for a celebrity, remarkably uneventful, light on madness, scandal, substance abuse or famous love affairs, though he did briefly date Yasmine Bleeth.
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“A Good Bad Boy” knits together intimate reminiscences from Wappler’s own difficult adolescence, young adulthood and marriage with an unavoidably more distant recounting of Perry’s life. The biography and autobiography are told in alternating chapters, which makes it difficult to get any narrative momentum going. As a memoir, it’s raw and frequently moving. As a Luke Perry primer, it’s not definitive, but it’s as empathetic as you’re likely to find, a moving meditation on his life and the still-unthinkable strangeness of his absence.
Allison Stewartwrites about pop culture, music and politics for The Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. She is working on a book about the history of the space program.
A Good Bad Boy
Luke Perry and How a Generation Grew Up
By Margaret Wappler
Simon & Schuster. 336 pp. $28.99
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