Breathing Out [Paperback]

Peggy Lipton (Author), David Dalton (Author), Coco Dalton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 8, 2006

Peggy Lipton's overnight success as Julie Barnes on television's hit The Mod Squad made her an instant fashion icon and the "it" girl everyone-from Elvis to Paul McCartney-wanted to date. She was the original and ultimate California girl of the early seventies, complete with stick-straight hair, a laid-back style, and a red convertible. But Lipton was much more: smart and determined to not be just another leggy blonde, she struggled for a way to stay connected to her childhood roots, though her coming of age had not been an easy one. And when she fell in love with Quincy Jones, that wasn't easy, either: their biracial marriage made headlines and changed her life.

Lipton's passionate and complicated seventeen-year marriage to Jones plunged her into motherhood and also into periods of confusion and difficulty. Her struggle to keep moving forward in the world while maintaining a rich inner life informed many of her decisions as an adult. When Lipton's marriage to Jones ended, she returned to television, appearing in David Lynch's Twin Peaks as well as in The Vagina Monologues and other stage productions. But her most recent triumph has been her overcoming a surprising diagnosis of colon cancer in 2003.

Breathing Out is full of fresh stories of life with the pop culture icons of our times, but is also a much more thoughtful book about life in the limelight, work, motherhood, and marriage. It's a refreshing and real look at the life of an actress who became, in many senses, a woman of her times.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lipton's story is clichéd, and her writing's clunky to boot. But that's no matter, because the main reason readers will pick this book up is for its pages on the sexual encounters Lipton—who played the hip chick of TV's undercover Mod Squad in the late 1960s and early '70s—had with Paul McCartney and Elvis. Born in 1947 and raised on Long Island, Lipton was a model at 15 and had started acting classes by the time her family moved to California a few years later. Hanging out in Hollywood, Lipton soon became a mod version of the "it" girl. After ridding herself of her virginity, her first goal was to seduce McCartney. That accomplished, she slept with a series of alcoholic or abusive married men, meanwhile experimenting with a variety of drugs. Her psychedelic adventures with actor Terence Stamp were quintessential Haight-Ashbury; she even had a fling with Elvis: "He was a great kisser," she allows, "but that was about it." In 1974, she married musician Quincy Jones, who didn't want her to work. A full-time mom until their marriage fell apart, Lipton then struggled with depression and debilitating fatigue, finding strength from her guru, Gurumayi, from acting work and from her two beloved daughters. There's a lot of '60s and '70s color—joints smoked in the bathroom, an interracial marriage, a trip to an Indian ashram—but it all boils down to an old-fashioned kiss-and-tell. 16 b&w photos. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

What do Paul McCartney, Sammy Davis Jr., and Elvis Presley have in common? Peggy Lipton had sex with all of them. Well, Elvis was a little too pumped with drugs to really close the deal. Other high (and low) lights for this nice blond Jewish girl? Stardom on The Mod Squad, marriage to Quincy Jones, motherhood, spiritual journeys, and a return to television after the marriage broke up. Lipton is a virtual Zelig, in the background whenever stars gather from the 1970s on. But in this surprisingly readable memoir, she and her cowriters have managed to make her various encounters into more than mere name-dropping, with each short chapter becoming a small slice of her life. Alternating between tough and neurotic postures, Lipton describes her childhood sexual abuse, her drug use, the experience of raising biracial children, and in an extremely abrupt ending, her recent bout with colon cancer. Many readers will not have thought about Lipton for years, yet her story holds our attention both for the life it chronicles and the changing times it encompasses. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (August 8, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312324146
• ISBN-13: 978-0312324148
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,469,444 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Breath Of Spring, May 29, 2005

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Breathing Out (Hardcover)

Peggy Lipton, best known for playing Julie in the seminal TV hippie/cop show, THE MOD SQUAD, was one of the most beautiful girls of the 1960s, an era of much beauty. Lipton had a radiance and a natural glow about her that made her stand out, and she wasn't a bad actress, though THE MOD SQUAD didn't give her that much to do. She was sulky and bold, as though she were trying to play James Dean's part in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, and like Dean in REBEL, her character, Julie, had to bond in a convincing way with other misfits. "With Michael and Clarence, I had an intuitive, wordless connection," she writes. The three of them could be lounging around a hippe pad together, or riding their big Harleys down Sunset Boulevard, and that connection remained. She was a star in her day (40 years ago), and she accomplished all this almost by accident,while wearing the coolest clothes ever seen on TV, and fighting crime, and reconciling the values of a drug and street culture to the strict law and order regime of a Quinn Martin production.

Behind the scenes Peggy was much gossiped about and as her revealing memoir tells us, it turns out to have been all true. Her affair with Paul McCartney is beautifully told. As she describes it, she was kind of squeezed in between Jane Asher and Linda Eastman, and I for one can see how Asher, Eastman, and Heather Mills are all variations on the Peggy Lipton type. She lived with Lou Adler and so she was right at the center of the LA "youthquake" with the Monterey Pop Festival, the Mamas and the Papas, etc. She even made an LP which I wish was included as a CD in the back of this book but alas no. She survived a close encounter with Sammy Davis Jr., and she "ended up spending three long weekends" with the one and only Elvis Presley. I'm just scratching the surface here. She got around in a serious way--she was "rapaciously romantic," she admits.

When she married Quincy Jones, she sort of withdrew from acting, and then David Lynch and TWIN PEAKS put her back on the map again. Her accounts of working with both men are equally satisfying. Most of all her readers will grow genuinely fond of her by the time the book comes to a close.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathing Out is a good thing!, June 8, 2005

By 

Donald D'Haene "Author, Father's Touch" (London, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Breathing Out (Hardcover)

Revealing your history (including sexual experiences) is a choice. It's interesting to me that we're often more critical of women who write tell-all books then men. In fact, I've read a number of reviews criticizing famous males when they don't reveal more and praising them when they do.
A personal, honest journey is not revealing dirt. And Ms. Lipton had a wonderful relationship for many years in which she had her children. Obviously relationships are important to her.
I found her a true bright light on Twin Peaks. And she is more beautiful as a mature woman than ever! Breathing Out is a good thing.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond Julie..., June 6, 2005

By 

A. Cooper "possum" (Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Breathing Out (Hardcover)

When I was growing up, I wished more than anything that I could be Julie Barnes... so as soon as I heard about this book, I ran out and bought it.

Peggy has had an amazing life, filled with despair and wonder, and she shares her stories in a very direct, honest manner. While parts of Peggy mirrored the emotional, vulnerable Julie that she played on the show, she is also much more sensual and complicated than her public persona.

I guess I just assumed that a woman as beautiful and famous as Peggy would have led a happy life, but that was naive on my part. Breathing Out was a surprising memoir: so much of it was heavy and depressing, but then it became inspirational as Peggy grew stronger and learned to face her past, so she could change her future.

This is a well-written, fast-paced and absorbing memoir. I recommend it very much.