Sandy Dennis: A Personal Memoir [Hardcover]

Sandy Dennis (Author), Louise Ladd (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1997

This remarkable memoir by Sandy Dennis reflects a true poet's soul in the face of life and death. Touching lightly on the theater and glamour, she instead spins highly personal tales from her childhood and adult life, with moments that move from laughter to tears. The actress won an Academy Award for Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf and two Tony awards for her work on stage. 23 photos.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the most unorthodox show biz autobiography you'll read all year, the late Sandy Dennis (A Thousand Clowns, Any Wednesday, many others) reveals a real flair for poetic evocation of the bright and dark moments of her short, cat-filled life. Brought to unhappy endings with nearly all the humans in her life (including jazzman Gerry Mulligan), she takes solace in enough strong-personality kitties to make Andrew Lloyd Webber ponder a sequel. She refers to her film career not at all, and when she speaks of her stage career she never bothers to reveal a title, but remembers fond personal details, such as how warm and belonging she felt on one of her homey sets. Written mostly during her long, losing battle with ovarian cancer, the 77 pages of prose poems read like vivid, impressionistic dreams.

From Publishers Weekly

Lovely and unexpected, this little volume was found among the papers of Oscar- and Tony-winning actress Dennis (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) after her death in March 1992. Begun after she was diagnosed with cancer, the book differs radically from the usual celebrity memoir. It drops not a single famous name and makes no mention of Dennis's career in film and only one of her stage work. Rather, it presents lyrical, impressionistic memories of Dennis's childhood in Nebraska and of the details of her daily life on a farm in Connecticut with her mother, two dogs and 30 cats. Apart from the occasional amateurish touch, Dennis reveals herself as a gifted natural writer. An undercurrent of pain runs through the book, not only in the passages about her cancer but in oblique accounts of former lovers who were physically and emotionally violent and in passages recollecting adult troubles she witnessed as a child, including suicide. Her huge array of cats are portrayed with affection but with little sentimentality. This is not a polished or completed narrative, but a posthumous assemblage of sketches toward a memoir, a poignant reminder of what was lost when the author died at the age of 54. Photos. (Apr.) birthday. Portions of the book's sales will be donated to Delta Society, "people helping animals, animals helping people."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Papier-Mache Press (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576010015
• ISBN-13: 978-1576010013
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #932,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique voice and subtle beauty, April 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Sandy Dennis: A Personal Memoir (Hardcover)

Sandy Dennis was a true original as an actress, and as a writer, she was just as distinguished. I drank this book down in one gulp, and when I was done, I felt brokenhearted that this delicate, wry, sensitive voice had been silenced so prematurely. There are a great many unanswered questions about Sandy Dennis' life that arise from this read, and I suppose we will never know the answers -- but what we do have here is a collection of intimate, impressionistic, exquisitely felt moments of a profoundly private lady's life and death. How I wish I had known her, and how I wish she had had the time to write more.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Legend gone too soon who has touched many lives, July 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sandy Dennis: A Personal Memoir (Hardcover)

I am thrilled to have had an opportunity to study with this wonderful woman, 6 years. Her Memoir is touching and elloquently said I could not put it down and had to read in private. I was very moved by her book and sad that the world lost her so suddenly. She was a giving and encouraging woman, all of her students LOVED HER. A gift so rare and so lovely. Ms. Dennis will live on in this Brilliant and touching book. I thank her for touching my life and encouraging me to be the artist I am. She is sadly missed.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Touching and poetic, this slim volume packs a punch!, June 2, 1999

By 

"kvc90028" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sandy Dennis: A Personal Memoir (Hardcover)

I knew Sandy Dennis. Not well and very briefly. Yet her death hit me hard. I'd always been surprised that no one had written a biography on her, as her life was tragically under-reported while she was alive. And as quirky and whimsical as she often appeared onstage and screen, a beautiful and fascinating woman lay beneath the greasepaint.

This slender book of memories (and "memoir" was never better used to describe a book) is just as engrossing and revealing as Joanne Woodward's Preface promises it to be. In no way a "show-biz" book, it offers instead insight and poignant confessions of an exceptional human being.

In my own book, which has yet to be published, I discuss my fleeting association with Sandy Dennis. But all one needs to know the person is to read this moving and surprisingly well-written memoir by the lady herself!