Roger pigaut

Betsy blair delphi
Karel reisz
Jeanne coyne

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The Memory of All That: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood, and Paris

October 23, 2017

”I realized that going to get what you want includes leaving behind not only good elements of that life, but even parts of yourself that flourished there. And you can’t get them back; they don’t fit in your luggage.”

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would and I'm glad I read it, but if you’re reading it for some insight into Gene Kelly, you might find yourself disappointed. While there are some stories about Gene and the life he and Betsy shared, the book is very much Ms. Blair’s memoirs, recalling her life from her perspective. This holds true for the whole book, including the post-Hollywood years. Blair rarely attempts to explain others' viewpoints or feelings or motivations or develop the people she encounters as full-fledged personalities. I suppose that’s fair, as all she can really know is her own reactions and feelings of her experiences. However, the result is that her writing seems sometimes overly analytical and self-reflective and she seems a little set apart from t

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Betsy Blair

American actress (1923–2009)

Betsy Blair (born Elizabeth Winifred Boger;^[1] December 11, 1923 – March 13, 2009) was an American actress of film and stage, long based in London.

Blair pursued a career in entertainment from the age of eight, and as a child worked as an amateur dancer, performed on radio, and worked as a model, before joining the chorus of Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe in 1940. There she met Gene Kelly; they were married the following year, when she was age 17 and divorced sixteen years later in 1957.

After work in the theatre, Blair began her film career playing supporting roles in films such as A Double Life (1947) and Another Part of the Forest (1948). Her interest in Marxism led to an investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Blair was blacklisted for some time, but resumed her career with a critically acclaimed performance in Marty (1955), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

She continued her career with regular theatre, film and televisio

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The Memory of All that: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood, and Paris

In this enchanting memoir, Betsy Blair -- Academy Award-nominated actress and the wife of the great Hollywood dancer Gene Kelly -- tells her story: from teenage dancer in the late thirties, to child-bride of a Hollywood movie star in the forties and fifties, to accomplished actress working in Europe.

Sixteen-year-old Blair met then-choreographer Kelly while dancing professionally and was soon swept up in a whirlwind courtship -- he gave her a New York education, complete with Marxist study groups and trips to Harlem's Savoy Theater, before marrying her and whisking her off to Hollywood.

She writes about the great times they had as Kelly flew higher and higher among the MGM stars: their famous Saturday night parties, their version of charades, their legendary Sunday afternoon volleyball games. Betsy rejected the Hollywood pattern (no swimming pool or fancy car) and writes of being drawn to the Communist Party, of the coming of the blacklist that brought an end to the optimism of the thirties and fo