Most Helpful Customer Reviews
45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Caron Reveals a Rich Life Full of Potholes with Elegance and Candor, December 18, 2009
This review is from: Thank Heaven: A Memoir (Hardcover)
It's hard to believe that Leslie Caron is 78 now, even if her star-making turn as Lise Bouvier, Gene Kelly's unattainable object of desire in An American in Paris was nearly six decades ago. There was a lilting quality to her wide Cheshire grin and gamine screen presence that begged comparison with her most comparable contemporary, Audrey Hepburn. According to Caron, their professional paths only crossed in the casting of the title role of Gigi, which Hepburn coveted but lost to Caron (Hepburn rebounded by getting cast opposite Fred Astaire in another classic musical, Funny Face). Regardless, neither actress led the charmed life that their screen counterparts would lead you to believe, and the French-American actress corroborates this with her sophisticated, reflective autobiography.
Caron represents one of the last remaining bridges to the golden era of MGM musicals, and as such, her eminently readable albeit often cursory book is sprinkled with legendary names beginning with Gene Kelly, who saw her in the Ballet des Champs-Elysées' 1948 production of "La Recontre", a performance he remembered vividly two years later when he returned to Paris in search of a dancing unknown to introduce in An American in Paris (replacing a pregnant Cyd Charisse). However, her sparkling talent apparently hid a mass of insecurities developed as a child growing up in privilege in pre-WWII Paris with a French chemist father and a disapproving American mother to whom nothing she did was ever good enough. Instead of being able to celebrate her bicultural heritage, Caron felt alienated from both worlds and further isolated by the outbreak of war.
She was prepared by her dancer mother to become a ballerina, even calling herself Caronova (like Pavlova), but Hollywood beckoned and her talent blossomed along with two subsequent Oscar nominations, one as a street urchin in Lili and the other as a pregnant single woman in The L-Shaped Room. Her career is distinguished to say the least. Caron not only danced with Kelly and Astaire (in Daddy Long Legs) but also Nureyev and Baryshnikov. However, her honest yet discreet accounts of her romantic relationships, including three marriages and divorces, are just as engaging, especially when in the mid-1960's, she embarked on a long affair with Warren Beatty whom she portrays as both attentive and narcissistic. She also hobnobbed with the likes of Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, Jean Renoir and François Truffaut, and yet doesn't shy away from the controversies and bad decisions in her life.
Caron maintains an elegant diplomacy about those whom she obviously disliked (David Niven, Kirk Douglas) and those who remained enigmatic to her (Cary Grant, Henry Fonda). The actress kept her life full with two children, while battling alcoholism and crippling depression, exacerbated by the suicide of her mother. She is quite candid about her vigilant attendance at weekly AA meetings. When the actress couldn't get enough work in the early 1990's, she opened a small hotel and restaurant in Burgundy, which sadly just closed in September due to the recession. Above it all, Caron has survived it all to tell her story with no regrets.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thank Heaven for writing your memoirs, June 8, 2010
I was delighted to find Leslie's memoirs in print. They should be read fast the first time and then slowly the second time to savor every chapter. This is honest, straightforward, diplomatic, kind and classy and gives a glimpse into the world of Hollywood, the theatre and ballet. I have followed Leslie Caron's life and career for more than 50 years.
In 1957 I worked for Leslie Caron and Peter Hall as cook-housekeeper in their first flat in Hyde Park Square. Winston Churchill had his London residence across the Square. Baby Christopher was just a few weeks old and taken care of by Maria, the Swiss Nanny. The flat was a hospitable place with frequent lunch or dinner guests. I cooked for and served Cecil Beaton, Jean Renoir, Gene Kelly (he had a sensitive stomach and liked my bland soup), John Osborne, Lars Schmidt, Tennessee Williams and others.
When the Hall family left July 3, 1957 for Paris for the outdoor scenes for the movie GIGI, Leslie Caron wore a chic two piece grey suit she had sewn just a few days before. She constantly amazed me with her many talents, including in the kitchen. She taught me to prepare a leg of lamb and I use this method to this day.
The Halls liked to try different dishes; their favorite were Wiener Schnitzel and a Mocha cream dessert which was requested often. The Halls were kind and appreciative and sad when I gave notice.They had hoped I would stay months or years longer but I needed to turn my life into a different direction.
Thank you Leslie Caron for sharing your remarkable life so far. You always were and are a classy lady!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A career that transcends two Hollywoods, February 26, 2010
This review is from: Thank Heaven: A Memoir (Hardcover)
Like many celebrity memoirs, Leslie Caron's vacillates between chapters of personal revelation and chapters of name-dropping and giving intimate parties "for 200 of my dearest friends." How Caron transitioned from a shy, withdrawn fledgling to an in-the-know, well-connected Hollywood player is uncharted in the book, so there are many unanswered questions raised in the reader's mind. The blame for this would appear to lie with Caron's editor. In her opening chapter, she admits that she regretted delving too deeply and that her editor forced her hand in this regard. Not hard enough, perhaps.
That said, the book finally reveals a warmth and humor to the lady that Caron has hidden in interviews during the past 40 years. She has often gone on the record rather bitterly, describing MGM as a brutal factory that allowed no artistic invention on the part of actors, so her sweet, nostalgic recollections of old Hollywood were a pleasant surprise. In particular, Caron sheds new light on Fred Astaire -- beginning with a rather shocking rehearsal photograph that shows Astaire without his hairpiece, a first I believe. As DADDY LONG LEGS was made during a period of intense grief in Astaire's life, Caron was poised to see a side of him not many were privy to, and she reports on it with tremendous, if unexpansive, sensitivity. Again, editors of celebrity memoirs would do well to guide their authors regarding how much or little to reveal. Along with LILI, DADDY LONG LEGS was arguably Caron's finest hour on film, revealing an unbelievably natural, genuine "not even acting" quality missing from her later, more assured performances. Virtually nothing has been documented about DADDY LONG LEGS, and this would have been a terrific opportunity to delve deep into the making of a much loved, much underrated film. Fans of the movie will no doubt be happy with what little Caron has written about it, but boy, are we hungry for more.
In the end, THANK HEAVEN is significant on one level in particular: it's one of the first autobiographies whose subject fully spans both old and new Hollywood. We go from early mornings at MGM in 1950 all the way through independent filmmaking in the late 1990s-2000s, from Gene Kelly and Judy Garland to Louis Malle and Juliette Binoche. Watching Caron navigate her way, and her description of her changing stature in the eyes of others, emerges as a genogram of the changing of the guard, crystalizing for the reader what was gained by the collapse of the studio system (artistic independence) and what was lost (movies that matter).
I'm glad Caron was there, and I'm glad she's here.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
