The Memory of All That: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood, and Paris

Product Description

The Academy Award-nominated actress and wife of Gene Kelly traces her life from her experiences as a teenage dancer in the 1930s, to a child bride of a Hollywood star, to an accomplished actress in Europe, describing her mentorship and marriage to Kelly, her New York education, her rejection of Hollywood fashions, and her status as a blacklisted actress. 25,000 first printing.

From Publishers Weekly

Blair has unquestionably led an exciting life, but her autobiography is likely only to engage dedicated Hollywood historians. Now 79 and living in London, the author was on Broadway at 15, married to Gene Kelly at 17, a mother at 19, an actress and political activist throughout her 20s and a movie star by her early 30s. Aside from her famous husband, she’s probably best known in America for starring opposite Ernest Borgnine in 1955’s Marty, but after decamping to Paris she distinguished herself in a string of European films. She spends two-thirds of the book describing life in Hollywood with Kelly in terms of nearly constant delight. She meets everyone: Greta Garbo, Bertolt Brecht, Orson Welles and the pope. The result is a shopping list of fame, and Blair’s paeans to all she encounters, from “the beautiful, the brilliant, the funny and charming Lenny Bernstein” to Kelly’s “gently spoken, loving, and loyal” secretary are monotonous. She recounts movie gossip dutifully and the unpleasantness of McCarthyism righteously-a proud leftist, she found herself blacklisted-but the book becomes more compelling as she moves past Rodeo Drive. “I broke out of the cocoon,” she writes, reflecting on escaping her marital idyll and feeling independent for the first time. Once this turmoil is over, the writing returns to list-making: Picasso makes a cameo; Blair hangs out with the Chaplins; and Marlene Dietrich lends her a lipstick. Blair’s years in Paris come through most vividly; eventually, she settles down in London with director Karel Reisz. 96 photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

She was a starry-eyed ingenue, dazzled by the bright lights on Broadway. He was a rising young movie star, destined to become a Hollywood icon. When Betsy Blair married Gene Kelly, it was a dream come true, but like most fairy-tale romances, there was a dark side to the glamour and glitz. Always an independent and inquiring spirit, Blair was soon attracted to left-wing politics, and her Communist-sympathizing activities in turn attracted the attention of HUAC investigators. Just as industry blacklisting hampered her acting ambitions, so did Gene’s worshipful pampering stifle her emotional development. Divorcing Kelly, Blair immigrated to Europe where, in the arrondissements and cinemas of Paris, she found both the love she desired and the professional and personal identity she craved. From the Great White Way to the Champs-Elysees, Blair starred at the epicenter of entertainment’s most famous and infamous era. In a refreshingly candid, yet cautiously respectful, memoir, Blair recounts how one Hollywood insider found fame and fortune outside its confines.
Carol Haggas

Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Betsy Blair was born in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. She was a child model, became a chorus dancer at fifteen, and appeared on Broadway in Panama Hattie and William Saroyan’s
The Beautiful People. She was married to Gene Kelly for sixteen years and appeared in such plays as Tennessee Williams’s
The Glass Menagerie, as well as
Sabrina Fair and
The Rainmaker. She appeared in many motion pictures, including
A Double Life,
Kind Lady,
The Snakepit, and
Marty, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Betsy Blair lives in London.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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I can’t claim it was love at first sight-not even from my side.

Billy Rose’s nightclub, the Diamond Horseshoe, was in the basement of the Edison Hotel in New York, on Fort