From Publishers Weekly
After rhetorically asking, "Was I born into a family that was too ideal?" TV soap actress Holly explains that she "fought for air by acting" and that, with this book, "now I fight for air by writing." Her upbringing?her father was a chemical engineer who, along with her mother, steeped the family in traditional values?gave her good manners and poise. But she also emerged with a vulnerability to others, as well as with uncommon powers of observation, which she uses here to see and to articulate the problems of being a talented, ambitious actress who also is African American. Holly (b. 1931) came to public notice in 1968 with her role as Carla Benari on One Life to Live. Seventeen years later, she left the show after a confrontation with the director; three years after that, she was cast as Judge Francis Collier on The Guiding Light. Holly parallels the turns of her acting career to various social events and issues such as the civil rights movement and the killing of Martin Luther King Jr., and describes honestly how these turns affected, and were affected by, the ongoing status of blacks on TV. The personal side of her life also receives frank attention, including portrayals of her parents, vignettes of her childhood and accounts of her affairs. Her most notable romance was with Harry Belafonte, whom Holly came to see as "fraudulent" for his alleged hypocrisy in his relations with black women. Holly settles some scores, depicts the mercurial world of show biz, says some things she wishes she had said earlier and displays a vivid sense of justice in this outspoken memoir. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Many readers will remember Ellen Holly, who played the groundbreaking "I passed for white" role on the daytime drama
One Life to Live. Born into an upper-middle-class African American family, Holly was sure she could have it all--a career in the theater, a husband, and a family. Instead she pined for her married friend Harry Belafonte (who, to Holly's dismay, left his wife for a white woman); received rave notices on Broadway but rarely found roles; and eventually landed on the soap from which she was cast off after 17 years. As a light-skinned black woman, she suffered professionally on two fronts: with few roles for black women anyway, she was further penalized by being too fair to play even those. Holly is very angry, and not without cause, though she is hardly alone among soap stars who never work in the medium again after being relieved of their roles. What will haunt readers here is the raw emotion behind Holly's often quite elegant prose. This is heartfelt, often brutal stuff, and Holly does not let you turn away from it.
Ilene Cooper
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
DVD ~ Eartha Kitt
by Gary Warner
