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Haywire

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At the reception after her sister Bridget's funeral, Brooke Hayward said to Tom Mankiewicz, "I'm the daughter of a father who's been married five times. Mother killed herself. My sister killed herself. My brother has been in a mental institution. I'm 23 and divorced with two kids." Mankiewicz replied,"Brooke, either you've got to open the window right now"--they were on the 10th floor, overlooking Park Avenue in her father's apartment--"either you've got to open the window right now and jump out, or say,'I'm going to live,' because you're right, it's the worst family history that anybody ever had, and either you jump out the window or you live."

Hayward decided to live, and to write about her family history. She did it so well that this book stays in memory long after many have faded.

Hayward's father, Leland Hayward, was the most colorful, dynamic and successful of theatrical agents. He repped such stars and celebrities as Greta Garbo, Ernest Hemingway, Judy Garland, Billy Wilder, Gregory Peck,Boris Karloff, Lillian Hellman, Fred Astaire and Dashiell Hammett. He was elegant, flamboyant, high-powered. After Sullavan, he would go on to marry the famously beautiful Pamela Digby Churchill, who clearly didn't care for his kids.

Hayward's mother, Margaret Sullavan, was a beautiful and beloved star of stage and screen. She'd been married to Henry Fonda: the Fonda and Hayward children were always close. They had everything. Jimmy Stewart as a babysitter. A house of their own, separate from their parents'. Nannies and tutors. Going up in daddy's private plane, with daddy, who just loved to fly, at the throttle-- almost before they could walk. Hollywood extravaganzas for birthday parties.

Their lives were as privileged as any American children's, and would likely be envied by minor princelings and princesses abroad. The kids were beautiful, intelligent, sensitive, charming. Brooke was on the cover of Life magazine at 15, bought her first convertible, juggled modeling and The Actors Studio, while Bridget began working backstage, as she'd wished to, at the Williamstown Playhouse, the most famous and prestigious of summer theaters. Yet the potentional for disaster was there all the time; in the end, it was no good. Bridget committed suicide before she was 21; Bill was in Menninger, a prestigious mental hospital, and only Brooke was left to try to understand what went so wrong.

Obviously, a lot went wrong, and Hayward only had to get it in writing, with honesty and sensitivity, to produce a riveting book. The sensitivity she had, and she somehow found the honesty to record the almost Greek tragedy that the Hayward kids lived. She's produced a deeply moving, affecting book that I think you'll find hard to put aside, providing you can find it,of course. And I think that, like me, you're liable to remember this book for quite a time to come.

"Haywire" is a history of people who acted with overwhelming emotional extravagance, extreme self-centeredness, and great carelessness. Brooke Hayward might almost be the issue of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "careless rich couple," Daisy and Tom Buchanan, who, in the end,cost Jay Gatsby his life in "The Great Gatsby."

I read HAYWIRE when it first was published, and I have continued to think of its sad story throughout all of the years that have followed.

I found this work by Brooke Hayward to be a courageous report of the events which tore apart her family. She was the daughter of producer Leland Hayward and actress Margaret Sullavan, whose first husband was Henry Fonda. Fonda's children from his next marriage were among the Hayward children's best friends. This was the cast which peopled Brooke Hayward's childhood.

After Sullavan's death, Leland married Pamela Churchill, whose first husband was the son of former English Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The Hayward family's problems trascended Pamela, but Brooke's portrayal of her is as a classic wicked stepmother, a thesis since confirmed by subsequent biographies of Pamela.

Since the author here came from a famous family, and since many of the events experienced by her family were extraordinary, HAYWIRE makes for fascinating reading. Brooke Hayward writes a heartbreaking story with style and dignity.

Just before I began this review, I was listening to Ravel's "Pavane For a Dead Infanta", which is the classical piece played at Bridget Hayward's funeral in the Autumn of 1960. Her older sister's narrative of the triumphs and tragedies of her family has the beautiful solemnity of "Pavane" itself.It's like a flower that blooms, grows, and dies far too quickly, somehow never quite fulfilling its true potential, like her younger sister. The Haywards' story is a typical Hollywood-style tragedy. But I felt intrigued by the detailed descriptions of the people and places Brooke Hayward knew, enthralled by the descriptions of the stylishness of her step-mother, Pamela, who later became the U.S. Ambassador to France, the heartiness, of her Grandfather who spent hours creating a beautful display quilt for his two granddaughters when they were children, the lonliness her father, Leland Hayward still felt years after being abandoned by his mother, and his unfortunate continuation of that cycle of behavior, of Margaret Sullavan's domineering spirit, of the failure of Bridget and Bill to live up to parental expectations, and of young, ill-fated Bridget's accute case of Middle Child Syndrome. Somehow, I didn't feel altogether surprised by her early death. Along the way, Brooke expresses concern for those who cared for and about her family when she was growing up, and gives a facinating study of life in Old Hollywood and Broadway in their Golden Ages. As Henry Fonda was one of Margaret Sullavan's ex-husbands, and the Fonda children and Hayward children were very close, I've often wondered if actress Bridget Fonda was named for Bridget Hayward. Brooke Hayward is someone who has come through a lot in her life, and one can only hope that she and her brother have found some peace after all the unhappiness they suffered.

This book was well written and very interesting. I learned so much about actors I had previously known little about. Margaret Sullavan, a lovely, talented woman, Leland Hayward, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Peter Fonda,etc. From this book I became interested in reading more about these people and went on to read "Capote"by Truman Capote who was friends with Slim Keith,"Don't Tell Dad" by Peter Fonda. Jane Fonda's "My Life So Far"and "The girl who walked home alone" by Bette Davis, who had some history with Henry Fonda early on.

Brooke's life, and that of her parents and siblings, started out idylically. A fairy tale childhood, at first. The breaking up of her parents marriage seemed so impossible when they seemed so thrilled with their family. Sad they let it get away. All their lives would have turned out so differently had they managed to work things out.

This booked touched me on so many levels. I am pleased to see it has had the same effect on others. The story is fascinating and the writing superb. I owe a debt of gratitude to Brooke. She fueled my imagination and inspired me to read many books that related to her story. Biographies about step-mother Pamela, another Mrs. Hayward's autobiography (Slim)and most recently her husband, Peter Duchin's autobiography. And there were others. The tale of her family, as told by Brooke, is a remarkable one. Beautiful, sad and remarkable. If you have any interest in Old Hollywood or the Broadway of days gone by, don't miss this book. It deserves a special place in your library.

Brooke Hayward's memoir, "Haywire" is back in print this year - 2011. Originally published in 1977, Hayward - who is related by marriage to almost every big name in Hollywood from the 1920's to the 1980's - was the daughter of actress Margaret Sullavan and agent/producer Leland Hayward. The book's title "Haywire" came from Leland Hayward's cable address, "Haywire". Hayward and Sullavan were married for ten years and had three children, Brooke, her younger sister, Bridget, and their younger brother Bill. That Hayward family of five - with the beautiful sun-kissed children and the beyond beautiful parents - that "golden" family - survived as a unit for ten years before Leland and Maggie divorced.

Divorce for the parents was nothing new. Leland Hayward eventually married five times - the last time to Pam Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman - and Margaret had four husbands in total, including a brief marriage to Henry Fonda.
They both appeared to be "high maintenance" - not surprising in successful Hollywood folk - but two high maintenance people can't fulfill the emotional needs of the other. With the parents' divorce, the children were moved from Los Angeles to the Connecticut suburb of Greenwich, where Margaret settled down with her fourth - and final - husband, a British businessman.

Their parents' divorce began troubled times for the children, particularly Bridget and Bill. But could the emotional troubles be totally attributed to the divorce? Or are some people born with fragile coping mechanisms? Certainly the Hayward household before the divorce had been an eccentric one. Did the parting of the parents and the subsequent two-house upbringing exacerbate or bring on the sad mental problems of the two youngest? From Brooke's memoir I could see that the three children were deeply loved by both parents but perhaps those parents didn't know how to handle children-with-problems. Parenting is not easy at best, and I would think much harder for the peripatetic parents who are often tending their own needs. Maggie did provide the children with their home base in Greenwich, but the children were sent away to school at relatively early ages.

It's never easy to know what happens behind closed doors, but Brooke Hayward has done an amazing job of writing about her parents and her siblings with love and grace and a sense of wonderment. That "wonderment" can be seen in the picture of the family - pre-breakup - on the pages preceding Chapter 3. It's a picture taken of Leland, Maggie, and the three kids, holding hands as the run together into the Pacific ocean. The abject beauty of the five and their seeming joy of being there, together and holding hands, is one of the most beautiful - and saddest - pictures of a family I've ever seen.

I thought Hayward's book was excellent when I read it in 1977, and I have the same view of it in 2011. One of the best - if not THE best - memoir I've ever read.

Once you pick up this book, you will surely have a hard time putting it down. What's great is that it's not just the yearning for lurid detail, but rather, a vortex quickly forms, not unlike the one in O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night." (It's kind of astounding how good the writing is here; if you are expecting something amateur and roughly hewn, you are in for a surprise.) Part of the reason is that there are great parts of the story that are setup, and then rather than working them to death or explaining them away, tracings of other effects are charted (like the mother's ordeal in childbirth in LDJIN: her pain, the doctor's choice to use morphine, the father's cheapness that landed hem there to begin with, the son's being born at all, etc.) Even though I read this years ago, many of the central motifs are still strongly etched in my mind, particularly the scene where the father (Leland Heyward) is walking toward a couple members of his family and collapses, and the bit about Brigette's emerging depression and a friend's prediction that she would be a swan. (Read the other day that Margaret Sullavan was losing her hearing; either I forgot that or never knew it, helps explain her suicide a bit more, but still, there is quite a lot of light, but still many unanswered questions here..)

Read this book.

[Long before I read this book, I saw "The Shop Around the Corner" and loved it. Highly recommend it if you haven't seen any of her films.]

When "Haywire" was originally published in February 1977, I had snapped up a copy the first week it was published. Immediately it cast its spell; I plunged into it totally engrossed, and in one afternoon and evening I had read it through to the last sentence. The final words are so poignant yet brave, Brooke Hayward's declaration to survive as she leaves her father's deathbed that I quote them here: "So I started for the doorway and the dark corridor beyond, knowing, as I passed through it, that my only choice was to keep moving forward."

Finished I was spent and awash in a variety of emotions; chiefly admiration for both Ms. Hayward's superb writing style and also her courage in confronting her family's checkered, sometimes tragic past. There was empathy for Ms. Hayward and brother Bill for having to experience the same, plus sadness for the lost, beguiling Hayward family who had been blessed by every joy in life until things began to go awry with horrific results. Finally since I was a callow twenty two year old, I fell a little bit in love with Ms. Hayward's mercurial younger sister Bridget who seemed a hapless victim of fate, and as viewed in her photo was exquisite, an angelic, radiant blonde out of a painting by Botticelli.

Gratifyingly "Haywire" was both a critical and popular success with deservedly laudatory reviews and was on the New York Times Bestseller list for several months. I reread it immediately since I had initially gobbled it down to pick up any nuance or detail I might have missed and loved it just as much. Anyone I knew got a rave review from me plus I gave copies as gifts to a favorite cousin and a lovely girl I was wooing at the time; it was a hit with both. In print and television interviews, Ms. Hayward spoke of her next book which was to be a sequel of sorts, concerning her two marriages and the years left out of "Haywire", although I impatiently awaited it's publication and any other books by Ms. Hayward they never materialized to my extreme disappointment. In 1980 "Haywire" became a television miniseries, but except for an affecting performance by Lee Remick as Margaret Sullavan, Ms. Hayward's mother, it was inferior to the original.

The Haywards were a celebrity family in the Golden Age of both Hollywood and Broadway in the 1930's and 1940's. Ms. Hayward's mother was the luminous, resonant voiced actress Margaret Sullavan, star of such films as "Three Comrades" and "The Shop Around the Corner" and on Broadway in "The Voice of the Turtle" and "The Deep Blue Sea". Her father the courtly, debonair Leland Hayward was first a powerhouse agent who clients included Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Gregory Peck and Greta Garbo, then an acclaimed Broadway producer who presented the original productions of "South Pacific", "Gypsy" and "The Sound of Music" among others. They were happily married for about ten years and had three children in even succession, Brooke, Bridget and Bill, living for a while a halcyon, privileged existence on both coasts. When the parents divorced, the seeds of destruction were sown that ultimately by the end of 1960 left the family irrevocably shattered. Margaret Sullavan, Bridget and Bill all suffered mental breakdowns, and spent time in psychiatric hospitals. More devastating was Margaret Sullavan's shockingly unexpected death New Year's Day 1960 followed by Bridget's, a scant ten months later. Both were caused by overdoses of prescription drugs, and it was unclear as to whether or not they were accidental or deliberate. Leland at this point in time was on his fifth marriage, and Brooke herself a divorcee with two little boys at ripe old age of twenty-three.

Quite the family saga, but "Haywire" is not just a grim, depressing, downward trajectory of unrelenting doom. Remember the Haywards had ten relatively tranquil years together as a family, and the happiness, love and laughter they once shared are presented by Ms. Hayward interludes of sunlight that balance the shadows. Additionally, she skillfully conjures up in the background of their existence the genuine glamour of Hollywood and Broadway at their peak with a starry supporting cast that adds an extra fascination for the reader.

Now, just last month, "Haywire" was reissued in a Vintage Paperback with an introduction by screenwriter Buck Henry and an epilogue by Brooke Hayward. I happened on it by accident on Amazon, and ordered a copy since I was very curious to read the epilogue. In recent years, I had read in the papers of further tragic events that had stalked her, and perhaps she would reveal as well why she never wrote the sequel to "Haywire". She does, and the reason makes perfect sense. Both the introduction and the epilogue are very slim, written in pared down prose, less than two pages each, the bare minimum that can be revealed is just what's offered. I don't fault either Ms. Hayward or Mr. Henry, especially Ms. Hayward whom I commend even more for her strength of character to survive and function after going through such an emotional minefield.

However I did decide to reread "Haywire" all these years later to see how it stood the test of time and find if my opinion had changed. It had, I was no longer quite so enthralled and my viewpoints of the characters and events had evolved in some instances, I had certainly gotten over that slight boyish crush on Bridget Hayward! Part of this was due to my familiarity with the material after multiple readings in the past. Also, I'm in my fifties now, and have gone through life's passages, love, marriage, fatherhood, family losses, joys and tribulations, it's only natural my perceptions have altered in the thirty four years since I first read it.

What remains timeless is the lucid beauty and grace of Ms. Hayward's style, and her skillful character delineation. She is a born storyteller, with the soul of an artist, able to illuminate a passage by choosing the right blend of words to achieve a glowing literary tapestry. This is reminiscent of the way a gifted painter or composer would select the perfect color or musical note to create a work of art. Ms. Hayward generously credits assistance from two close talented writers friends; the first Johanna Mankiewicz Davis, who aided with the first part of the book before she was killed by a taxi in 1974, then Buck Henry, for the final polishing her editor and publisher the gifted Bob Gottlieb. Both Margaret Sullavan and Leland Hayward were charismatic, larger than life individuals, and as many reviewers pointed out could have been characters from the pen of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Even though they along with their daughter Bridget had been dead from three to fourteen years when Ms. Hayward began writing, they spring vividly to life resurrected and fully developed, complex people filtered through her memories. To augment and perhaps give a different perspective to her family Ms. Hayward includes brief recollections by family friends, such as Henry and Jane Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, her former stepmother Nancy Keith, director Josh Logan, playwright Paul Osborn, writer Tom Mankiewiez, and Bridget's boyfriend Bill Francisco. This works marvelously well as a literary device and adds to the richness of the narrative.

This reissue has new cover art black and white photographs of the Haywards taken during an idyllic summer beach holiday circa 1942. Maggie and Leland are tanned, gorgeous, and merrily laughing, and there is a charming trio of photos of the children playing on the seashore. These are heartrending to see, after you find out what the future holds for this blithe, sparkling family.

Although "Haywire" is a Hollywood childhood memoir, unlike later books by the children of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Bing Crosby it isn't a self pitying exercise in revenge, laced with vitriol with an eye to make a buck. Rather Ms. Hayward eloquently with equal measures of love and sorrow recounts a cautionary tale of the calamitous effects of emotional carelessness and flawed communication on a family that should have on the surface lived happily ever after. As such, it's a towering achievement, kudos to Ms. Hayward, one that is profoundly moving and hopefully gives everyone that reads it a fresh appreciation and perspective of their own family. Don't want to pass this one by; this is a personal history you shouldn't miss!

Mr. Hopper's death has inspired me to finally write a review of Haywire.

Brooke Hayward's Haywire is as enchanting as it is heartbreaking She absolutely captures her family as it seemingly moves along crumpling, star crossed. I read this when I was 13 but never bought it and found a copy in a book shop in New Orleans when I was 25. I read it on the flight home and sobbed as it ended.

Only A Mother's Story by Gloria Vanderbilt has broken my heart the way Haywire has.

I hope Ms. Hayward reads this someday and emails me at [...]

I really loved this book. It is heartfelt and so well written, both a great inside hollywood book and an intense family story. Impossible to put down!