Haywire

Fülszöveg

he was bom into the most enviable of circumstances—one of the three beautiful chil-dren of charming, successful, beloved parents living at the very center of the most glittering life America had to offer. Who could have imagined that this magical life would shatter, so conclusively, so destructively?
In Haywire, the daughter of Leiand Hay-ward and Margaret Sullavan tells the story of her extraordinary family: the aura of glamour and extreme privilege that surrounded her growing up—beauty, talent, money, grace, joy, all in seemingly infinite supply—and the care-lessness and emotional extravagance that were all the while invisibly at work. Until, inevitably, there were destroyed marriages, mental breakdown, tragic death; parents and children alike crippled in crucial, sometimes fatal ways.
Leiand Hayward: he was the most color-ful and dynamic of theatrical agents, "the Tos-canini of the telephone," making deals day and night for his clients: Garbo, Hemingway, Judy Garland, Billy... Tovább

Fülszöveg

he was bom into the most enviable of circumstances—one of the three beautiful chil-dren of charming, successful, beloved parents living at the very center of the most glittering life America had to offer. Who could have imagined that this magical life would shatter, so conclusively, so destructively?
In Haywire, the daughter of Leiand Hay-ward and Margaret Sullavan tells the story of her extraordinary family: the aura of glamour and extreme privilege that surrounded her growing up—beauty, talent, money, grace, joy, all in seemingly infinite supply—and the care-lessness and emotional extravagance that were all the while invisibly at work. Until, inevitably, there were destroyed marriages, mental breakdown, tragic death; parents and children alike crippled in crucial, sometimes fatal ways.
Leiand Hayward: he was the most color-ful and dynamic of theatrical agents, "the Tos-canini of the telephone," making deals day and night for his clients: Garbo, Hemingway, Judy Garland, Billy Wilder, Gregory Peck, Boris Karloff, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, Fred Astaire He was elegant, flamboyant, magnetic—with a warm, uncomplicated zest for a life charged with success and style.
Margaret Sullavan: she was a true star of both Hollywood and Broadway; a superb ac-tress; a spell-casting charmer, beautiful and spirited. "If ever I've known someone who was unique, it was Maggie," said Henry Fonda (they married as kids, got unmarried, almost remar-ried, raised their families as Best Friends). She loathed Hollywood and hungered for simplic-ity. Most of all, she was determined to bring up her children properly, privately; she knew what was right—for them, for Leiand, for anyone who came under her spell.
And the children: attractive, intelligent, adored; themselves in thrall to the romance of
(continued from front flap)
their parents'—and their own—lives. Brooke on the cover of Life at 15; Bill into—and out of-the best schools in America; exquisite Bridget plunging into the theater, into a happy love affair.
Suddenly, Bridget's death at 21—suicide? epilepsy? Bill, in and out of Menninger's. Mag-gie and Leiand divorced, miserable apart and impossible together; Maggie rejected by two of her children, hating her work, dying suddenly in a New Haven hotel during pre-Broadway tryouts____
What went wrong? What was wrong?
With amazing courage and control, Brooke Hayward re-creates her past, and her family's. While, in counterpoint to her narra-tive, the witnesses—others who knew and loved the Haywards—give us their own memories: the Fondas, Jimmy Stewart, the Mankiewiczes, Truman Capote, Diana Vreeland
Haywire takes us into fascinating lives, little by little revealing the disparity between their outer and inner circumstances. Brooke Hayward's story moves and galvanizes the reader—as a sharing of her own impassioned search for understanding, and as an incomparable portrayal of Hollywood and Broadway in their halcyon days. Vissza