The Memory of All that: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood, and ParisIn this enchanting memoir, Betsy Blair -- Academy Award-nominated actress and the wife of the great Hollywood dancer Gene Kelly -- tells her story: from teenage dancer in the late thirties, to child-bride of a Hollywood movie star in the forties and fifties, to accomplished actress working in Europe. Sixteen-year-old Blair met then-choreographer Kelly while dancing professionally and was soon swept up in a whirlwind courtship -- he gave her a New York education, complete with Marxist study groups and trips to Harlem's Savoy Theater, before marrying her and whisking her off to Hollywood. She writes about the great times they had as Kelly flew higher and higher among the MGM stars: their famous Saturday night parties, their version of charades, their legendary Sunday afternoon volleyball games. Betsy rejected the Hollywood pattern (no swimming pool or fancy car) and writes of being drawn to the Communist Party, of the coming of the blacklist that brought an end to the optimism of the thirties and forties, and of the terrifying moment when she found her own name on the list. And she makes us understand why she ultimately burst out of the cocoon of her idyllic marriage -- moving to Europe and coming into her own as an actress, winning the Golden Palm at Cannes for Marty, and falling in love with and marrying the director Karel Reisz. |
Contents
Sydney Chaplin in California 1949 authors collection | 190 |
Lee Gershwin with Oscar Levant Ira and Arthur Freed Photofest | 194 |
With Ethel Barrymore and Maurice Evans in Kind Lady Photofest | 209 |
Copyright | |
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