Judging by this satisfyingly scandalous brand new memoir, Frank Langella has slept with, been propositioned by, or during slightest swapped unwashed jokes with a monumental swath of stars over his illustrious half-century career. Each of a 65 chapters in "Dropped Names" offers a no-holds-barred acknowledgment somewhere between mash note as well as carpet-bombing. The collection paints Hollywood as well as Broadway as teeming with vulgar, highly-strung as well as overwhelming company, as well as Langella as relentlessly affable in a face of nonstop groping by important people in far-flung locations. He ambles in to story as well as falls in to notable beds similar to some kind of voluptuous Forrest Gump or beefcake Zelig.
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Frank Langella in a scene from a 1971 movie "The Deadly Trap."
DROPPED NAMES
Famous Men as well as Women as I Knew Them
By Frank Langella
356 pp. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. $ 25.99.
On Cape Cod, Nol Coward hits upon him in a presence of President as well as Mrs. Kennedy. In Arizona, filming a TV remake of "The Mark of Zorro," Yvonne De Carlo (better well known as Lily Munster) plays Langella's mother by day, as well as by night treats him "like a pretty lady in a back chair of a convertible upon a hot summer night." In a south of England, upon place for "Dracula," Langella flashes Laurence Olivier through a pathway of their adjoining suites, calling, "Oh professor, see anything we like?" He as well as Jill Clayburgh come "dangerously tighten to a tumble," as well as backstage they as well as Raul Julia become "a pulsa! ting Ore o cookie with nothing remotely pure about where our hands as well as mouths wandered." The book's underline should be "Bad Girls Go Everywhere," nonetheless Langella is no lady as Anthony Perkins rather bluntly attempts to verify a single night in a dressing room.
Aside from a little prudery about his insinuate attribute with Jackie Onassis, Langella pulls really couple of punches. Richard Burton is "a crashing bore"; Yul Brynner is paranoid as well as imperious; Rex Harrison, a "son of a bitch"; Lee Strasberg, "arrogant as well as insufferable." Langella is "flattered as well as somewhat perversely titillated" when Elia Kazan makes a pass during his girlfriend in an effort to mangle him down, though of Kazan's other bad behavior, prior to a House Un-American Activities Committee, he says, "I have regularly felt that bent such as his doesn't give we rights." Langella recalls sitting with his hands folded when Kazan received a standing ovation during a Oscars.
Luckily for others, Langella is as enthusiastic as he is vicious. He celebrates Robert Mitchum's "carefree, rangy masculinity," Roger Vadim's "devotion to earthy pleasure," as well as Paul Newman's "original as well as mesmerizing" beauty (although he does call him "dull" as well as note that he didn't have "much of a behind"). Langella saves his top regard for women of a sure age that age entitling a single to a bonus during a movies. Loretta Young in her late 70s was "breathtaking . . . really attractive." Brooke Astor in her late 90s was "ultrafeminine as well as alluring" as well as in Langella's association not shy about relating how she lost her virginity. He waxes philosophical about his on-set event with Rita Hayworth when he was 34. It was her final film. She was twenty years comparison as well as pang from alcoholism as well as early Alzheimer's, yet, "in a candle's light as well as fire's glow," Hayworth "once again becomes a Goddess." If this discourse doesn't make a book bar of each seniors' home in America, afterward! s there' s something wrong with a Greatest Generation.
While never boring, "Dropped Names" is in places some-more sketch than oil painting. The ode to Princess Diana, whom Langella never met, is a weak link, as is his opening chapter upon Marilyn Monroe, that leads with a generic: "Remember when all meant so much?" There are a couple of distracting repetitions, including during slightest 10 variations upon a phrase "minimal makeup." (Perhaps he's spent so most time surrounded by stars in greasepaint that whenever he sees a woman's pores, he exults.) But a book's stylistic imperfections supplement to a sense that you're celebration of a mass a uncensored diary of an indefatigably social as well as curious man, a modern-entertainment-industry Samuel Pepys. Narcissistic? Sure. He grants that he was generally "selfish as well as obstreperous" in his youth. But he's inspiringly game.
The word "slut" has been invoked in a public discourse as an ugly slur. But Langella's book celebrates sluttiness as a estimable even noble way of life. When Bette Davis wants to have "racy phone conversations . . . rife with foreplay," he agrees, because how could we not? When Elizabeth Taylor says, "Come upon up, baby, as well as put me to sleep," who is he to resist? (He does make her follow him first.) By his contented debauchery, Langella reveals something sure commentators have obscured: sluts are a best hungry for experience as well as inexhaustible with themselves in its pursuit. He talks about how joyful it was in his 20s to "throw some scripts, jeans as well as a couple of packs of condoms in to a bag," as well as head out to do plays as well as bed drama apprentices.
There is so most happy sexuality in this book that celebration of a mass it is similar to being flirted with for a total party by a hottest chairman in a room. It's no wonder Langella was invited everywhere.
Ada Calhoun is a co-author (with Tim Gunn) of "Gunn's Golden Rules," a author of "Instinctive Parenting" as well as a! visit w riter to a Book Review.
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