Lee Grant is known as a trailblazing female director and Oscar winning actress, but in the midst of her accolades as a young up-an-coming actor, her career was shattered by the HUAC committee, blacklisting her in Hollywood for over a decade. How did she continue and overcome? She said Yes to everything.
A terrific show business memoir and autobiography of an activist, Lee began in the 1950's as a member of New York's legendary Actor's Studio, while modelling and working on Broadway. At twenty-four, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Detective Story, winning Best Actress at Cannes. When she married, she was unconcerned that her husband once attended a communist meeting, but that was enough for someone to talk and overnight her career was at a full stop. This was 1951. No film or television studio would or could hire her from then on.
Continuing against injustice while teaching and doing theatre work, she fought twelve years to exonerate herself - coming one day just like that. Over with a vague letter at the age of thirty-six.
A respected actress, she went to work immediately starring in Peyton Place, Valley of the Dolls, In the Heat of the Night with Sidney Poitier, and Shampoo - for which she won the Oscar.
From the theatre scene in the Fifties to Malibu in the Seventies, this is one of the best autobiographies I've read of a true actor's life. She was not only on the scene but completely immersed with the major players of filmmaking, from discussing directing with a young Speilberg to being in the room when Dionne Warwick recorded with Burt Bacharach. She continued to do great film work (and in the case of Airport 77" - perhaps not her favourite role of hers but it is mine, she got to really chew the scenery, as only she can). After acting, she became a ground breaker as one of the first female directors in film and TV.
Read without preconceptions, I found this book a gem. Plenty of show business highs and lows, from the Oscars to parts in low budget thrillers like The Swarm, she said yes to life and yes to continuing. The sections on her personal life are just as engaging and it was a pleasure to read. I often note a page to jump back to and reread after I've finished a book - that this book has a note on about every fifth page should recommend it to anyone interested in film and theatre.
2014 / Hardcover / 463 pages
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