There Really Was a Hollywood

by Janet Leigh and Janet Leigh

Book Overview

Book by Leigh, Janet This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385190352
• ISBN13: 9780385190350
• Release Date: January 1984
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 322 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Truthfulness and Good Taste Can Go Hand in Hand

In the preface to this memoir, Janet Leigh discusses meeting a cabdriver who, when told she is working on a book, advises her that he hopes it won't be a trashy "tell-all." While she doesn't veer in the opposite direction, making her reminiscences sugary-sweet, she does follow the gentleman's advice and provides a tasteful rendition of her life. She is honest, but not mean-spirited. That is a very fine line to walk, but she walks it fairly well. Most people picking this book up will do so because of her years with Tony Curtis, and a large portion of the book is devoted to that era in her life. She also goes over her childhood, first romances and marriages and start of her career, and her insecurities. The book ends with the start of her marriage to Bob Brandt - a marriage that lasted for more than 40 years and only ended with her passing in 2004. Miss Leigh is humorous, gentle, even-handed and classy. It's an excellent look behind the glamour that we see on the red carpet - not all she experienced was pleasant, and she's truthful about that. She lays no blame on any one person for her unhappy moments, and even her most negative comments (about von Sternberg) are shared in an elegant manner. The only thing I didn't care for, though I understood the reasoning behind it, was Miss Leigh's use of third-person narrative for the first 50 pages of the book. This was the period when she was still Jeanette Morrison, and she doesn't write in the first person until she "becomes" Janet Leigh. Reading a memoir in this way is difficult and, in the end, annoying. If it weren't for that, I would have given There Really Was a Hollywood five stars.