Customer Reviews

Leaving a Doll's House: A Memoir

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4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Claire Bloom's "Leaving a Doll's House" is poignant in its honesty, but a bit underwritten. The first time I reached for my highlighter pen was on page 104, where Bloom describes a distraught Vivien Leigh.

Leigh, of course, was the incomparable beauty who portrayed Scarlett O'hara in "Gone with the Wind." Leigh's marriage was unsteady; she suffered from mental illness. Leigh kept her emotions in check, but one night Bloom entered Leigh's dressing room and found her in tears. "Vivien in tears was not like anyone I knew; no red nose, sniffles...she simply sat at her table, in her beautiful scarlet [how appropriate] costume; diamond tears rolled down her cheeks, her beauty undiminished, her make-up untouched." What an image.

Page 149 includes a similarly brief, and pointedly telling, anecdote. Bloom's husband, the author Philip Roth, insists that a skunk has anti-Semitic feelings toward him. This anecdote goes a long way towards explaining Roth's new book, "The Plot Against America."

For the most part, though, the book is frank, and underwritten. For example, Bloom's father was a feckless businessman and gambler who abandoned Bloom, her mother, and her brother. Years later, when she became a successful actress, Bloom's father reappeared, backstage in her dressing room, with a new, rich wife in tow. Bloom, by her own account, was pointedly cold and humiliating to him. Three days later, he died. "I believed," Bloom writes, "that it had been my callous behavior that had killed him" (79). Bloom does not pause after this remarkable confession; only one sentence is offered as denouement, "I picked up and went on with my life."

Bloom played an essential role in a superlative film, "The Haunting." This film is unsurpassed in its genre; its psychological and sociological undercurrents raise it far above most horror films. Though made in 1963, in black and white, and since remade, it regularly makes top ten lists for "the scariest movie ever made." Bloom never mentions it here.

Too, Bloom partnered some of the biggest names among twentieth century actors: Richard Burton, Yul Brynner, Rod Steiger, Anthony Quinn, Laurence Olivier. If the reader had never seen a Burton film, I'm not sure he would get an adequate impression of Burton from this book.

Bloom's Burton has intense green eyes; she quotes a critic who says, beautifully, that his voice is so powerful "he carries his own cathedral with him" (50). But this reader never understood why Bloom risked the pain she reports feeling being his lover while he lived with, and loved, his first wife, Sybil Burton.

Bloom's brief fling with Brynner is enlivened by a late night visit to a Paris nightclub where Brynner, who mythologized his ethnic and professional roots, was adored, and sang with, the Gypsies he said raised him. The night was capped in Russian fashion, Bloom reports; drinking glasses were thrown against the wall.

Pages 195-220 contain, without comment, Bloom's diary entries from a particularly rocky time in her marriage to Roth. This is the best, rawest, most detailed writing in the book.

As others report, Philip Roth is depicted here -- believably -- as a demented and sadistic man. He is also clearly depicted as an object of genuine pathos. It must be hard to be Roth's wife; it must also be hard to be Roth. Without ever using the term, Bloom creates a vivid portrayal of Roth as a kind of idiot savant with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Reading of Roth's self-induced wounds of greed -- he demanded that Bloom pay him huge sums of money as compensation for the time he spent with her -- paranoia, and sheer unhappiness is like reading of a patient tormented by self-induced skin rashes. It's simply hard to watch, and you can't help but say a prayer for his speedy recovery.

"Leaving a Doll's House" is an easy read, and poignant in its honesty. It offers insights into Claire Bloom that will cause me to view her performances, and other women I meet, in a more expansive, and more compassionate, light.

Ok, I admit and I am embarrassed--I ate this book up like a pint of Haagen-Daz. And afterwards, I felt about the same as I do when I look at the empty ice cream container: a little shamed, vaguely nauseous, highly satisfied. I am a huge Philip Roth fan, a collector of his signed first editions, etc., so you have to take this reveiw with a grain of salt. Ms. Bloom, or whoever ghosted it, is much better writer than I had anticipated and the pages flew by (just one more spoonful...). Charlie Chaplin, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Gore Vidal, Rod Steiger--it was interesting to read what felt like highly redacted versions of who these men were in Ms. Bloom's life. She does seem to reserve a certainy clarity and honesty for her depiction of Roth, for better or worse, than she seems willing to give to these other men. I, frankly, believe most if not all of what she wrote about Roth, and it is tantalizing to watch the threads of her fact with him reverberate in his fiction. (Sylphid, the harp-playing harpy in "I Married A Communist" is very openly Bloom's daughter with Rod Steiger). So if you are a Roth fan and are interested in a painful dissection of his fiction, you should probably put this on your shelf...though don't expect HIM to appreciate it.

I picked up this autobiography not out of any particular interest in Claire Bloom the actress (I'll say Claire Bloom the writer resembles Claire Bloom the actress : competent, well-spoken, attractive but so narcissistic it is difficult to empathize with her), but rather intrigued by her relationship with Philip Roth, an author I admire but find maddeningly misogynistic.

Bloom the writer is no more convincing than Bloom the actress at depicting a depth of feeling. She tells us she loved Roth, Richard Burton, her mother and her daughter. Yet mother and daughter both get short shrift (when Roth didn't want the daughter around, the daughter was out on her ear). First and second husbands get little attention (not famous enough ? there is something of the groupie about Ms. Bloom).

She names her autobiography after « A Doll's House » but is this ironic ? She portrays herself as the original doormat-wife and mistress and then asks her audience to sympathize with her inability to get her husbands to respect her. She moans about unfaithful husbands but delights in telling her readers how she cuckolded Richard Burton's wife. Pot, meet kettle.

The book's main source of interest is its description of Philip Roth's mental breakdown. This is fascinating for Roth readers - however humiliating it must have been for Roth the man to endure (and now to have exhibited in public by his ex-wife).

I just was reading the most recent of Philip Roth's books, which I adore. I have read everything he's written more than once. Then I decided to open "Leaving a Doll's House" again.

I was taken with how honest is Bloom, and how what others take to be personal vitriol really isn't. It was more fun reading Bloom after Roth. She's not a genius and she gives him plenty of credit for being one, but she is smart and has a great warmth... and is not just dishing about Philip but is telling how it was for her. Is there a woman alive, over 30, who would not totally relate to her hurt? Well done, Ms. Bloom.

Claire has had a fascinating life. Her first love affair was with Richard Burton, followed by others with Laurence Olivier and Yul Brenner. She was a successful screen actress (as in Limelight with Charlie Chaplin), but she was better known for her stage acting. So she has a great story to tell. But something about this book was a little "off" for me, and I can't quite put my finger on it. She was English, and I am a great Anglophile and so I normally love the tone and nuances of anything British. But she came across as perhaps a little bit affected. And then she describes her three husbands--she never really loved Rod Steiger (but married him because she was pregnant), her second husband Elkins (whom she mentions only briefly and usually just by last name), and then she excoriates her longest mate and last husband, Philip Roth, detailing the demise of their partnership. She claims to have "moved on" with her life since him, but there is an unmistakable taste of bitterness to her recall. She further described a rather symbiotic relationship with her daughter, Anna Steiger, who became an opera singer. Claire is to be commended for her tremendous honesty in this book, and I have no doubt that she was a brilliant actress. Her surprise ending makes for good reading, although I had "not quite boarded her bus," as they say.

Hmm. I agree with the other reviewers who say that there is no depth or reflection here. It is quite a catalogue of woes, and there is a sincerity and honesty in the telling. But.... As a piece of writing, it is not at all distinguished, and there is not much nourishment as in something left to reflect on, observations worth mulling over, whether in agreement or disagreement. It is, sadly, like some of the worst celebrity autobiogs on the shelves. Which is a pity, because I think with better editorial direction this could have been a far better book.

I think the British honor of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire has missed wonderful Claire Bloom. In this book, she reveals all to her audience including her difficult and turbulent relationship with equally brilliant and disturbed Philip Roth. Their union should have been a happy one but it wasn't after so many years together. Sadly, their relationship ended in divorce. I remember watching this glorious actress on As The World Turns as Lily's mother-in-law, Orlena. As Claire gets older, she gets better on stage, film or television. I would love to see her become a Dame because she is in every sense of the world. While she writes about her life, she writes about her relationships especially with Philip Roth and understands him better than literary critic could because she was so close to him. As somebody who has read many of his works, Roth is both a literary genius and equally troubled as a person. He wrote that he didn't need to be surrounded by people but Claire needs constant human contact. Somehow, these two brilliant artists didn't make it. It's not a happy divorce but then what is. I think Claire for the first time needed to be independent and free from a relationship with a man like Philip Roth. Prior to Roth, she was married to Rod Steiger and Hillard Elkins. I think Claire like Nora in Henrik Ibsen's Doll's House needs to leave for her own sanity and become independent and free of others. I hope Claire has happiness in her life. Still, I believe she deserves to be a British Dame.

This is a particularly well written autobiography.

On the back of the dust jacket are 2 comments that are the reason I decided to read this book. One is from the incomparable Gore Vidal and the other from the wonderful Sir John Gielgud. Vidal's brief description of what one will be getting is as true and reliable a statement as I have ever experienced when reading what is, after all, an opinion. Unique to this opinion is the truth of it.

Ms. Bloom is a straight forward story teller. She tells this story with more restraint than I am sure it might have born. She tells her truth without putting a sledge hammer to Mr. Roth and one cannot help but ponder the meaning of spousal abuse. The woman was battered by an insecure artist with a narcissistic personality. His bat was his selfish need to control everything in her life, up to and including her daughter, mother and friends. The conditions for his love ultimately amount to a vile predator serving his neurotic self-interest.

Mr. Roth recognized his target and took a bead and struck a bull's eye. He knew from day one, minute one, that he was going to have this famous woman, force her bidding with a labyrinth psychology that would serve his ego and ultimately, prove to himself that he is indeed, Portnoy.

I have no desire to share more of my opinions here but to say that if you have ever wondered what went on in this relationship you will get an insight that few people ever share with love and understanding. Ms. Bloom may well have made Mr. Roth interesting, as Mr. Vidal observed but more importantly, she reveals herself to be highly intelligent and extremely interesting. The sharing of her story is a cautionary tale.

Read it now.

This certainly isn't great literature but I still found it a wonderful read. Claire is so unbelievably honest about her weaknesses & lack of judgement that is so different from other "actressy" books about their lives. I liked the way she tries to see the other people in the picture & it is not only about what was going on with her. Not just about the men in her life but also about her struggle & ambition. I do think she shows some insight (who ever has total insight into themselves?) but at least she doesn't pretend to be trying to save the world or depict herself as "a teacher". Ambitious & driven? Yes. Showing poor choices with the men in her life? Yes. Staying too long in bad places? Yes. It is also important to remember that the vast majority of men she met were actors or in the arts so discounting those who were gay, her choices were limited to a large degree of very egotistical men.Claire is also a serious Shakespearian actress & never liked Hollywood life styles.
Her total lack of regard to depicting herself in any kind of self pitying role is what I liked most. With the exception of Roth, at least she now has the satisfaction of having outlived all the others! Claire is not a genius like Roth but certainly more human & she is intelligent.

Bloom's life in films, which began with being discovered by Charlie Chaplin. Insider views of theatre work and motion picture filming, but mostly interesting for its insights of some well-known personalities. Well-written, considering that it was not penned by a professional writer.