Frank Langella's DROPPED NAMES- Page 2

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 4/20/12 at 12:27pm

Sounds like kitty scratch compared to the avalanche of petty vituperation Kathleen Turner let go of in her book.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 4/21/12 at 9:35am

The book is thin but fully loaded. Seemingly a kind of glib, free-associating memoir, it's a catalog of exploits and very strongly worded opinions about the talents and self-discipline or self-destructive impulses of many. He doesn't even pause or euphemize any of his reservations about the talents of his co-stars. Jill Clayburgh? Not good on stage. Anne Bancroft -- Anne Bancroft! (more on her in a sec) -- should've been much better. It would seem arrogant if he wasn't fairly hard on himself, in both his personal and professional lives. He freely admits that he ruined SEASCAPE for Deborah Kerr, and is filled with regret about how he treated her throughout the experience. And how awful he was in some show that Stella Adler saw him in, and how she held him accountable for a poor performance.

As for his sexuality, he sets it up his coy tap dance at the end of the very first chapter, page 6. When Elsa Lancaster lets him know that her brilliant husband would've come on to Langella, Langella's reply: "I'm not that easily seduced." Hardly a denial of intermittent interest; instead, a suggestion of great selectivity when it comes to men. From there on, we know we're in for veiled references. We get plenty, especially in the chapters on Anthony Perkins and Raul Julia, whom he genuinely fell for. For such a wee volume, it's stuffed to the brim with his covert and sometimes overt preoccupation with homosexual intrigue. None of his observations would've been made without an active gaydar, or bidar. He clearly enjoys seducing older women and playing a kind of sustained titillation with men, even Lawrence Olivier. His comments on Roddy McDowell's self-exploitation are brutally frank, pun intended, but probably accurate. And he cannot resist a lot of size queen stuff. For such an elegant gent, he does love dick talk.

Whoopie? I wondered if this was it: "Anne and Mel loyally came to every play I was in, every movie, endured some inappropriate love affairs..." Hmm.

The book is one of the best page-turners in a while; you cannot NOT laugh out loud (the portraits of Dewhurst and Coral Browne are razor sharp.) But just when you think he cannot tell more secrets, he arrives at the chapter on Anne Bancroft. I was startled by his raw appraisal of her gifts and his to me ungallant explication of her ego and the seemingly unseemly behavior it created. He is blisteringly cruel, and a part of me feels like that chapter taints the book. I actually felt as if I didn't want to know what he shared about Bancroft, something I honestly didn't feel elsewhere. But I'd be a hypocrite to say I didn't devour every damned page. Read this on the subway, and you'll miss your stop.

Updated On: 4/21/12 at 09:35 AM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 4/21/12 at 10:18am

Downloaded it onto my iPad and I've been reading it the way one polishes leftover cake in the refrigerator: in big chunks.

I'm actually sad for him that he feel that he has to be so coy or elliptical about his gay tricks and lovers, which rumor has always been were many. That part of the book feels creepily closeted, the way the older men I remember from the 1970s would dish about the sex lives of others and but clam up or get offended when I asked about theirs.

Writing the book as short chapters with famous names makes for the ultimate in dishy structure, but it removes the responsibility for the author to construct a narrative of his life. If he had done that, he would have to have been more honest.

He is a master raconteur, but some of the stories are borrowed from others and may possibly have been told to him (Stapleton's "...until they feed her"). In the David Begelman chapter, he weirdly gets the chronology wrong, putting his own association with Begelman BEFORE Judy Garland's and placing her death sometime in the 1970s. After reading that part twice, I started to wonder how many of the other events were conflated.

All memoirs are self-serving. This one is a different kind of self-serving than the standard fare. And like Langella, it is entertaining, intelligent, attractive and sexually alluring. But, in the end, I think I would rather have read Raul Julia's.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 4/21/12 at 10:33am

The QUEEN OF THE REBELS story about Dewhurst ceasing her scream doesn't quite track, since the show ran briefly. Small details tend to make the overall picture suspect.

He's so proud of his supposed blistering honesty. Yet his coy closetedness is also at strange odds with the book's seeming dedication to truth-speaking. The biggest truth in the mix -- that he has been welcomed into the intimate lives of so many gay men because he had good reason to be invited -- is a glaring omission. His pie-eyed, Candide-like MO, that he's straight serial seducer of older women who just happens to stumble into one homosexual milieu after another by accident, is especially ludicrous coming from a sophisticate in his 70s. He really should be above the Craig tea-room defense, i.e. I was just there to do my (acting) business and all these gay people kept showing up, wanting to show me their cocks. I bet he goes to the ramble to bird watch.

Updated On: 4/22/12 at 10:33 AM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 4/21/12 at 11:20am

He must think maintaining his "privacy" is The Best of all Possible Worlds.

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 4/23/12 at 3:55pm

am saving this one, the SERVICE one about LA's "pimp to the stars", and the Steward/Phil Andros one for vacation...too many things to read for my day jobs first. But the stuff about his own closetedness...of COURSE you gossip more about other men's proclivities to mask your own...does that really surprise anyone? he probably subconsciously is thinking "since my****is bigger than yours, i'm still straight and you're still the real fag". A real case of the casing not being up to the sausage inside.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 4/23/12 at 7:48pm

I'm being ridiculously picky, but the errors in the book began to wear me down; they are sloppy, silly things for a man of the theater. He suggests that he flew back to NYC the final week of the run of SEASCAPE in Los Angeles, with only one performance in California remaining. He claims he then won the Tony, returned and closed that final show with Kerr and company. But the Tony Awards are always on Sunday night, and the Equity work week begins on Monday or Tuesday. A show doesn't close on a Monday or Tuesday. How could he win a Tony on a Sunday night and return to LA for a single performance? In editing his own book, an actor should catch that. (I also vow to check out the exact details, and if I'm wrong, I'll post here with a mea culpa to Frank and everyone!)

And to pick up my own thread above: the chapter on the sad and dying Dominick Dunne is the strangest in the is-he-or-isn't-he discussion. Langella claims to have repeatedly nudged Dunne to be open and honest and make peace with his homosexuality, to come out to his children and help them see their troubled father as a complete human being. This syndrome occurs throughout the book, it's a recurring theme, something he touches on with a kind of zealotry, in the chapters on Perkins, McDowell, Clift and especially Dunne. Again, one wonders why he was so concerned with the closet doors on others' lives. Maybe a sequel will say more.

He also loves to boink and tell when it comes to stars, but eschews details about "my girl friend" or "my girl" or "the girl I wasliving with at the time." Those phrases are ubiquitous in the book. I understand protecting these women ("girls"), but for a man obsessed with those he schtupped, these mystery women who were lucky to have him in their beds on his rare stay-at-home nights certainly end up as shadowy figures.

Updated On: 4/23/12 at 07:48 PM

[wonkit]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 10:08am

The "girls" are probably still alive and can tell tales of their own.

[chanel]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 10:32am

Here's a criticism of Langella's coyness about his own sexuality, as per what the book tells and doesn't tell.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto/2012/04/langellas_book.php

[ageorges3]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 1:05pm

Really disturbed by his memoir.

We all know what a brilliant performer Langella is, and after I heard about the structure of his book (candid/matter-of-fact stories about his relationships with the biggest and brightest from a long gone era of Hollywood) I was really intrigued, but I'm deeply disturbed by his relationships with Rita Hayworth and Liz Taylor.

Rita Hayworth: She was developing and well on her way into the ravages of Alzheimer's when Langella had an affair with her. She was 20 years his senior, and it was clear as day that she wasn't of sound mind. She couldn't read/memorize lines, and hell, he and Robert Mitchum ended up riding to work in the same car as her, since she was having trouble getting in the car to go to the studio and making it to set on time.

She forgot his freaking name after a week of shooting. Langella wrote her passage with such tragic romance and gusto - you're swept up in the emotion and cathartic storytelling that you almost overlook the disgusting nature of this relationship. His description of her reaction to him leaving her (Hayworth ran out to the car and pleaded: "Don’t leave me. I gotta have a man with me") is crafted to read like some sort of powerful, cinematic ending to their relationship, but if you take away their fame, pedigree, and the mystique that surrounds Hollywood romances and pretend that they're normal everyday people, you see a woman on the brink of senility losing it. Langella makes a point of saying that very little was known of Alzheimer's at the time, but still, anyone could tell that she was obviously unwell, and the fact that he could have an affair with someone in such a state of mind is gross.

Liz Taylor - very upset that he was willing to have an affair with the broken and lonely Taylor. This is an excerpt from an article about Langella's book: [ Langella "recalls a desperately lonely Taylor who, after a second date in 2001, told him "Come on, baby, and put me to sleep." After helping the then 69-year-old actress upstairs by pushing her from behind he said he was shocked by the clutter in her room: pictures of dead ex-husbands, "dozens and dozens of bottles of witch hazel that she used to remove her makeup and a huge box of chocolates on her bed." ] She was obviously not well, and still he had no qualms bedding her. Again, Langella writes with such poetic and emotional gusto that you almost think it was a tragic romance from the plot of a 1950s movie. No. This is real freaking life. Disturbing as hell.

Pretty sure it's universally frowned upon for a person to behave like this. I don't fall for the BS allure and mystique of his movie star life. He's a human being like you or I, and a very troubled one at that.

(Posted this on the regular message board, then found out this thread was here.)



Updated On: 4/25/12 at 01:05 PM

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 3:59pm

I admit, while I've always appreciated Frank as an actor, I've also always found him rather creepy and not remotely attractive, something I may be in the minority about and felt was me being unfair and judgemental. Being about half way through the book, I'm feeling far less guilty about it. (But it's nice to know that Paul Newman, while boring, does have a nice butt. Honestly, some of the remarks seem so random).

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 7:13pm

Someone named John Clark posted this under the Amazon reviews (obviously he has his own bias):

For insight to this commenter's observations, how about this: Mr. Langella does not write about his refusal to share the curtain call with my wife, Lynn Redgrave, on the opening night of LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES at the Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, in which they co-starred in 1988. He does not talk about his threat to not perform that night if he didn't get a lone curtain call, nor how he hid in his dressing-room and refused to appear until the last possible moment. Did he finally come out and share the joint curtain call for the run? Yes, I made sure it was in her contract. But never ever talked to Lynn again off-stage.
A more egocentric childish spoiled star is hard to imagine. The alleged anecdotes may make for entertaining reading. But the above commenter is right, especially concerning anecdotes that might serve to reveal who he is and where he comes from, even if only in his mind. Was this book ghost written? Who knows. But I can tell you this. Celebrities, willing to pay half the proceeds to a professional ghost writer on the basis that they contractually remain hidden and don't share in the copyright, are a fact in the "celebrity autobiography" industry. In Mr. Langella's case, only he knows for sure.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 10:10pm

Eric, thank you for posting that. I read it twice, and once again, I comprehend the need to stand back and see the biases in Langella's (unreliable) narration, the subjective nature of his memory and supposed reporting, unavoidable as they are. Having watched the Charlie Rose interview 1 1/2 times (fell asleep), I see contradictions: a man who claims to want to move past the adolescent idea of star f--king even as he makes another buck exploiting his own MO as a star AND a star f--ker. (Watch him gloat with Charlie about celebs dying to party only with other celebs, fully acknowledging, in his insider embrace of the syndrome, what a willing participant he always has been.)

Now in his early 70s he wants to claim a psychological even spiritual rebirth, a man stripped of shallow ambitions, removed from the quotidian awfulness of show biz cut-throat-ness and savage bitchery even as he makes another book from ... documenting the daily toll of the ugliness (throats cut, bitchy comments fully documented) that defines show biz. It's all fine (who cares who he boinked, really?) but all blatantly self-serving. "Read my book, and absorb MY lessons -- even though it's not remotely about ME." Please. At least be honest enough -- after years of therapy -- to admit that every chapter, deep down, is about one person: the gangly guy from Bayonne invited in to drink/shmooze/comfort/tuck-in/f--k the subject at hand.

Updated On: 4/25/12 at 10:10 PM

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 10:23pm

Oops, wrong thread.

Updated On: 4/25/12 at 10:23 PM

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/26/12 at 2:11am

That's exactly my only real issue, but it's a major one. The whole thing reeks of hypocricy-- Of course this should be perhaps expected, but still.

[Leadingplayer]

Posted: 4/26/12 at 11:38am

Wow Auggie...that was really well written! Thanks!

[ageorges3]

Posted: 4/26/12 at 1:19pm

Can someone confirm that it is reprehensible and disgusting to have an affair with broken, damaged, confused, and/or alcoholic women? That's what really disgusted me about Langella's memoir, hypocrisy aside. Poor Hayworth and Taylor.

I just realized this earlier today when I was re-reading the Hayworth passage - Langella says that she was the brunt of jokes he'd tell his friends! Actual quote: "At lunch, as she rests in her trailer, the jokes about her are lewd and cruel, and for years after, I too would be guilty of reenacting the scene for friends at her expense." Really, what kind of human being could climb into bed with a person in such a condition and not have overwhelming feelings of guilt, and moreover, what kind of person would have the gall to joke about someone so obviously unwell, even if she wasn't officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's yet?
Updated On: 4/26/12 at 01:19 PM

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 4/26/12 at 1:37pm

I can confirm it.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/26/12 at 6:00pm

Well if Growl confirmed it then it is so

ageorges3, I definitely get your point, though I guess those parts didn't stand out to me *all* that more than the tone in general. That said, I don't think having a romance with someone who was clearly starting to suffer from mental issues in and of itself is so awful--I know it's a controversial take, but if he gave some comfort to those women then I feel I can't judge. It's the way he went about it, and then gleefully brags about it--and again, the tone in general. He wants the reader it seems to both feel like he's above such behaviour and to think he's so thoughtful while also getting off on his gleeful, kinda malicious gossip--he gossips and then acts like that's not what he was doing, he was actually being completely honest and considerate.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 4/26/12 at 9:18pm

I saw him on Charlie Rose the other night, where he seemed like an ass - and I just started reading the book today. All memoirs I'm sure contain embellishment, but the nature of this particular one makes me think that half of it is fiction. Even at the start of the book, after he bumps into Marilyn, he asks "What were the odds of this chance encounter?" - slim to none, I'd say.

It may well be deplorable to sleep with mentally ill elderly women, but did it actually happen? (Frank, that is...I don't doubt you, mysteriousgrowl...)

Updated On: 4/26/12 at 09:18 PM

[Auggie27]

Posted: 4/27/12 at 11:52am

His behavior with the women is his business and theirs; hell, I guess people with deteriorating minds and bodies are entitled to romance and sex, too. What's unseemly is his painstaking attention to the most debasing details, particularly about Elizabeth Taylor. And I noted that Charlie Rose mostly stayed clear of all of that, despite all of his giggling; not a single woman did he mention, and probed about Kazan and others as if it were a routine theatrical memoir. Clearly Rose wanted to suggest that his friend has penned a high brow piece of artistic reflection on a colorful career, not a schtupp-and-tell. I remain perplexed by all of the mostly positive press, the lack of fact-checking, and the supposition that he's done the world a great favor by peeking out from behind his shuttered blinds to share five decades of seductions of women who couldn't keep their eyes and hands off of him. I repeat what I said above: for a book that's supposedly not about him, it really seems to be about no one else.

Updated On: 4/27/12 at 11:52 AM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 4/27/12 at 12:56pm

If there is one person in the world more pompous and self-important than Frank Langella, it's Charlie Rose.

Or, to quote Sondheim, "Wait--I think I meant that in reverse."

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 4/27/12 at 4:01pm

Aw, how could anyone not like Charlie Rose?

[Auggie27]

Posted: 4/27/12 at 8:51pm

PalJoey, I've been on the fence about Rose at times (though his theme music still makes me feel like it's the 1990s; another topic, that particular aural nostalgia.) Watching the interview with Langella, I agree fully with your feelings about his arrogance. It's a preposterous and calculated take on the book and Langella's MO. His case of the giggles is bizarre, which makes me think Charlie's destined to be a chapter in the Langella sequel. Is that a round table in his pocket, or is he just glad to see him?

[Leadingplayer]

Posted: 4/29/12 at 12:27am

The facts seem messed up in a lot of places. He says Raul Julia did the whole run of the production of Design for Living while he left early YET reading IBDB it says John Glover replaced Julia.