Tony Curlis's career, as related in this scattershot memoir, is the very model of the Hollywood rags-to-riches-to-rags survival story. In 1949, the impossibly handsome Bernie Schwartz hit the big time as a studio-created sex symbol, and along the way he learned a thing or two about acting. That led to performances in several pictures and great wealth, followed by a drug habit, three busted marriages and a stay at the Betty Ford Center, where the actor blamed many of his problems on a controlling, long-dead mother.
Curtis reels off inside tales of Hollywood in the '50s, and doesn't hold back such peppery opinions as what it was like to make movie love to Marilyn Monroe in the comedy Some Like It Hot—an experience that Curtis has long told envious colleagues was as enjoyable as "kissing Hitler." He still hasn't forgiven his "unmanageable, unpleasant, and dirty" costar, who required dozens of takes. The actor is kinder to his first wife, Janet Leigh, who put up with his womanizing during their 10-year marriage, and he is genuinely moving when recalling other young performers who did not have the same combination of luck and talent as Curtis himself.
A voracious cocaine addiction sent the actor into a career tailspin that included appearances in the 1978 Mae West megaflop Sextette and cheapo epics like Lobster Man from Mars (1989). Although Curtis gets carried away recounting past slights, he is also sincerely thankful to the friends who persuaded him to clean up. Reading his story is like encountering the actor holding forth at a party—often funny and reflective, but never in danger of being too profound. (Morrow, $23)
by Diana Maychick
In this loving tribute, no one utters an unkind word about Audrey Hepburn except Humphrey Bogart, and Maychick, a former New York Post entertainment columnist who interviewed the actress for nearly nine months before her death last winter, makes it clear there's something wrong with him for not liking her.
The most intriguing chapters focus on Hepburn's traumatic childhood in Holland. Her father abandoned his family when Audrey was 6, and for a time they were so poor they survived on tulip bulbs. As a teenager during World War II, Hepburn carried coded messages for the Resistance before her rapid rise from awkward ballerina to overnight sensation.
We learn that the elegant actress thought herself unattractive; that she battled eating disorders and depression through much of her life; that William Holden was her great love; and that she played doormat to her first husband, Mel Ferrar, and rejected spouse to her second husband, Dr. Andrea Dotti. (In 1981 she became involved with Merle Oberon's former companion, Robert Wolders, with whom she lived until her death.)
The magnetic star, the tireless UNICEF worker, the gushing quotes from pals—it's all here, plus a string of "beloveds" from Maychick: Hepburn in her beloved Givenchys, tending her beloved lilies, on the arm of her beloved Robbie. This biography cries out for a second opinion and childhood photos. How much more gratifying it would have been, for example, to see Hepburn as a chubby baby, than to hear it from the starstruck author. (Birch Lane. $21.95)
by Naomi Jadd, with Bud Schaetzle
Any book that uses song titles for chapter names runs the danger of being saccharine. And—no surprise—Naomi Judd's autobiography is full of the dogged optimism and irrepressible cuteness that marked her years as half of one of the most successful duos in country-music history. (Sometimes she anonymously hums Jesus Loves Me on daughter Wynonna's answering machine.)
But to her credit Naomi isn't afraid to bare the more discordant moments in the struggle that took her from rural Kentucky to country music's Mount Olympus. She writes of contemplating suicide when, at age 17 and unmarried, she became pregnant with Wynonna; about her guilt at the impoverished life her two daughters lived as she pursued her dream; and about her first experience smoking marijuana. Included, too, are details of her rape by an abusive friend, her tumultuous relationship with current husband Larry Strickland (she once fired a .38 over his head when she became suspicious of his many road-trip liaisons) and her enduring faith, which she credits with helping her beat the liver disease that put an end to her singing career. (The disease is now in remission.)
Naomi says she's telling the family's story to offer readers "living proof that it pays to believe in miracles. In our struggles and triumphs," she writes, "you glimpse the prospect of your own." Hokey? Definitely. But with her words, as with her music, Naomi has a way of making you believe. (Villard, $24)
by Diana Ross
If the onetime lead singer of the Supremes, and the star of the movies like The Wiz, chooses to see herself as a sparrow, so be it. But other accounts of her life, notably by fellow Supreme Mary Wilson in Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme and J. Randy Taraborrelli in Call Her Miss Ross suggest a more predatory creature. Ornithological issues aside, Secrets of a Sparrow is self-serving, self-indulgent nonsense. It's tempting to add "humorless" to the list, but that's not quite accurate. After all, Ross does have a hilarious propensity for drawing parallels between world events—the Vietnam War or civil unrest of the '60s, for example—and her life. Of course, to hear Ross tell it, every? incident in her life has mythic importance. "I guess this will destroy a lot of illusions," she writes about the recording session for Someday We'll Be Together, "but the girls [fellow Supremes Wilson and Florence Ballard] weren't even at the session." And while no one can argue about the good intentions that propelled Ross's free Central Park concert 10 years ago—she wanted to gather corporate funding for a children's playground—she writes about the event as though it were the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Sandwiched between Ross's free verse ("a privacy/appears on the surface/ordinary and common/bearer of light/stand on the mountain/free in my thinking") are revelations like "When I travel I love to be invited to use someone's private plane because that way I can look funky. But that isn't always possible. Sometimes I have to walk through public airports where people see me, and there is the expectation that I look a certain way. I have to be Diana Ross, the performer, the star, not Diana, the human being, the mother, the weary traveler." The weary reader can cut to the chase by turning to "Lifeline: Music, Music, and More Music" at the end of the book for the exact dates of Ross's appearances on Today, Good Morning America, The Barbara Walters Special and her presentation of the Record of the Year Grammy to Phil Collins. Lest we forget. (Villard, $22)
- Contributors:
- David Ellis,
- Carol Peace,
- Cynthia Sanz,
- Joanne Kaufman.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
