Book Review: Nixon's Life to Live

I'm glad Agnes Nixon, who died last September at the age of 93, wrote her memoirs. She's an important figure in television history, and it's good to have her memories recorded in her own voice. I just wish I could have found the book more satisfying.

What I found most bothersome was the way this book skims the surface, studiously avoiding controversy and unpleasantness. Ms. Nixon once again relates proudly how One Life to Live, in 1968, did what was a groundbreaking story for its day: the tale of Carla Benari, a light-skinned African-American woman trying to find her way in a bigoted society. Ms. Nixon recalls the difficulty she and her colleagues had in casting the role, and the excitement she felt when they found Ellen Holly, who played Carla so beautifully. Included in the book's photo section is a picture of Tony-winning actress Lillian Hayman, who appeared as Carla's mother, Sadie.

What's missing is any acknowledgment of the poor treatment Ms. Holly says she received from producers at One Life, the low pay she received compared to her Caucasian colleagues, and the nasty way she and Ms. Hayman were fired when bigwigs decided the actresses, and their characters, were no longer useful. Whether all of Ms. Holly's allegations, which she made in her own memoirs and in Jeff Giles' excellent oral history of One Life, are true is open to speculation. But I was disappointed, as a reader, that Ms. Nixon utterly ignores the controversy, of which she was certainly aware. In fact, One Life receives little attention here, compared to All My Children, and Ms. Nixon's third ABC serial, the less-successful Loving, is absent altogether.

I also hoped to learn more about the somewhat enigmatic Irna Phillips, often called "Queen of the Soaps," who largely invented the genre, and was Ms. Nixon's mentor. Others have depicted her as a complex, demanding woman, without probing much beneath the surface, and I wanted to hear from someone who knew her perhaps as well as anyone did. Ms. Nixon's brief discussion of Phillips is disappointingly bland and superficial.

Ms. Nixon was elderly and apparently in shaky health when she completed this book, and that may explain some of its shortcomings (including some odd factual errors about her own shows and characters). Still, she does offer an interesting account of her personal life, and the ways in which her father and others were reflected in her TV characters. It's just a pity that, for once, the story stops before she's finished telling it.

The 95-Year-Old Man

Here's wishing a very happy 95th birthday to the comedic genius Carl Reiner, born March 20, 1922. He can take great pride in creating and producing The Dick Van Dyke Show, a sitcom classic that is still fresh and funny more than 50 years after its debut. What a legacy -- and he's not through yet!

Book Review: Lightner on Lightner

I'm always predisposed to like a show business biography covering someone who hasn't already been the subject of a dozen books. On that score alone, Winnie Lightner: Tomboy of the Talkies (University Press of Mississippi) starts with an advantage. In fact, author David L. Lightner, a history professor, says that one of the book's goals is to alleviate the "public amnesia" that has left Lightner, a popular star of stage and screen in her day, largely forgotten today.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Lightner was a musical comedy star at Warner Brothers, often cast as a fun-loving golddigger. But her film success was short-lived. As the grim realities of the Great Depression (not to mention the Motion Picture Production Code) set in, Lightner's best opportunities began to slip away. She was soon demoted to supporting roles, usually as the heroine's best friend, and by 1934 she threw in the towel altogether, saying she "never gave a hang for fame" anyway.

Lightner (the author) does a fine job of bringing out his subject's personality, as well as the life she lived before, during, and after her film career. Her relationship with film director Roy Del Ruth (with whom she had a son) is covered in detail. This book is well worth a look for film buffs.

Your Sister Did WHAT?

That look you reserve for your sister-in-law. The one played by Joan Crawford. The one who's coming to live with you. The one who was just released from a mental institution after twenty years. For committing axe murders...

Happy birthday, Rochelle Hudson! Born March 6, 1916, she became a movie ingenue in the 1930s, named a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1931. Some thirty years later, having paused along the way to play Natalie Wood's mother in Rebel Without a Cause, she made the acquaintance of flamboyant director William Castle. He gave her two of her last movie roles, in his shockers Strait-Jacket (pictured above) and The Night Walker. Miss Hudson died in 1972.