Guilty Pleasure

I've been spending the past couple of late nights and late mornings indulging in one of my favourite guilty pleasures: an entertainment autobiography!  Many hours under the covers with George Hamilton's many, many, many lively adventures!  Hamilton led a colourful life before he got into the movie business.  Then...  The book is exactly what I want from a showbiz biography - sex, name-dropping, more sex, colourful characters and more sex.  Hamilton didn't exactly make a lot of really great movies, though I love "Two Weeks in Another Town," and am very fond of "A Light in the Piazza."  Who knew the story of how he got into the latter would be almost more fun than the lovely Florentine travelogue?

I'll just end with why Hamilton's mother never sought to be a movie star herself:

It was too hard, too demanding, and the moral cost was too high.  Sharing an insight with me culled from her earlier movie foray, she once told me that  in 1930s Hollywood, with the casting couch system running full tilt, for a woman to become a star she would probably have had to sleep with the entire studio.  Example: the casting director to get the role; the producers and directors to keep the role; the camera, makeup and lighting men to make sure you looked good; the editor, so he didn't leave your best work on the cutting room floor; and so on and so on.

A very juicy read.

Don't Mind If I Do

By George Hamilton and William Stadiem

Illustrated. 306 pages.

Touchstone