Reading Showbiz Biographies Aloud to Pets

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Life Is a Banquet by Rosalind Russell and Chris Chase

I was at the height of my movie career, and the fans cut the awning into the church with big butcher knives in order to peer through, and you could hear them saying, “There she is, there’s Roz”—and they tore all the decorations off the church walls and they brought food in and ate it. It was a shambles. I almost passed out. I thought, I’ve destroyed Mary Jane’s wedding.

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My Story by Ann-Margret

My life assumed an eerie parallel to the movie. At one point Bobbie despairs that she can no longer continue solely as a receptacle for Jonathan’s needs, despairs over the time she spends in bed, warning, “I’m already up to fifteen hours a day. Pretty soon it’s gonna be twenty-four.” By that time, I’d capitulated to the character. I spent hours at night pacing the bathroom, depressed, teetering on the brink of a breakdown, and hoping I made it through the movie. This was part of the metamorphosis I had to go through in order to play Bobbie. Roger and I had long ago discussed the possible changes that would ensue, the alteration of my personality. He knew that to play a character as complex as Bobbi I had to feel like her. Be her.

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Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be by Simone Signoret

She irritated me too, Marilyn. It was a bit tedious to hear her tell about how happy and inspired she had been during the months when she had made the series of photographs with Richard Avedon. The series was, indeed, remarkable; they were pictures of her made up to impersonate all the big stars of the thirties. But listening to her, you’d believe the only satisfaction to her as an actress she had ever felt was during those disguises, when she suddenly turned into Marlene, Garbo, and Harlowe. She talked about these photography sessions the way other actors talk about their films.

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Spencer Tracy: Tragic Idol by Bill Davidson

“For multi-problem people like Tracy, we devised an even more elaborate technique. We kept an official-looking ambulance on call at the studio. Every bar owner and hotel manager in the area knew what to do if Tracy showed up drunk and began causing a problem. They’d phone me, and I’d phone Whitey, and the ambulance would take off with a couple of our security men dressed as paramedics. They’d go to the scene, strap Tracy to a stretcher, and then rush him away in the ambulance before too many people could recognize Tracy as the trouble-maker. Considering his habit of drinking only in private, we mostly found him alone off in a room somewhere.”

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This Life by Sidney Poitier

Then, to everyone’s relief, Eartha reappeared on the eve of her scheduled return to filming. Her account, embellishments notwithstanding, of how she spent her week was amazing. She had gone deep into the jungle as a guest of a chief to visit his people, had involved herself in their lives, stayed for a few days, then moved on upriver to random places and other encounters, one of which produced a genuine proposal of marriage from a handsome prince from the Moslem north who had already, by Eartha’s observation, seven or eight wives too many. Next, she moved downriver to study the dance and music of the powerful Urubus, who sent her back at the end of her adventures loaded down with gifts of appreciation “for a returning sister out of the Western world.”

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Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud by Shaun Considine

One day Joan invited Lana to drop by her house alone, to talk about something “very important.” Sitting in the drawing room with her knitting, Joan opened with “now darling, you know I’m a bit older than you ...” which got Lana to thinking: “She’s quite a bit older than me.” As Joan rambled on about life’s complexities, Lana eventually cut in and impetuously asked her to get to the point. She did. “Greg doesn’t love you anymore,” she told young Lana. “It’s me he truly loves, but he hasn’t figure out how he can get rid of you.”

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Emcee Monty Hall by Monty Hall and Bill Libby

I knew I was in big trouble when I went to a corpulent lady in the audience and offered her $50 for any kind of pill; and when she didn’t have one, I chided, “You just blew fifty bucks!” She looked at me and  said, “Honey, I just blew $3000 at the crap tables. What the hell is another fifty bucks? Just give me a kiss and forget about the money!” I had to do a lot of kissing during that two-week engagement.

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McQueen: The Untold Story of a Bad Boy in Hollywood

by Pennina Spiegel

Steve’s sexual practices, and even more so, his excessive consumption of women as if they were salted peanuts led to speculation. Elmer Valentine volunteers, “When people say Steve was homosexual - he absolutely was not. Absolutely. I personally know because there were times when Steve and I ****ed in the same room with different girls. He liked to switch girls, but there was never any sign of homosexuality. I’m an ex-cop. I know when someone’s homo. I’ve been all over the world with Steve. I’ve been with him for months [at a time]. I know how he dug women. He never left me to go cruising. I know a cruiser!”

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Citizen Jane

by Christopher Anderson

She endured all this without complaint until one scene that called for her to be attacked by two thousand killer wrens that pecked at her clothes until they were in tatters. Unfortunately, the birds wouldn’t budge. While Jane cowered, guns were fired and giant fans were brought in to set the birds fluttering about in a frenzy. Nothing. Birdseed was stuffed into Jane’s clothing. Still no interest. By now the wrens had also made a considerable mess on the studio floor. After days of trying, trained lovebirds would finish the scene. The strain took its toll: Jane checked into a local hospital for three days suffering from nausea and elevated blood pressure.

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The Million Dollar Mermaid

by Esther Williams with Digby Diehl

“Gene,” I said, “I was born with long legs and a long waistline. Swimming gave me broad shoulders. I have perfect proportions in a swimsuit, and that’s why I’m here making movies at MGM. I’m sorry that my physique doesn’t fit in with your plans - you’d like me to be petite, with short  little legs and narrow shoulders, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t make myself five-two, and I can’t make you six-three, either. For this scene, it would help a lot if you’d just sit up straight. If that’s not enough, try tucking one foot under your ass.”

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Just Jason

by Grace Catalano

“I’m a neatness freak!” admits Jason. “I think it has something to do with the fact that I was born under the astrological sign of Virgo, because Virgos tend to be very organized and clean.”

Jason set up a home office on one room of his condo. His big walnut desk is situated right next to a window. In back of his desk, there is a wall of shelves that Jason set up neatly with books, framed photographs, his video collection, and some special mementos. His phone and answering machine are to the right on his desk, a cup of pencils and pens are on the first shelf of the middle bookcase at arm’s reach, and his script for the day rests on a second shelf. With everything in its proper, place, Jason has whatever he needs at his fingertips at all times.

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Brando: The Unauthorized Biography

by Charles Higham

One afternoon, he went to the bar of the Hotel George V to join Dean Martin. Marlon was on the wagon after his experience with Truman Capote, and a large pot of boiling water was set up at the bar so he could make himself a cup of tea. The actress Liliane Montevecchi, brushed by it, upsetting it. Marlon jumped up, yelling “Shit!” The hot water had scalded his genitals. Doubled up in agony, he pulled down his pants and ran with bare buttocks out of the bar while the phlegmatic French shrugged their shoulders at this alarming exit.

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Ava: My Story by Ava Gardner

“Ava, you can’t. Don’t you understand this is his way of getting engaged? For a whole seven days he is going to give you  a wonderful piece of jewelry before breakfast, before lunch, and before dinner, each getting more and more beautiful and more and more valuable. That gold ring last night was the first gift. Now, shall I tell him you’re sorry?”

“Sorry!” I yelled. “Tell him he can take the whole damned lot and stick it up his ass!”

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Rhinestone Cowboy by Glen Campbell with Tom Carter

The bodyguard for the Indonesian official didn’t appreciate that. He told them to return to their seats and that made me angry. It probably seemed like discrimination to me at the time. Then he came over to my seat and told me to keep my friends in their place. I was drunk, and thought he was out of place, and told him so. Then I said I was going to call my friend Ronald Reagan and ask him to bomb Indonesia.

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The Million Dollar Mermaid by Esther Williams with Digby Diehl

So now I had a drunken Gary Merrill making indecent proposals to me at the bar in the pool house, a husband out like a light in the bathtub of the bathroom off the bar, and Bette Davis screaming from her bedroom window, “Gary get up her, you sonofabitch! I know what you’re doing!”

Gary looked up warily at the window. “Happens all the time,” he said thickly, taking a big swig and putting his arm around my shoulder. Edward Albee himself couldn’t have done any better.

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The Million Dollar Mermaid by Esther Williams with Dibgy Diehl

“I’ve been thinking very hard all day long and I have to understand this,” I said. “You’re going to have to explain to me: When you make love to me, who are you making love to? What roles are we playing in your mind?”

“I’m a beautiful woman making love to a beautiful woman,” he said.

“But I wasn’t aware that you were a beautiful woman. How was I supposed to come up with that picture?”

“I was hoping your neuroses would match mine,” he said.

I don’t think I have any neuroses that unusual. I like men. And I didn’t like seeing your dressed like that.”

He sagged and sighed. “Well, I wasn’t lucky. Your neuroses didn’t match mine.”

Jeff, are you getting help? Are you seeing a therapist?”

“Yes, of course.”

If felt a strong intuition and blurted it out: “Your therapist is a cross-dresser, too. Isn’t he?”

“How did you know?” he asked in amazement.

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Cry: The Johnnie Ray Story by Jonny Whiteside

That he did it in an apartment shared with two other former lovers (both Lourie and Marline had enjoyed periods of intimacy with him) was certainly off kilter. And the fact that all of them tacitly understood they would serve as beards once Dorothy returned, was the bizarre cherry on top of Johnnie’s pagan confection of ego and lust.

That Johnnie expected such humbling fealty from these men cannot be explained in “civilian” terms. This was megalomaniacal Star Psychology at its most manipulative, exploitative and presumptuous, but the compliance he unfailingly received was a result of Johnnie’s rare, careless charm. Even in the depths of his most wretched drunkenness, Johnnie still had, in the eyes of these men, and irresistible goodness, a charm and innocence that cried out for succor.