Showing posts with label autobiography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label autobiography. Show all posts
The very talented star of Rebecca, Suspicion, Letter from an Unknown Women, and many others proffered this very well-written and absorbing autobiography in the late seventies. The "feud" between her and her sister Olivia de Havilland seems to be attributed to a fairly childish sibling rivalry that existed since childhood, this despite the fact that both women won Oscars and became acclaimed, highly successful actresses. Fontaine was born in Japan, but she came to the US after her parents' marriage broke up, and had a comparatively privileged if often unhappy childhood. She intimates that both her father and stepfather had an unhealthy sexual interest in her. She married Brian Aherne even though Howard Hughes wanted her for a wife, this despite the fact that Olivia was practically engaged to the man at the same time, another blow to their relationship. Fontaine had other marriages and boyfriends, and along the way made quite a few movies: This Above All with Tyrone Power; Beyond a Reasonable Doubt with Dana Andrews; Kiss the Blood Off My Hands with Burt Lancaster; and The Constant Nymph with Charles Boyer. Fontaine has little to say about some of her films, such as Something to Live For and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, aside from the fact that she thought very little of them. She appeared in The Bigamist only because her husband at the time, Collier Young, produced it; Young had been married to co-star and director Ida Lupino previously. As Fontaine puts it: "After shooting all my scenes, director Ida saw the rushes, didn't like the photography, and changed cameramen before actress Ida began her own scenes!" The book concludes with a moving open letter from Fontaine to her late mother, with whom she had a relationship just as complicated as her relationship with her sister. Despite Fontaine's fame, what comes across to the reader is the damage that parents can inflict on their children, no matter who they might be or what becomes of them.
Verdict: Fascinating look at one lady's life in and out of Hollywood. ***1/2.
Jason Priestley became well-known when he appeared on the long-running television series Beverly Hills 90210 -- he has been a busy actor ever since. In this memoir Priestley, who started working as a model and actor at a very early age, writes about the effects of fame, his colleagues on the show, his film projects, occasional stage appearances, early girlfriends, a racing accident that nearly killed him, and his wife and children. Along the way he documents some truly stupid behavior, and on more than one occasion writes about how he needed to grow up, that being a celebrity did not prepare one for a normal life. Priestley is typical of some celebrities who bemoan the fact that they lose their privacy and all that goes with it, but forgets that this loss came about because of success, not because of a personal tragedy or some disaster -- would he rather have been an unknown waiter desperate for an acting career? McCarron insures that the book reads well, and it will probably be of interest to young, aspiring actors as it does describe how the business of acting, and making a career at it, works. Priestley writes hardly a word about his film with John Hurt, Love and Death on Long Island. For some reason Priestley uses a comparatively crappy photo of himself on the cover.
Verdict: Strictly for fans and aspiring actors. **1/2.
Robert Wagner appeared in a number of high-profile movies, such as A Kiss Before Dying, before becoming even more successful as a TV star in middle-age, with such programs as It Takes a Thief, Switch, and Hart to Hart. Wagner -- via Scott Eyman -- writes about his early life and his lousy relationship with his father, his desire to be nothing but a movie star from his youngest days, his marriages to Natalie Wood and Jill St. John, and the tragic night that Natalie drowned. There are some surprises in the book, such as (a very few) details about his four-year affair with the older Barbara Stanwyck, which may have been highly exaggerated. Wagner has a sense of humor, but comes off as a rather superficial third-tier celebrity bashing a few enemies -- such as Natalie's less successful sister, Lana, whom he skewers, and co-star Stefanie Powers, whom he felt betrayed him -- and justifying some of his bad actions as well. Wagner outs numerous people as gay or bisexual, but remains mum on the rumors surrounding his own sexuality. Although Wagner has pleasant things to say about some gay men he knew, he's not above the occasional stereotypical whack; he comes off as an old-fashioned guy trying to affect a liberal posture. If the book has any value, it is as an insider's look at old Hollywood, the dying (and now dead) studio system, and some of the characters who inhabited that long-ago world, about which much has already been written. The book is entertaining enough but overlong.
Verdict: Hardly essential reading, but Wagner's fans may eat it up. **1/2.
Debonair and suave without being especially handsome in the Hollywood tradition, Viennese-born Paul Henreid nevertheless became a romantic leading man in such pictures as Now, Voyager, Deception, and Casablanca, among others. In his autobiography, written with Julius Fast, Henreid is fairly frank about those days and the more difficult days afterward, when he was unofficially blacklisted and then simply became too old to be a leading man. He writes of his television assignments -- acting but especially directing -- the motion pictures he directed (such as Dead Ringer), touring with "Don Juan in Hell" with Agnes Moorehead and Ricardo Montalban, and his happy marriage and children. Along the way he relates anecdotes of the many different actors that he worked with along the way, such as leading ladies Bette Davis, Hedy Lamarr, and Ingrid Bergman. Henreid also appeared in Stolen Face and Exorcist II: The Heretic, among many others.
Verdict: Very interesting insider bio. ***.
Evelyn Keyes was one of those innumerable Hollywood starlets who managed to have a few major roles in minor pictures, and small parts in big movies such as Gone With the Wind. When these "also-rans" write their memoirs they fill the pages with notes on the important people they knew and worked with, and do what they can to convince everyone that their life was fabulous even though Hollywood rejected them [or they rejected Hollywood, which sounds better]. Generally these books are about settling scores and perhaps there's a little of that in Scarlet O'Hara's Younger Sister, but what sets the book apart is that Keyes can write. This is not an "as told to" book where everything is interpreted by somebody else, but Keyes' story in her own generally well-chosen and witty words; it reads like a good novel where you're anxious to see what happens to our heroine next. The book is frank -- Keyes makes no bones that she slept with and married powerful men in the industry [directors Charles Vidor and John Huston, among others] -- although she claims it was a daddy fixation. The book, full of amusing anecdotes, explores the sleazy underbelly of Hollywood and the crappy way that women, instantly disposable, were treated by most males in the industry. The most interesting passages deal with Keyes' several-years affair with Mike Todd, which almost led to the altar [except he met Liz Taylor], and her marriage to nutty chauvinist bandleader Artie Shaw, whose punctilious behavior would have driven anyone crazy. [Keyes was still technically married to Shaw when this book was published. When he died several years after their 1985 divorce, Keyes successfully sued for half of his estate, but she herself was gone only a couple of years later.] If you're looking for behind-the-scenes stories of the movies Keyes appeared in, look elsewhere; she doesn't even have that much to say about The Killer that Stalked New York, in which she gave an excellent performance. Keyes also gave notable performances in The Face Behind the Mask and Ladies in Retirement.
Verdict: Absorbing life of a Hollywood insider. ***1/2.
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| Diana Barrymore |
This very frank memoir written by the daughter of John Barrymore was published in 1957 but reads like one of the "warts and all" embarrassingly frank Hollywood autobiogs of today. Barrymore seems to leave nothing out -- her three marriages, her promiscuity, her nearly hopeless alcoholism -- but one still gets the sense that this self-destructive individual didn't want to take full responsibility for her actions. True, her famous father [who was on a serious down-slide when Diana began her career] and mother, who wrote under the pen name "Michael Strange," were rather self-absorbed people and not the best of parents, but it's not as if Diana, on a trust fund, was raised in the ghetto -- although in later years when the money ran out she certainly got a stark taste of poverty and harsh reality. Thanks to co-author Frank, "Too Much, Too Soon" is compelling and often powerful in its delineation of the depths to which Ms. Barrymore would sink. She managed to throw away many opportunities others would have killed for, such as when she showed up for the first live telecast of "The Diana Barrymore Show" dead drunk and immediately lost the show and the lucrative contract. The anguish of her third marriage to washed-up actor and fellow drunk Robert Wilcox is sharply etched [her first husband was older actor Bramwell Fletcher of The Undying Monster, whom she was wretched to]. She can be capable of some raw assessments of herself, such as when she chastises herself for being outraged by her father's wanting her to phone a call girl service for him [which was a little tacky] when she later realizes she should have shown compassion for his being "sick and broken and lonely and old and unhappy." Whatever you think of Diana -- pathetic, out-of-control alcoholic, or simply a major fuck-up -- the book is a fascinating expose of the dark side of Hollywood that pulls you along from the first page. Diana managed to make about half a dozen films, but she died of an overdose only three years after this book was published. The film version of the book starred Dorothy Malone as Diana and Errol Flynn as her father. John Barrymore and future son-in-law Fletcher appeared together in Svengali.
Verdict: Pride goeth before a fall. ***1/2.