Books written by second and third tier celebrities have to rely on a lot of name-dropping to create reader interest, and Livingstone certainly does a lot of that. She can be forgiven because she did, after all, have a good part in the famous Sunset Boulevard (as Nancy Olson) and was married to lyricist Alan Jay Lerner of Lerner and Loewe fame (My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, etc.). So the lady has plenty of anecdotes to share, including her impressions of the Beatles, whom she met through her second husband, record executive Alan Livingstone. However, she really doesn't go into much detail about Sunset Boulevard or any of her other movies, which include such Disney films as Pollyanna and The Absent-Minded Professor. She seems to be more interested in telling how JFK made passes at her and taking pot shots at Joan Crawford. Her anecdotes about Arthur Laurents and closet queen Moss Hart are not so much homophobic as naive and dated. However, she admirably exposes the anti-Semitism of the period. This overlong tome could have been reduced by a quarter if all of Livingstone's detailed descriptions of the clothing she wore were excised. Initially interesting, I eventually found the book rather tedious.
Verdict: Some interesting passages to be sure, but hardly essential reading. **1/2.
Love her in Sunset Boulevard, of course, and fun to see her cameo with Gloria Swanson in Airport 75 years later, but the rest of her career, as you say her book is, is tedious indeed!
ReplyDelete-C
I'm afraid that's true. She basically sold her soul to Alan Jay Lerner who ran off with another woman, a woman he would not even name in his own memoirs!
ReplyDelete