Memoirs by Faded D-Listers

"He started paying oral homage to my vagina"

LMAO

I guess Britt Ekland was A-list adjacent, not C or D -list, but "True Britt" is florid and fun:

Rod Stewart was eighteen months younger than me. At last I was with a man virtually of my own generation. For so much of my life I had been influenced by the father figure. I had missed out so much in my youth. My early twenties had been stifled by Peter Sellers and his indoctrinations on the immaturity and rashness of youth. With Rod I could go to parties and discos and let my hair down.

I had to look up Sharon Farrell because I didn’t think I knew who she was but I guess have seen her in a few things - It’s Alive, Night of the Comet, The Stunt Man, Can’t Buy Me Love. So glad to know about the sex life of someone I can barely picture.

She had phone sex with Lee Majors? Was he getting a blowjob from his male 'protegé' at the time?

I barely remember Sharon Farrell, and I sure didn’t need to hear about her painful experiences with anal sex and wearing a buttplug all day.

Her son is named Chance Boyer.

Anyone read the memoir written by the actress Evelyn Keys who played a sister of Scarlet O Hara in Gone with the wind? So depressing!!

Who’s the Dale that Sharon mentions?

[quote]Who’s the Dale that Sharon mentions?

One of the Disney Chipmunks, Rose.

Disney chipmunks did anal???!!!!

The gold standard

I'm a big fan of the early poetry of Suzanne Somers interpreted by Kristin Wiig.

She did the Rescue Rangers, R9.

OP I liked A Low Life in High Heels by Holly Woodlawn.

R6: why was it depressing?

If you’ve got mom at R10, we might as well throw in the son as well.

Sharon Farrell was also a Y&R actress so we’ve hit the trifecta.

R14, She was a failed actress that lived with the miserable and abusive Artie Shaw for 20+ years because it was obvious she didn’t know how to/feel capable of financially supporting herself. It made me bummed that she wasn’t able to get her act together. The overall impression I got was that she basically threw a big chunk of her life away.

That is sad r16. He seems like an asshole, but damn, I guess he had something. Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, almost Judy Garland. Must have had something, but the trick seems to have been fuck him and get out of there quick.

I Am Not Ashamed is great

R10 I **knew** someone would have shared that one.

That crazy bitch!

There was a memoir by Phyllis Newman, who had basically three things to her name:

(1) She was the wife of the lyricist Adolph Green, and appeared on game shows and talk shows with him;

(2) She won a Best Supporting Actress in a Musical Tony for the little-seen "Subways are for Sleeping";

(3) She understudied Judy Holliday in "Bells Are Ringing"

Oh I love obscure DL entertainment history. Did "Subways are for Sleeping" have anything to do with Don't Sleep in the Subway.

r21: actually, yes. The title of the musical inspired that Petula Clark song, which premiered in the UK to the general puzzlement of Britons. They would say "the undergrounds" rather than what we Americans call "subways"--a "subway" to them is a sunken pathway with open air but below ground level, and so a bad place for sleeping; but the writers of the musical and the writers of the Pet Clark song both meant underground trains by the term.

Thanks r22. And I'll reiterate LOVE obscure entertainment history on DL.

OP, you're wonderful. Thank you.

I have signed copies of Sophie Tucker's ("Some of These Days") and Hikdegarde's (Over 50? So What!) autobiographies, but they're funny for other reasons than how they opened their most private parts.

She was "Evelyn Keyes."

SPY Magazine used to do a hilarious yearly round-up of the most unintentionally passages from celebrity memoirs and autobiographies, whether by A-listers or D-listers, and some parts of them have always stayed with me, like Malcolm Jamal-Warner giving his teenage readers his okay to masturbate, or Debbie Reynolds (not a D-lister, of course) praying ever night to the spirit of her beloved mentor Agnes Moorhead after the latter's death (and sometimes receiving responses from the late Agnes from the Great Beyond!).

Agnes was not Debbie's mentor.

She was her womentor.

Famously.

OP you mention "Stanwyck", certainly you're not referring to Barbara Stanwyck as anything, but A list, right?

There is no way anyone would consider her anything but A list!

Did Zasu Pitts write her memoirs? The perfect title would have been Life Is Just a Bowl of Pitts.

Hedy Lamarr’s “Ecstacy and Me” includes a vivid description of her being orally serviced by a famous female costume designer. But Lamarr later claimed that she didn’t write thd book.

I bought Sharon Farrell's and haven't gone more than few pages but it doesn't seem like crap, it seems dishy and fun.

I also have Hollywood Mother of the Year and A Difficult Woman in Hollywood in my to-read pile.

R28 No, certainly not. I merely meant that while I enjoy reading about real stars, there’s a devil may care charm in the downtrodden.

R5 Chance’s father — Sharon’s third or fourth husband — was the heir to the White King soap fortune. White King was a homegrown (California) and once mighty brand.

R2 Peter Sellers had kept Britt on a very short leash! I can understand her letting loose with Rod and, later, Slim Jim Phantom from The Stray Cats.

"Rod came into my life six weeks after I parted from Lou Adler, and I rose back into the sky like a gull whose oil-soaked wings had been cleansed by a detergent."

R6 R25 I read Keyes’s first memoir, “Scarlett O’Hara’s Younger Sister” when it was first published in the early 1980s during a huge wave of celebrity autobiographies. She also married Orson Welles and John Huston. It was a surprise bestseller. But her follow up was not as interesting or successful. Meanwhile, I adored Shelley Winters’s first memoir, “Shelley, Also Known as Shirley.” A great big tell all and catnip for 1950s Hollywood fans.

R31 It is fun…but I wish she would send it to me in a word doc and let me edit it for her.

Tisha Sterling’s book had some gold…particularly her “bio within a bio” on her mom, Ann Sothern.

R7 Dale Trevillion, a minor league film producer, who, predictably, spent her savings, controlled her, and emotionally abused her.

Trevillion sued Farrell for property as recently as 2016, but the case was dismissed.

There’s a TokToker who highlights quotes and info from D List celebrity memoirs.

Subways Are for Sleeping has a song called Be a Santa. Yesterday was SantaCon so I guess it was a musical 60 years ahead off its time.

Ha! I never thought about that r42 but "Be a Santa" is the first act finale and features most of the cast running around New York dressed as Santa Claus.

The Be a Santa number from Subways Are for Sleeping.

Now back to the thread topic, please.

Was it Edith Head who serviced Hedy Lamar?

Graham Payn's book about Noel Coward was absolutely unreadable. If those mentioned above are D-listers, he was deffo D-.

Fuck. I only just watched Out of the Blue (1980) and one of the extras was an interview with Sharon Farrell.

She wasn't aware that Linda Manz had passed away last year.

r47 Where did you find Out of the Blue? Did you need to buy on DVD? I cannot find it streaming and always wanted to see it. A few weeks ago, I found it on YouTube, started watching, got hooked, but stopped midway through. A few nights later it had been taken down. It was very hypnotic and Linda Manz was fantastic. Now that I am reading about Farrell, I want to find it. During the filming of Out of the Blue, she herself was in the throes of addiction and I kind of felt like she was playing herself a bit

Miss Farrell is very South Shore of Long Island without being South Shore.

Sharon Farrell.....the downmarket Sally Kirkland?

Burt Ward insinuated that Marta Kristen, Judy from LOST IN SPACE, tried to attack him w/an axe after sex in his horribly written vanity press memoir, BOY WONDER: MY LIFE IN TIGHTS.

I love this guy's Amazon review of Burt Ward's memoir.

" Published by a company that Burt Ward owns (with good cause... no one in their right mind would touch this), Burt tells us how he was an honor role student, best chess player in his school, and speed reads 30,000 words a minute. He later describes how he was Bruce Lee's equal in the martial arts and how the nasty Batman producers kept him from playing the title role in The Graduate, leaving the role open for Dustin Hoffman. What he does not tell us is how such a great actor as he seems to feel that he is, spent the next thirty years making a living shaking hands at car lots. He does tell us that he got laid a lot. Not as much detail is spent discussing the un-named compainons though as tales as to how large his organ is, and how many orgasms he was able to bring them to on a regular basis. Funny thing about the book. He never discusses any friends. Upon reading the book it is apparent as to why. It is hard to imagine him having any."

Anne Heche's "Call Me Crazy" is excellent trash.

R47 It was actually I Blu Ray Region B from the UK, though I understand a Region A edition is being released soon in the US.

I remember when Burt’s Ward’s autobiography came out. If I recall, he discussed his huge schlong and numerous sexual escapes including group sex (women only) with Adam West.

R38, what did Tisha Sterling say? I've always liked her

Olivia Hussey talks about her relationship with actor Christopher Jones. She said he beat and raped her after she broke up with him

R56 She has a lot of stories. A lot of addiction and lost opportunities…but the early years when she was a kid and Ann was a star were a lot of fun to read.

But she tells a very disturbing story about how Ann, at the height of her “Maisie” fame and before she was married to Robert Sterling, felt she needed to adopt. She was visiting Chicago and became charmed by the newsie outside her hotel. He was 9 or 10 and she asked to meet his family. They lived in poverty and he had 11 or 12 siblings. She asked his parents if they would “give” him to her…and they agreed (!)

She took him back with her to LA. She sent him to private school and lived in luxury. She loved him like a son and thought he was hers for good. But about a year later his family showed up and threatened her and she had to give him back.

She never heard from them again, but decades later (when Ann was in a wheelchair) a woman came up to her and said she had known the boy and his family. Ann lit up in excitement. Then the woman told her the boy had had a rough life and had died in his forties.

^^ does Tisha write about many stars of Old Hollywood in this book?

Charm school- what a great concept. They should bring it back.