Dropped Names -- Frank Langella

The subtitle of Frank Langella's memoir is Famous Men and Women as I Knew Them. There are over 60 chapters here, each one about a celebrity that Langella has encountered in one way or another during his lengthy career on the stage and in movies. It's gossipy, insightful, funny, sad, and hugely entertaining if, like me, you're a sucker for reading the intimate details of the lives of glamorous people whose lives are so different from your own that they might as well be living on Mars.

The book might have been subtitled First and Last Words, as that's what we get quite often. All the people Langella talks about are deceased except for one, Bunny Mellon, who gets the final chapter in the book. Mellon is one of the people for whom Langella has deep affection, and there are plenty of those here, including Raul Julia, Noel Coward, and Jackie Kennedy Onasis. He didn't like everyone, though, and his portraits of people like Lee Strassberg and Charlton Heston are hilariously bitchy.

Sex? Oh, yeah, and lots of it. Langella tells about many of his own affairs, naming names often enough, but many times simply referring to his "female companion." He mentions his wives, too, though only briefly. But then the book's not supposed to be about him. Even at that, plenty of things about him come through, including his devotion to his craft and his respect for those who practice it well. He doesn't mind revealing his own darker side now and then, either.

I found the book entertaining and downright irresistible. Check it out.