Legs Are the Last to Go
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It's conventional wisdom that Hollywood has no use for a woman over forty. So it's a good thing that Diahann Carroll—whose winning, sometimes controversial career breached racial barriers—is anything but conventional. Shonda Rhimes, the creator and executive producer of the hit program Grey's Anatomy, developed a role just for her, and a recent show that's touring the United States, The Life and Times of Diahann Carroll, was enthusiastically embraced by the New York Times. And all this since Carroll turned seventy!Here she shares her life story with an admirable candidness of someone who has seen and done it all. With wisdom that only aging gracefully can bestow, she talks frankly about her four marriages as well as the other significant relationships in her life, including her courtship with Sidney Poitier; racial politics in Hollywood and on Broadway; and the personal cost, particularly to her family, of being a pioneer. Whether she's recalling an audition for Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard, reflecting on her marriage to Vic Damone, or talking about her experience with breast cancer, Carroll's storied history, blunt views, and notorious wit will be sure to entertain and inform.Publishers WeeklyAt age 70, singer-actress Carroll, a Golden Globe and Tony Award winner, was described in a 2006 rave review by Stephen Holden in the New York Times as delivering a song "like an emotional volcano," and the label works equally well for this radiant autobiography, bubbling over with sincere self-insights as well as a potent underlying theme of the "immense cruelties" and racial politics of showbiz. Revealing personal struggles with her mother and men (she details her marriage to singer Vic Damone), she pulls no punches in detailing conflicts with such major figures as Andrew Lloyd Webber, Pearl Bailey and Samuel Goldwyn. Beginning with her Harlem childhood, she traces her life from the High School of Music and Art, modeling and early club performances to theatrical triumphs (No Strings; Sunset Boulevard), TV (Julia; Dynasty), her grandchildren and plastic surgery, plus painful memories of racism. An outstanding chapter probes the "art-directed Negro squalor" and other "demeaning" aspects of the 1959 film Porgy and Bess, a "cliché of noble poverty as reimagined by some very talented white men." What emerges is an astute analysis of her career along with descriptions of the highs and lows of an often glamorous life, whether she performs at dazzling Vegas venues or in an intimate cabaret space. (Oct.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
