The Way We Lived Then : Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper [Hardcover]

Dominick Dunne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 1999

Mesmerizing, revelatory text combines with more than two hundred photographs -- most of them taken by the author -- in a startling illustrated memoir that will both astonish and move you.

When Dominick Dunne lived and worked in Hollywood, he had it all: a beautiful family, a glamorous career, and the friendship of the talented and powerful. He also had a camera and loved to take pictures. These photographs, which Dunne carefully preserved in more than a dozen leatherbound scrapbooks -- along with invitations, telegrams, personal notes, and other memorabilia -- record the parties, the glittering receptions, the society weddings, and scenes from the everyday lives of the Dunnes and those they knew, including Jane Fonda, Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, Roddy McDowall, Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, Brooke Hayward, Jennifer Jones, and David Selznick. You'll meet them all in this fascinating book -- captured in snapshots as these celebrities relax at poolside barbecues, gossip at cozy get-togethers and dance at the Dunnes' dazzling black-and-white ball. And you will meet Dominick Dunne's beautiful wife, Lenny, and his children, Griffin, Alex, and Dominique, as they celebrate Christmases, birthdays, and graduations.  But, most of all, you will meet Dominick Dunne and learn about the peaks and valleys of his years in Hollywood, the disastrous turn his life took, and the long road back that led to his triumphant career as a writer. With its engaging photographs and candid text, The Way We Lived Then is a riveting and unvarnished account of a life among the stars and a life almost lost.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In a previous incarnation, writer Dominick Dunne was the toast of Hollywood--entertaining movie stars and socialites and invited by moguls to clambakes and black-tie dances. Long before he started churning out his romans à clef set in the private recesses of Hollywood and penthouses of New York City and his dispatches from notorious murder trials, he spent his days on movie sets, producing films like Ash Wednesday and working as an executive at various studios. In the off-hours, he and his wife Lenny ate dinner with Vincente Minnelli, Jack Benny, Rock Hudson, and Elizabeth Montgomery. They went to beach parties hosted by Jane Fonda and Roddy McDowall--and threw not a few bashes of their own, attended by, well, everyone and often photographed for Vogue magazine. Dunne seemed to carry his camera with him everywhere and "was always sticking [it] into someone's face." Kirk Douglas biting into an oversized hotdog, a scantily clad Paul Newman perusing a picnic table, Princess Margaret smoking, Mia Farrow dancing, and Natalie Wood hamming. Each weekend he carefully arranged his snapshots along with the week's invitations, telegrams, and news-clippings into a set of scrapbooks.

The Way We Lived Then closely resembles those scrapbooks, filled as it is with images culled from them. Dunne sews the scraps together with a loose memoir that moves from the mundane (how the house was decorated for a certain party, how the subjects of a given photo were feeling about one another at the time) to the grand (meditations on his marriage and his children). All of these famous friends, glittery parties, and cozy evenings did add up to a picture-perfect life for a time. But by the mid '60s, Dunne was drinking hard, insulting acquaintances in public, and being a perfectly terrible husband to the lovely Lenny. He was soon arrested carrying drugs into the country from Mexico, divorced, nearly poverty-stricken, and living in a cabin in Oregon. But he lived to tell about it, and though his story is something of a cautionary tale about the dangers of success and excess, punctuated as it is by his dreamy photos, one can't help but wonder if he'd happily go back to the way he lived then. --Jordana Moskowitz

From Publishers Weekly

Before becoming a bestselling novelist (The Two Mrs. Grenvilles) and Vanity Fair correspondent noted for skeptical dispatches from the O.J. Simpson and Menendez brothers murder trials, Dunne was a TV and movie producer in the 1960s. Less a memoir than a scrapbook, this slim volume consists largely of Dunne's often appealing celebrity snapshots. There's a young Warren Beatty at the piano, Elizabeth Taylor in white mink and a gimlet-eyed Princess Margaret, poised with a cigarette holder. The book's subtitle is well-taken. Plenty of names are dropped, though there's a paucity of fresh or compelling anecdotes. Dunne notes the "deep devotion" of Nancy and Ronald Reagan; in person, Elizabeth Taylor "is even more breathtaking than on the screen"; Natalie Wood, who "always looked like a million bucks," checks her makeup in the mirror-bright blade of a butter knife. There are exceptions to the pat anecdotes: a vicious Frank Sinatra, for instance, makes a memorable appearance. The book is further distinguished by the pages that focus on Dunne's own capitulation to drugs, alcohol and promiscuity; the irrevocable damage his tailspin wrought on his heroic wife (herself suffering from MS); and his slow but determined recovery. But it's odd that the Hollywood elite that betrayed Dunne at the nadir of his life should be so unreflectively celebrated here. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (September 28, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609603884
• ISBN-13: 978-0609603888
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #83,355 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dominick Dunne (1925-2009) was the author of five bestselling novels, two collections of essays, and "The Way We Lived Then," a memoir with photographs. His final novel, "Too Much Money," will be published in December 2009. He was a Special Correspondent for "Vanity Fair" and lived in New York City and Hadlyme, Connecticut.

Photo (C) H. Thompson

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars who is an ardent Dominick Dunne fan, November 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Way We Lived Then : Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper (Hardcover)

To anyone who can remember the Los Angeles of the 50s, 60s and 70s, this book is a treasure and a real piece of social history. It is wonderful to see how beautiful and stylish the women of that era were, and how the behind-the-scenes entertaining of celebrities was accomplished. The photo of Priness Margaret with a cigarette in her mouth is priceless, as is the shot of Natalie Wood fixing her makeup in the reflection of a dinner knife. Dominick's black and white ball, which preceeded the Truman Capote extravaganza held in New York, apparently was the prototype. It's a wonderful read that I would recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about behind-the-scenes Hollywood.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Surprising Tour-de-Force, March 12, 2000

By 

"marrano" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Way We Lived Then : Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper (Hardcover)

It wasn't Dominick Dunne's vintage photos that caught me -- although some of them are stunning -- but the delicious text of this book. There are some quotable lines, like this musing on Lana Turner: "I have always been intrigued by the kind of people who call their lawyers before they call the police after a murder. It's a rich-people thing." What's best, of course, is that Dunne manages to capture the guilty innocence in post-war Hollywood manners and morals. And then that exquisitely sad coda! This book will be a minor classic. Dominick Dunne, thank you.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great insights into Dunne's books, December 27, 1999

By 

Roger Dawson "Negotiating expert" (La Habra Heights, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Way We Lived Then : Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper (Hardcover)

A great book if you're a fan of Dunne's. To appreciate it, you have to read the text, not just look at the pictures. He gives interesting insights into the people on whom he based his book characters. For example, the Mendelsons in 'An Inconvenient Woman' were based on the Bloomingdales. The coke snorting movie director was based on Robert Evans (also much maligned as the character who Dustin Hoffman played in Wag the Dog).