Depressing celebrity memoirs

Barbara Feldon’s. She had a hell of a time with the guy she married and nothing else seemed to work out. It becomes happier toward the end but she seems to have a depressive streak.

A good read, by the way. I knocked it out in an afternoon.

Candice Bergen’s second book was also depressing. She didn’t seem to mesh well with her second husband.

I thought the part of Demi Moore's memoir where she talked about her relationship with Ashton Kutcher was pretty depressing. She tried so hard to make herself feel hot enough for him and then he cheated on her with a much younger woman.

The memoir as a whole wasn't depressing but that part of her life bummed me out.

'YES, I CAN" by Sammy Davis JR. Despite the uplifting title, the memoir depressed the hell out of me.

'I'M GLAD MY MOM IS DEAD", couldn't finish it!

Poor Matthew Perry he’s just not getting everything his way so he’s let us know in book form. Too bad he’s not around .Like other has-beens he could have found continued fame in Trump/MAGA world.

He had plenty of opportunities to support Trump and chose not to, r5. Why are you talking about him like he died in 2012?

I am reading, trying to finish TELL ME EVERYTHING by Minka Kelly, also depressing and not well written

What a horrible comment about Perry R9. Only speak good about the dead. He’s dead-good!

Colton Haynes - Miss Memory Lane

"Once a Dancer" by Allegra Kent. She writes well, and is clearly smart and funny, but she has terrible taste in, or simply bad luck with, men and spent much of her life extremely stressed and depressed over relationships or her life in general. I remember one reviewer said she had "a habit of self-defeat," which is sad to read about in such a talented woman,

George Michael - A Life

R7 Minka’s was hard to read.

Sally Field, In Pieces

Gilda Radner's memoir "It's Always Something" is especially depressing.

Poor Gilda.

Yeah the Sally Field book caught me off guard, I thought I was just going to hear funny bts anecdotes about The Flying Nun.

And the Demi Moore memoir is pretty depressing throughout, r7. The Ashton bit isn’t the worst of it. The story of her childhood and adolescence was harrowing.

Jeannette McCurdy's "I'm Glad My Mom is Dead" is really well written, but it's a difficult book to read.

Will There Really Be a Morning? by Frances Farmer.

Spoiler alert: morning never came.

Julia Phillips's You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again. She did a LOT of drugs.

Dawn Steel's book They Can Kill You, But They Can't Eat You is only depressing in retrospect. She died of brain cancer some time after it was published.

SPARE by Prince Harry

It was depressing to learn what a self-absorbed, vacuous man Harry became. Certainly, there are valid explanations for why he is the way he is, but they were not enough to prevent me from disliking him. Such a waste of opportunity and privilege.

i love the Phillips memoir, full of SPITE

Just finished listening to the audiobook "How to Lose Your Mother" by Molly Jong-Fast, writer and political commentator and daughter of Erica Jong, author of "Fear of Flying" and other books. It primarily covers her life in the year 2023, right after the COVID epidemic, when she was already dealing with her mother's dementia, her stepfather Ken's Parkinson's (and his subsequent death in 2023), and then the death of her father-in-law Howard Fast (author of Spartacus), her aunt's death, and her husband Matthew's diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer, while continuing to work and keep up with her three kids. Whew! It's a lot.

She also writes about her family history and her childhood, which was awful, with her mom and stepdad leaving her care almost exclusively to paid help. Her mother Erica's alcoholism (which ran in Erica's family--her mom was a mean drunk), narcissism , and fame chasing was a big part of their lives. She describes her mom as having disassociated from her body due to some childhood trauma that Erica could not recall and trying to lose herself with one man after another, even during her marriages.

Molly had severe dyslexia and had trouble in school, felt unloved, and got lost in alcoholism and drug addiction in her teens and early 20s. She wrote she still feels a hollowness inside of her from the effects of her childhood.

Erica Jong's books were semi-autobiographical and included characters based on Molly and her life. Molly made a point of not reading her books because of it.

I think Molly takes some satisfaction in turning the tables on her mother and now being able to share their stories on her own terms, without harming her mother, whose dementia is far along. She is honest about the internal struggles over their shared history but emphasizes how deeply she loves her mother, despite the painful past.

She narrated her own book and although I found her voice and intonations grating, I felt sympathy for all she had been through and survived and think her story is worth knowing.

Oh wow r22, this is the first in hearing of Jong's dementia. How harrowing and tough for the daughter. I just finished the article; that was depressing.

Molly's book is really good.

I would say Sally Kellerman (omg she dated Kissinger), Tippi Hedren ( just about the stupidest mom and wild cat “rescuer” ever), Teri Garr(I like her but she didn’t reveal a whole lot. I guess if you want to protect your friends you shouldn’t try to write a bio).

I need to read that R22.

Burt Bacharach basically admitted he wasn’t a nice man despite his talent and “couldn’t relate” to his disabled daughter.

Angie D came off as a saint and a real mensch.

I could not even begin to buy or read R16. I would feel cursed just by the title.

Nothing is more depressing than your monomaniacal obsession, r20

The title “I’m Glad My Mom is Dead” is absolutely hilarious. Any gay who doesn’t relish that needs to turn in their gay card immediately.

What I can’t figure out is Angie D letting him make the decision to keep their daughter in a behavior modification school for YEARS when it was obvious she was autistic. The only thing l fault her for. And Burt seemed resistant to believing anything else.

R29 Maybe you're thinking of someone else? I don't think I've commented on Prince Harry or his book on DL before.

Joan Fontaine's book, No Bed of Roses, was somewhat depressing, though she tried to lighten it up with funny stories. Never really had a relationship that worked out.