Guillaume: A Life

by David Ritz and Robert Guillaume

Book Overview

Guillaume: A Life is the autobiography of esteemed Broadway, Hollywood, and television star Robert Guillaume. Ten months after suffering a stroke, Guillaume--perhaps best known as television's Benson--began this autobiography with award-winning author and collaborator David Ritz.

The book goes beyond the recounting of a long and successful career to examine the forces that shaped the man: family, religion, race, and class. Startlingly candid and disarmingly self-aware, Guillaume seeks to know and understand himself, his treatment of the women in his life, and the choices he made along the way. He pursues the truth, however painful it may be, says Ritz, guided by two questions, "Who the hell am I?" and "What made me do what I did?"
Born in St. Louis in 1927 to a young, abused, unstable mother, and reared by a strong, hardworking grandmother, Robert Guillaume managed to move from the poverty and adversity of his youth to a rich, full career as an actor and a singer. Fierce determination and sharp focus enabled this man born to hardship and racial discrimination to study, learn, cultivate his natural talents, and succeed at the performance career he pursued with a vengeance. Guillaume first performed in the strict Catholic schools and churches to which his grandmother, who understood that education would be the key to any success he might achieve, sent him. There his love of classical music was nurtured, and he was encouraged to perform.

From a child longing for his mother's love to a man unsure of the meaning of love for many of the women in his life, from a young performer struggling to succeed on Broadway and in Hollywood to a grief-stricken father watching his son die of AIDS, Robert Guillaume tells what it was like to realize celebrity and what he sacrificed in the process. Readers will savor the success story of this artist who achieved great recognition and fame, but who never lost sight of his beginnings. Appealing to all audiences, Guillaume is a revealing and poignant autobiography of an extraordinary and distinguished American thespian.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826221610
• ISBN13: 9780826221612
• Release Date: November 2017
• Publisher: University of Missouri Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A tragic life, a great story

Robert Guillaume always made me laugh, so I was eager to learn more about him when I picked up this book. Suprisingly, "Benson" is about as far from Robert's reality as a character could be.Born in poverty to an alcohol-addicted prostitute, Guillaume certainly didn't have a charmed start. Love and encouragement from a grandmother who showered him with love gave him a chance, and natural intelligence got him to Hollywood.Guillaume is clearly a haunted soul, and I hope this book assisted him in expunging some rather obvious demons, which he deals with along the way. Repeating the family cycle, he fathers, and then abandons a series of wives, women, and children, though he never seems sure why he repeats the pattern. A chance audition landed him the role of his lifetime, as Benson, first of the dearly missed "Soap", and then the rather limp spinoff "Benson". Success in Hollywood gives him the stability to at last enter a strong relationship, rebuild past bridges, and overcome a near debilitating stroke while performing on "Sports Night", another classic show. The chapters dealing with the stroke, and his recovery (it's great to read how "Sports Night" was reconfigured to work his disability into the script) are particularly touching, and give Guillaume the opportunity to deal not only with his illness, but with his perceived failings as an individual. It makes for some very strong, and very inspiring reading.Guillaume isn't likely, by his own admission, to win any "Father Of the Year" awards, and doesn't (fully) apologize for a somewhat soiled past. He does revel in his successes as an individual by the later years of his life, and makes up for many of his self-created messes by the end of the story. It's overall a very insightful look at both a performer and a man, and well worth reading