Customer Reviews

Just Outside the Spotlight: Growing Up with Eileen Heckart

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Luke Yankee has written a fine show business biography, but with a unique universality that will appeal to anyone interested in family dynamics. Written with love, sensitivity, humor, warmth and a wisdom born of experience (and therapy), Yankee goes to both the light and dark places to tell his story. We come to know the author, his family and most particularly his mother, actress Eileen Heckart. Some stories are laugh-out-loud hilarious. Some are open-mouth shocking. Some break your heart. Some offer encouragement to carry on through rough times. Perhaps the book should have been titled "Tough Cookie," because Eileen Heckart was a tough, act-then-think, cigarette-smoking, opinionated actress and mother. Yankee acknowledges all this. After all, he experienced it first hand. But he also understood his mother as a vulnerable, loving, intelligent, passionate woman. There isn't a single uninteresting page in the book. It's greatest sadness is that in the end Eileen Heckart dies (am I giving something away here?) and we feel like we're losing a friend whom we love and know well, warts and all. Highly recommended.

"Just Outside the Spotlight" is an amusing, revealing book that courses through the life of Eileen Heckart, discussing the idiosyncracies and attributes of those around her, with whom she shared life behind the scenes of the theatre experience.
Luke Yankee succinctly portrays his mother as the consummate professional, her story shows her passion for life, which permeates through her "tough love" approach to caring for her family, her art and her beliefs. It is absolutely marvelous to read such an honest work!!

I found Luke Yankee's "Just Outside the Spotlight: : Growing Up With Eileen Heckart" compulsively readable. This is far from your typical "Star Bio." Luke Yankee, son of stage and screen legend Eileen Heckart, could have gone the easy route with just anecdote after anecdote of growing up surrounded by Broadway and Hollywood royalty. While the book is full of unforgettable stories of mixing drinks for Ethel Merman as a pre-teen and the like,"Just Outside the Spotlight: : Growing Up With Eileen Heckart" is so much more than that. Yankee gives a sensitive no holds barred account of his life coming from such a colorful world. While the book gives a wonderful and fitting tribute to his mother, it is also an extremely candid look at the challenges a child can face coming from such an extrodinary background. Both hilarious and touching, this is a story that will appeal not only to fans of Heckert and show business, but to anyone who has gone through the bittersweet experience of growing up.

And I've read quite a few. Luke Yankee's affectionate memoir of his mother is about as fine a tribute as that talented actress could have wished for. You'll fall in love with Heckart and her family and you'll fall in love with theatre all over again. The book is quite often hilarious, always absorbing and occasionally quite touching, though nothing maudlin intrudes. Few books have this cast of characters, a "Who's Who" of theatre and film. Well worth reading.

Luke Yankee has written a wonderful piece about growing up with his famous mother, Eileen Heckart. Candid, funny and touching, I was both laughing and dabbing my eyes while enjoying this adventure.

Mom has to be looking down with a PROUD smile on her face, a cigarette in her mouth and a Scotch in her hand!

Thanks Luke for giving us a small window into your life with a such a wonderful actress and a mom.

"Mommie Dearest" this ain't. Instead, it's a love letter from a son to his mom...written with all the heart, humour and candor that made up their relationship. The reader is lucky that Mr. Yankee is willing to share so much.

Each chapter is written almost like a monologue or anecdote you might hear him tell in his own living room. I couldn't read the book fast enough, although I certainly didn't want it to end, either! It was really as if I were being entertained right in the Heckart homestead.

Whether or not you are aware of the late great Ms. Heckart's work, you will enjoy this gossipy memoire that is long on love without ever being sappy or self indulgent.

I received this book on Friday and so enjoyed it, I finished it in less than two days! Not only is it a loving tribute to a phenomenal actress (full of all the dish we love to read!), but a really important story of family dynamics and the pressures of stardom. ALSO-and this is important-helped me see why Ms. Heckart was such a good actress. In addition to her talent, she believed in her craft and supported her fellow artists (imagine arranging for your understudy to have a performance!). Her son Luke was lucky to have this wonderful 'broad' as a mother, confidant and teacher and I was lucky to get to know them both through this book.

I found this to be a very cozy and interesting book. I had not seen Eileen Heckart in many movies, but it didn't matter....the book is a good one, tells what it was like growing up with her as his mother, shows her looking more glamorous than I knew she could, and I felt like I'd been on a visit with his family and friends.

If you love Eileen Heckart, as I do, then you must read this book. Lots of in-depth info about her life and career. You really feel that you know the woman, after you read this. Plus you get some interesting info about her gay son.
Heckart was a great actress. I knew almost nothing about her life before I read this. It's a very enjoyable read, to boot.

Luke Yankee's extraordinary and captivating stories of his life "growing up with Eileen Heckart" are so much fun to read it's hard to put the book down. I laughed and cried as Luke shares some his most intimate moments with his "Mama" with love, humor, and respect. Luke has captured the essence of his mother's deep passion for acting and her deep love for her family. Above all, Eileen Heckart was committed to her family, for that alone, she should be remembered always as a great woman! "Just Outside the Spotlight" is a great read for anyone who loves show business and a must read for anyone who has experienced losing a parent.

Thank You Luke for this most beautiful book!