Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women As I Knew Them

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The reader gets a good glimpse into the life of the actor -- in Hollywood and New York -- as seen through the eyes of Langella, a long-time participant.He's a decent writer. His prose is concise and perceptive. And there's little of the sort of narcissism we might expect. There are interpolated references to his own career, adventurously rebounding from one year to another, from Bayonne, New Jersey, to Bayonne, France, but autobiography is not Langella's goal. There's no way to judge his achievements from this book. His first film, "Diary of a Mad Housewife," is hardly mentioned. "Lolita" doesn't appear at all.He's candid about his mistakes too, and that sort of honesty allows him room to make judgments about others, like those he loved (Raul Julia) and those he disliked (Charlton Heston). He's discreet about his love affairs. You need almost second sight to tell when he's scored with a beautiful woman but it's clear that, for an actor like Langella, sex resembled some kind of lavish buffet table, a groaning board on which everything was available.Without the least bit of sentimentality, we can feel, repeatedly, the writer's compassion for the lonely and the wrecked and his distaste for the imperious. He's in his 70s now, and many of his friends have passed on,. A sense of something lost pervades the book.I've been impressed by Langella for years. Not so much because of his acting but because in the early 1980s he bothered to write a piece on acting for the New York Times Op-Ed page. Now, that's not a very "Italian" thing to do, according to Gay Talese. In places like Bayonne, New Jersey, writing is not a very manly profession. And here was an article by Frank Langella in the Times, unashamedly well written and thoughtful.While reading it, I couldn't help comparing it to Kirk Douglas' autobiographical "Ragman's Son," which was very popular reading when it appeared. Douglas' was a pitiless journey through life. He's thoroughly candid about his experiences, and in being honest he fell into the trap of revealing what an ass he is, without realizing that he was, and is, an ass in fact. Douglas has so little insight that he sees nothing wrong in stealing a few cents from his dead father's desk drawer, since his father had given him so little in the way of love. He throws out a young Italian actress and when he learns later of her suicide, he blames her.Douglas' book is really a savage narrative. Langella's, in contrast, is full of pity for almost everyone except himself. I felt that I should have sent him a note after his Op-Ed piece: "Bravo." Nothing in this book has lessened my admiration for him.

For starters, the book is exceptionally well written and possesses a not-put-down quality. Langella either had a wonderful editor or the guy can flat out write (or both). It is hard to resist the inside looks into many of these people and he does a great job of holding reader attention throughout the book.That said, in a spate of irony, the more I read, the more I struggled to figure out whether Langella, who waxes endlessly about the flaws of others, is likeable himself. Is he someone to whom I could relate or is he a real jerk?On the one hand, he seems a candid, passionate, multi-dimensional man with a refreshing refuse-to-kiss-the-ring or bend-over-backwards to-get-ahead, independent persona, and, on the other hand, a mean-spirited, gratuitous-piss-on-the-grave, jealous and petulant child who lacks the capacity to feel for those whose demons painfully rear their heads more often than otherwise.In the end, I concluded Langella is not that nice a guy. Wholly apart from the glaring (and with a single exception unexplained) fact he went through agents like Zsa Zsa Gabor went through husbands or Richard Pryor wives, while he sometimes exuded compassion for fellow actors and friends, like his seeming unconditional love for Raul Julia, this occurred only when convenient and easy, meaning when naturally and comfortably reciprocated. When, however, he found himself in a more challenging relationship, where it was considerably more difficult to understand, embrace and feel the pain of others and deal with their consuming flaws—a challenge we all sometimes experience—he becomes cold and brutally dismissive.His treatment of Anne Bancroft is telling in this regard. He acknowledges that she “would cover her anxiety with an imperious disdain.” Thus, he gets that she often "acted" out her fears and insecurities. But then he has this to say about his commitment to their platonic relationship:“Any relationship in which one party feels even the slightest sense of diminishment had become for me a relationship not worth enduring. I did not so much regret my decision to pull away from her ultimately corrosive aura as I did bemoan the demons that held sway insider . . .” Hey, Frank, as you walk out of my life, thanks anyway for bemoaning my demons!This, to me, speaks volume about his character. Relationships to him if not smooth sailing, were relegated to the no-regrets trash bin. The irony is that, upon scrutiny, Langella comes off more like the people for whom he exhibits disdain than he may or certainly seems to realize—shallow, arrogant and insufferably egotistical. He merely acts out his egotistical foibles differently.

Frank Langella caught my eye decades ago, when he appeared in ‘The Twelve Chairs’. He was a handsome dog for sure! His acting career focussed mostly on theatre work - and what a host of fascinating people have crossed his path! Small chapters reveal insights into famous folk as varied as Jackie Onassis, Liz Taylor, Dominick Dunne, Paul Newman and Arthur Miller. Langella writes well and pulls no punches here. Honest about his own youthful illusions and vanities, he skewers the rich and famous mercilessly - but there are words of honest admiration also. If you, like me, are a sucker for celeb gossip, this is one book not to miss.

Actors biographies are always tricky propositions. The wealth of their lives often to be found in their encounters with others. Mr Langella has these in abundance and imparts the tales in a manner which is deeply engrossing, tragically funny, but never salacious. I purchased this book as a means of voicing my support over his recent ridiculous sacking from a Netflix television series. I am so glad I did. Worth every penny

I have always been a great admirer of Frank Langella as a film star so when he published a book, I looked forward to reading it and it lived up to my expectation. I particularly liked how the book was laid out. Some chapters were three pages, some much longer, some shorter, It depended on what he had to say about the people he wrote about. Hadn't realised that he knew Jacqueline Kennedy and their on-going friendship was fascinating. It is so rare to have a memoir that is candid as this book. He tells the story of the people he met and he doesn't have to take centre stage. He is definitely not sycophantic. Hope he continues to write. Love his new movie.

I don't usually read auto-biographies, and I have never before read anything autobiographical by any actor. I made an exception with this book by Frank Langella, because he is someone I recently discovered and I felt intrigued about him and because I like the concept of his book: a collection of short chapters about the people, more or less well known, he has met during his life.Some reviews, like the one by the New York Times, can be misleading. This is not a book about his sexual conquests, as it has been suggested. This is a far more interesting book: this is a book about failure.Mr Langella has met plenty of successful people, but he has also met with lots of actors whose early promise never materialised. Or actors whose early promise did materialise for a while but it was eventually ruined by the self-destructiveness, neediness, lack of emotional control, reality-denying narcissism and overwhelming emotional immaturity that seem to fall like a plague over many people in the acting community.And even the successful ones are interesting for what they have in themselves of failure. One of the most interesting chapters is about the very successful playwright Arthur Miller. The chapter is focused in Langella attempt to put to stage on of Miller's less successful plays, "After the fall", where the main character is based in Miller himself. Miller is unable to see how the character that reflects him is a person no one in the audience likes. He obviously likes himself, and has everybody in the play say all the time he is such a great person. He is not, and that's obvious by everyone except the character and Mr Miller. Langella, at the end, and after plenty of negotiating with Miller, manages to get the author's agreement to have the character slapped at the end of the play. Miller didn't really understand why it was necessary. "Because someone has to", Langella said. That was great. Miller was slapped enough during his time with Marilyn, I suspect, but he may have chosen not to think too much it when constructing his idealized fictional persona. Good of him to manage that and to be able to describe it for us in his book.His chapter about Elizabeth Taylor is painful to read. He dated her 10 years before her death. She was someone who couldn't remember a time in her life when she was not famous and who spent the last years of her life confined in a mansion full of tones (quite likely, literally tones) of clothing items, jewels and bottles of astringent lotion (she was promoting them and had to have them at home as a part of her contract, apparently), and no human contacts able to give her any type of emotional fulfilment.Langella writes superbly, not as a stylist (he is good, but not outstanding), but as a dissector of human souls. He must be a good actor.

Felt uncomfortable by some of the stories he tells. A bit like the betrayal of a good friend spilling the beans. I enjoyed it but as said some stories are far too personal to be indulging.