Scott Eyman

THE PLACE TO BE: WASHINGTON, CBS, AND THE GLORY DAYS OF TELEVISION NEWS
By Roger Mudd
PublicAffairs, 413 pages, $27.95

Why are journalists’ memoirs dull?

Could it be they’re so studiously trained to keep their own personalities out of their writing that when the time for self-expression comes, they have nothing of their own to offer?

There are exceptions, of course—nobody ever called Leibling dull or Mencken boring, and Russell Baker is always charming and elegant. But the norm is Robert Novak, the Prince of Darkness himself, who obviously reread his old columns to develop a timeline for the memoir he published last year. Tylenol PM should be so effective.  read more »

HOME: A MEMOIR OF MY EARLY YEARS
By Julie Andrews
Hyperion, 352 pages, $26.95

My favorite moment in Julie Andrews’ memoir comes after the first New Haven preview of My Fair Lady. Rex Harrison had a pre-performance panic attack, the show ran to an endless three and a half hours, but Julie Andrews was feeling pretty good. Her vaudeville training had helped her rise to the occasion, and the show had gone on.

She was sitting in her dressing room bathing in self-approbation when the door flew open and designer Cecil Beaton stalked in. Beaton picked up a little yellow hat Ms. Andrews wore in the show, and slammed it onto her head.

“Not that way, you silly bitch,” he hissed, like some road company Roger DeBris, “This way!”  read more »

NOT THE GIRL NEXT DOOR: JOAN CRAWFORD, A PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY
By Charlotte Chandler
Simon & Schuster, 336 pages, $26

It’s easy to feel superior to Joan Crawford. There are her Great Lady affectations, that pissy upper-crust speech reeking of noblesse oblige. “My audience always deserves the best I have to give, and I give them everything I have,” she tells Charlotte Chandler in Not the Girl Next Door, a new oral biography. “I like to remember people on special occasions. I’m sure there are people it doesn’t mean much to, but if one lonely person was cheered, it was well worth the effort.”  read more »

In The Star Machine, Jeanine Basinger, a film historian, tells her story with her customary verve and sass.  read more »

Foster Hirsch has written a balanced, intelligent, compelling biography of a very erratic director.  read more »

You can practically count the number of books about screenwriters on two hands. This latest is the best—by far.  read more »

With his first collection of pieces in over 25 years, Woody Allen is reclaiming the attention that his recent movies have done so much to dissipate.  read more »

Biography is the perfect occupation for the scholar-squirrel, assiduously storing lists of the guests at every dinner party, the word count of every rough draft. But it’s also tailor-made for the passive-aggressive, someone who gets to define and characterize somebody else’s life, passing judgment on their motives and meaning while hiding behind a façade of objective truth-telling.  read more »