Customer Reviews

Thank Heaven: A Memoir

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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!

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.

My friend the novelist Bruce Benderson author of Pacific Agony has been trmupeting this book far and wide, and he has never steered me wrong yet, so I opened my Amazon account and ordered it pronto. I have to say that it is one of the most evocative movie star memoirs I have ever read.

Growing up during World War II in a middleclass family left open to the privations of war, little Leslie learned how to dance as a way of escaping the strange dreams of her mother, one of the oddest characters in all of nonfiction. The mother seemed to want to live Leslie's life for her: brother Aimery seemed to escape Maman's iron will due to his gender. Caron brings us backstage into her life of early stardom as one of Roland Petit's principal dancers: it is here that Gene Kelly apparently saw her and clapped his hands and voila! Caron and Maman were in Hollywood as the "guests" of MGM. As always, memoirs of the final days of Louis B Mayer's MGM are always welcome, they are so bizarre and the men and women who passed through his rule came out the other end utterly changed (some for the better, of course). The collapse of the studio system took its toll on their identities, and Caron seemed to want to put away her toe shoes, and study heavy dramatics under the tutelage of Jean and Dido Renoir, Christopher Isherwood, and the British wunderkind Peter Hall whom she eventually married.

Mistake! Well, not so bad a mistake as her first husband, a wealthy eccentric from the Hormel family. Cultural differences and Hormel pride prevented Leslie until too late from discovering that her handsome bridegroom was a grade A nut! Peter Hall just comes across as small minded, jealous and cruel, and yet now Caron can say she did love him and he did give her two wonderful children. Outside of that--pfui! She made a huge impression in the early 60s reinventing herself as the unmarried mother in a "kitchen sink" drama THE L-SHAPED ROOM, and then she met Warren Beatty and it was Peter Hall who? Beatty brought her back to Hollywood and for a brief period they were the most glamorous couple in town. He poured cold water over her dreams however by laying stress on the fact that she could not be Bonnie to his Clyde (in the 1967 Arthur Penn movie) not because she was French, but because she was so old! Tut tut, and the next thing she knew he had replaced her with a Bolshoi ballerina, then Julie Christie.

Throughout, Caron's natural delicacy and humor battles with a newfound urge to tell her life the way it was really lived. Every page has some La Rochefaucauldian pensee on love, on death; and yet every page has some hot gossip about some star of the past one has just barely heard of. I never wanted it to end! Thank you, Bruce Benderson! And thanks Leslie Caron.

Yes, thank heaven for little girls. When I was a little girl Leslie Caron was an influence in my life with her movies. And now, to read her book, she is a model for someone who wants to age as gracefully as she has. The book is charming, literate and entertaining.

Caron has selective memory when it comes to her life and career--at times she shares lengthy stories that have very specific details, while at other times she doesn't seem to recall much of anything. So whether you enjoy this book will depend upon which parts of her life you are looking for.

The books starts with a lot of detail about her rich upbringing. She, of course, claims that her family was not rich but the mansion and servants give away the truth. Much of the first fourth of the book has to do with family history and the impact of the war.

Once she gets to Hollywood she says nothing about her impressions of America. Even though her mother came from here, Caron says nothing about what it was like to adjust to life in the U.S.--she just starts right in with the making of An American in Paris. Most surprising is that she shares the least amount of information about some of the projects she is best known for and the famous people she worked with. You'll hunger for more when she talks about Cary Grant, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, while wanting to skip other chapters filled with unfamiliar names. She does reveal a little about her years with Warren Beatty and the playboy's controlling personality is confirmed here.

Overall, the book lacks much introspection and insight. In the end your satisfaction with the book will depend upon how much you enjoy reading about her French childhood or some of the artists she knew. For those of us who would like to hear more specifics about her greatest films and co-stars, the book is lacking.

Sorry, to all those gave this book rave reviews, I wish I could share your enthusiasm, but I just can't. I am a fan, Fanny and Gigi, being my favorite of Caron's films. Having seen Leslie Caron on Private Screenings with Robert Osborne, I was much impressed with her humor and her sense of fun about her career, elements I found sadly lacking in her book. I am not referring to her WWII stories, I don't expect her to have numerous funny stories about war, but her postwar career years are curiously lacking in enthusiasm and enjoyment. She had a wonderful career, worked with, and socialized with the some of the best artists the world has known, and apparently took little personal satisfaction in it. Some of her personal friendships, as with Christopher Isherwood are exceptions to that statement, but all those years and all those wonderful achievements in dance and on film and stage result in extremely few smiles on my face as I read about them. Maybe it's foolish on my part, but I keep thinking to be born with the talent Caron has and to have achieved the levels of success she did, should have provided her with a sense she had been blessed in some way the rest of us were not and the wonderment of the journey that provided for her. If it did, she seems to have decided to not share much of that sense of wonderment in this book.

leslie caron is and always has been one of my favorite actresses.starring in great films like The L Shaped Room,Father Goose with Cary Grant,her Oscar nominated roles in The L Shaped Room and Lili and of course playing the role of Gigi and appearing with Gene Kelly in An American in Paris.i have been looking forward to reading her life story for over a year now ever since i first saw her book when it first came out.there is nothing like a book to read to make my day even better.i hope we will always have books because i do not like kindle.

THANK HEAVEN is much like the author herself: classy.
Leslie Caron relives her past - her upbringing in a war torn France, her early, hectic days in Hollywood at the end of the golden era - in an honest and fun way.
Not exactly a Tell-All, but Ms. Caron has an endearing and quite charming way (just like in her films) so that you feel you are sitting with a friend who is confiding a few secrets with you.
In THANK HEAVEN, Ms. Caron seems to be letting us in on secrets but knows how to hold back just a bit so that they are informative but never nasty. I enjoyed her stories about Gene Kelly, Cary Grant, Maurice Chevalier and the rest of the A List that she worked with during her reign.

Has depression and alcoholism come to represent a stop along the way down from greatness? These were my thoughts as I flipped through the pages of Caron's book, coming across a very candid description of her abuse problems. I was intrigued, so I read the book expecting to form a deep bond with the writer. I could not. Reading Caron's book was like walking into a beautiful house with no furniture. There was no place to sit and chat, no place to connect with her as a person. The memoir left me feeling almost nothing. I did feel a slight envy, as I came to realize Caron's rise was primarily due to "good luck". I don't discount her talent as a dancer or her ability to act, but she seemed to be consistently in the right place, at the right time. Was this planned? Is this the real genius of Leslie Caron? She was spotted by Roland Petit in a dance class and invited to join the Les Ballet des Champs-Elysées. She was spotted by Gene Kelly and offered an MGM role.

Leslie Caron has written two books, Vengeance and 'Thank Heaven'. Thank Heaven really consist of three sections: Patches of background information, a Hollywood directory, glimpses into French culture. The stories of her early family life were dull and the characters had little dimension. The biography was mostly an endless whose-who of friends and contacts in Hollywood. Finally, Caron returns us back to France. The most interesting part of the book for me was Caron's description of building and running the Auberge La Lucarne aux Chouettes in Burgundy. The hotel sounds amazing and I have added a visit to my "bucket list". Caron has strong spirit. Her energy and vitality shine in this part of the book.