Customer Reviews

My heart belongs

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mary Martin is best known today for her portrayal of Peter Pan, a role she felt destined to play. She also appeared in such shows as South Pacific and Hello Dolly!. She made several films too, but her real love was the stage. She discusses her early life, beginning with her childhood as a tomboy and a showoff, two things that served her well in her career. She began her own dance studio in Texas and moved on to bigger and better things. Mary discusses her marriages, her children, her career, and the famous faces that she knew including Richard Rogers, Noel Coward, Janet Gaynor, and others.

She writes with gusto and excitement. This book makes you feel that you are a friend of Mary's who is listening to her stories about the past. Sometimes the stories are sad and sometimes they're downright funny. Mary is always honest and forthright; she'll tell you if something didn't turn out so well and completely take the blame. She doesn't try to make herself out to be a huge important star, but she doesn't constantly demean herself either. The best thing is, just like everything she did, she seems to be having fun telling her story. That makes it easy and enjoyable to read.

The only thing I would have liked to hear more about is her film career, which recieves only a few pages total. Martin was a stage star at heart and never really cared for the movies she made (although they're quite good).

Mary Martin had an amazing life, full of ups (she spent a great deal of time soaring around as Peter Pan, so those "ups" were quite literal), downs, and everything in between. This book is so breezy, lighthearted and "surface," however, that I came away from it feeling as if I didn't really learn a lot about what made Mary Martin tick. Given that this was her autobiography, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised - but I am no less disappointed (thus the slight downgrade to four stars). Miss Martin's husband, Richard Halliday, had an alcohol problem which is mentioned in just a few sentences; her relationship with her son, Larry Hagman, was difficult early on. She says that she will discuss it later in the book, but she never really does.

What Miss Martin DOES do, however, is share in loving detail how she prepared for and followed through on her performances. We learn with great specificity how she prepared for a role, how she was wired to fly as Peter Pan, and the backstage difficulties during some of her less successful ventures. For that information alone, the book is highly recommended to anyone interested in musical theatre. This, I now know, is what I should have expected - a marvelous amount of information about Mary Martin the performer; and much less about Mary Martin the person. Her wish for privacy is to be expected, but now that she has left us, I'd love to read an in-depth, objective biography that includes more personal information, and which covers the entirety of her life. This book was written in the mid-1970s, long before the horrible car accident that killed one person immediately and severely injured all the others involved (including Mary's best friend, Janet Gaynor, who never fully recovered and who passed away just a year or two later), and just before Larry Hagman became "J.R." on the television series, Dallas. There's clearly more to the Martin story, and I'd be very interested to read it.

This is a lovely book-warm, endearing, breezy, just like the lady herself. Filled with charming and hilarious anecdotes ("Mary Martin slapped here") and oodles of Broadway lore. She is also frank about how her career sometimes upstaged her family and the price she paid for that. Although I suspect there are truths she chose not to reveal (which one expects in any autobiography), this book is altogether delightful and just what you'd expect from Mary Martin.

The author was one of my boyhood icons. In this autobiography she undermines my high opinion with unwitting revelations of her unending self regard, and her obsessive craving for celebrity and adulation.She fails her children, paricularly Larry, in this frantic search for theatrical success. Yes, she was a talented lady, but she bought success at a terrible price to those around her. I stand disappointed.

I became interested in Mary Martin after having learned that she was from Weatherford, Texas, a town with which I am very familiar. I bought the book thinking that it would provide an interesting perspective of the town in the 1920s and 30s. As I started reading the book, it quickly became clear that the book is so much more. First of all, Mary Martin was a superstar of American musical theater in the 1940s and 1950s. She was a dynamo of talent, drive and ambition. She was in the right place at the right time with the right talent, before the advent of television. She had the support of her parents, and most of all, her second husband, Richard. The book is interesting on many different levels. The pages are filled with many interesting stories of the people she worked with, in Hollywood and New York. The love between Richard and her shines through every chapter. I recommended this book to my mother, who is 90 yrs old. She hadn't read a book in over 30 years. She is now half-way through the book, and loves it. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in American history, or theater.

I thought this was a terrifc book from cover to cover. From her childhood memories to her Broadway hits, there was the simple truth. She told it like it was. Reading it, I felt as if she were sitting across from me, telling me the story herself. I loved her before the I read the book and after, I loved her more.