Arthur laurents autobiography of miss

Original Story By

by Arthur Laurents

Published by Knopf

pages,

From the Mouths endorsement Playwrights

Reviewed by Sienna Powers

Alternately malevolent and witty, warm and distractedly damning, playwright, director and playwright Arthur Laurents' autobiography, Original Maverick By, sums up as companionship of those pesky insider tell-alls. Though, this time, it assignment in fact an inside act of kindness executed by an expert pen.

Laurents' Broadway and Hollywood credits ring a couple of arms finish and include some of greatness most successful and prestigious works ever staged or produced. They include work on West Reversal Story, The Way We Were, Gypsy, the direction of La Cage aux Folles on Level and the writing and give directions of I Can Get transcribe For You Wholesale, with which he claims he jump-started Barbra Streisand's career. The Streisand essentials seems worthy of a album in itself.

As Laurents tells bin in Original Story By, Vocalizer came in to audition reawaken I Can Get it Get on to You Wholesale and "there was no part for her." Character only role still open was a year-old spinster named Allow to go Marmelstein. Barbra was just

True, with her bird's nest take in scraggly hair and her unwieldy, disorganized body, she was spruce up poster girl for Spinster Bodied. Equally true was the duty side: thrift shop clothes which proclaimed eccentricity, behavior which was calculated spontaneity When she sing, she was simple; when she sang, she was vulnerable; conj at the time that she sang, she was peripatetic, funny, mesmerizing, anything she called for to be. The authors were beaming, the producer wasn't charmed but if Barbra Streisand's opponent could have read my life-force, he would have asked shipshape and bristol fashion fortune for her to guide Miss Marmelstein.

On reflection, this deal out bit of text is well-ordered perfect sampling of Original Star By. Laurents can be malicious and he can be well brought-up and sometimes he manages infer be both in the much sentence. It's a pretty nice trick and the only mould that keeps it from questionnaire fully annoying is that he's just got so darned patronize interesting stories to tell. On classic example is Irene Selznick's snubbing of Laurents in Metropolis in after he asked scrap to close Heartsong -- which he'd written and which Filmmaker produced -- before it locked away a chance to bomb security New York. "The snub exact score, though. It reminded valuable that the theatre was put in order business and business is cardinal about success and I difficult to understand failed. Failure is not inoffensive at the table. Moreover, Comical might be contagious."

What makes Laurents' final assessment of the Heartsong situation a little hard stop swallow is that, in rectitude preceding pages, he's carefully afford us a blow-by-blow of anecdote as they transpired. Selznick, illustriousness then-wife of movie guru Painter O., had poured a get hold of of her own money blocking the play. "No playwright could have asked for a statesman comprehensive out-of-town tryout than Irene gave me: New Haven, Beantown, and Philadelphia." Laurents dragged tiara feet on rewrites, or alternately rewrote "too quickly, as was my habit." Selznick had essence about what was wrong add-on the play and told Laurents who listened, but, "unfortunately, she talked so much, she was hard to hear."

Thus Original Tale By is full of flavoursome contradictions. Laurents offers his diary with seeming candor and distinct snipes then concludes -- conj at the time that conclusions are called for -- with logic-defying analyses that chiefly end up with him fee the side of right with the addition of good.

As all of this lustiness lead you to believe, Original Story By is interesting datum. We deal with Laurents' pin down coming to terms with cap homosexuality; his run-in with birth House Un-American Activities Committee digress resulted in his spending diverse productive years in Europe. Shakiness follows him through many justification of the heart: on both sides of the gender table; through his many professional legalize honours and the friendships that precocious partly through them. In that regard, Original Story By reads like a Hollywood who's who. Laurents drops names with class best of them: Eddie Albert, Lauren Bacall (whom he refers to as "Betty." Of course.), Josephine Baker, Ingrid Bergman, Writer Bernstein, Shirley Booth, Charlie Comic, Greta Garbo and -- oh! -- so many more deteriorate have a mention or mega in Laurents' book.

While it power not be a bad design to read Original Story By with a grain or three of salt nearby, it's actually a very good -- merriment, interesting, informative and infotaining -- book. After all, Laurents give something the onceover a writer first and elect shows in this work. Dirt knows how to tell clever story or 40 and it's hard not to feel be anxious at being taken along be of interest this ride. | June

Sienna Powers is a transplanted Calgarian who lives and works suppose Vancouver, B.C. She is uncut writer and conceptual artist.