Design for Living: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne

by Margot Peters

From the much-admired biographer of Charlotte Bront?, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and the Barrymores ("Margot Peters is surely now . . . our foremost historian of stage make-believe"-Leon Edel), a new... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375411178
• ISBN13: 9780375411175
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 394 Pages
• Weight: 1.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A good but not great biography

This book probably deserves three-and-a-half stars, but I'll round it up to four. Margot Peters clearly did a lot of research for this book, and it shows. If you're interested in learning about the Lunts, this book is more than adequate. But if Jared Brown's "The Fabulous Lunts" were in print, that would be my first recommendation for a biography of the couple. That having been said, this book is arguably superior in some respects. If you want to learn about the Lunts' private lives, Peters provides far more information than does Brown (even if some of her surmises about the couple's sex life, or lack thereof, are a bit of a stretch). In comparison with "The Fabulous Lunts," here we learn a great deal more about Lunt's family; Ten Chimneys, their estate in Wisconsin; and many of their friendships. (The downside is that some of this is not very interesting.) On the other hand, Brown is generally more thorough in discussing their professional lives, though Peters is more thorough on a few productions (including "The Taming of the Shrew" and Coward's "Design for Living"). To Peters's credit, there are relatively few factual errors (as far as I can tell), and there are extensive endnotes. Unfortunately, even with all the endnotes, there are still some things that didn't get them but should have, and some of the endnotes that are included are more confusing than informative. Indeed, one of the problems with this book is that Peters's writing is sometimes maddeningly convoluted, occasionally descending into incoherence. This is where Brown scores over Peters most of all: His writing is simple, straightforward, and clear, making "The Fabulous Lunts" a better read than "Design for Living." Still, for the most part this is a good book, and I can recommend it to those who want to learn about the Lunts. EDIT: Since I wrote the above, "The Fabulous Lunts" has come back into print.