Dropped Names audiobook

I came to this book not as die-hard "fan" of Mr. Langella's work--I have liked some of his performances, and others not so much, he was never "the deciding factor" for me in seeing a film or play. He has played Dracula and Nixon, as well as Skeletor and Dog the Bad Pirate. His career has spanned five decades, which is impressive as a stand alone fact. In fact, it provides a good entry point to this book, which is filled with his memories of time spent with other well-known folks in theatre, movies, literature and "high society." Many of the people Mr. Langella discusses in the book he admits are hugely talented at what they do, yet, for some reason, there was a self-destructive streak that eventually took over. Throughout the 50 years or so chronicled in this book, we watch Mr. Langella go from a 10-month "unpaid internship" with Elia Kazan to his current position--that of a 74 year old individual looking over his life that has been filled--to put it mildly--with interesting encounters with people who used to be described as "bold face names." This is not so much as a "memoir" per se as it is a series of vignettes of his encounters with those folks. As such, there is not much biography here, tales of youthful struggle, sudden (or not-so-sudden) success, overconsumption of __________ (sex, drugs, booze, shopping, etc.), the resultant crash and subsequent rebirth that typical "celebrity" memoirs seem to follow. Instead, one gets the sense that Mr. Langella is both an avid and capable observer of others in the strange fishbowl world he exists in, and also determined to not fall victim to any of the demons that have laid so many of his compatriots low. Thus, what you get in this book is very much like (one imagines) stories and anecdotes you would hear from Mr. Langella at a dinner or cocktail party. I mean that in the best possible way--one feels as sort of a confidant into this world and where story after story comes with only the barest of background information, because it is assumed that you know enough background information to appreciate the story. Some of the stories are funny, many of them (especially the longish section involving a declining Elizabeth Taylor) are very sad, and a few seem unnecessarily cruel (the Oliver Reed bit, for one.). Unless the subject of the anecdote is directly involved in the sexual activities going on, Mr. Langella discreetly lists "my companion at the time," "my girlfriend at the time" or "my wife" without naming those names. And, to be sure, this book is a diary of someone who tasted a lot of sexual fruit during those five decades, and is not the slightest bit sorry or embarrassed (nor should he be). In short, this book is extremely entertaining for what it is--short tidbits and gossip about folks who are (almost all) dead. The chapters and sections are short, which makes for perfect "stop and start" reading. I don't know that there are any tremendous insights into either Mr. Langella or the people profiled in this book, but then again, that may not be the point. As one reviewer pointed out, one can see why Mr. Langella was invited so many places--he is engaging company and would seem to be a wonderful companion to enjoy passing the time over cocktails or dinner with--with excellent, naughty conversation.

It was AN UTTER DELIGHT to read this book. It lived fully up to its billing as advertised recently in USA Today. With clarity, insight, and an unflinching truthfulness and candor, Langella provides the reader with penetrating and well-crafted vignettes throughout his 50-year acting career of the many notable people of the last half of the 20th century (e.g. President Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Rita Hayworth, James Mason, Lawrence Olivier, George C. Scott, Raul Julia, Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman, the Queen Mother, Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor) with whom he worked on stage and screen or met during various periods of his life. In reading this book, I was able to get glimpses of what some of my favorite stars and people in the public eye I grew up admiring were really like. Their anxieties, fears, foibles, passions, and loves. I was saddened to see that George C. Scott felt himself, despite his love and talent for acting, to be a fraud. In a conversation with the author, he admitted that had acting not been open to him, he would have been a writer. "But I can't write." Langella proves here to be a deft writer, as well as a keen observer of people.

By choosing to make himself the supporting player and not the star, Mr. Langella has created a memoir consisting of 66 short pieces about encounters he's had, dropping some pretty surprising names and making them the stars of their pieces. At the time of writing, all but one had passed and could not present their side of events. But Langella is not meanspirited, only an honest observer or participant, and through combinations of luck and timing, has spanned generations in his lifetime. So we learn (maybe at times too much), about people who he worked with that included Gilbert Roland, Lawrence Olivier, and many others. Giving thanks where he felt it most deserving, he gives out indelible portraits of Jacqueline Onassis, Brooke Astor, and most notably Bunny Mellon. He doesn't dish, but doesn't hold back either, and some of the more high flying egos are pared down to scale (the Anthony Quinn piece made me laugh out loud). Ingested piecemeal like a rare box of bonbons, this is a memoir to savor.

Langella's acting is intense and dangerous. He's a guy you'll do your best to be careful around. I didn't know him as a writer until this. The writing comes across as the acting does. It's got the same quiet snap in its smart put-downs, and enough of those to make a reader grateful for the praise that goes out when it goes out.With a single exception all the celebrities he accounts for have died, the contents set up in order of decease. He's met some you'd expect and some you wouldn't. JFK in yellow pants, Monty Clift curled and unconscious in a hallway, Rita Hayworth patronized by a frustrated crew, Yul Brynner arrogantly insisting everyone at New York's 21 get an order of french fries. This is not a tell-all. He respects privacy, and only suggests where he may have been given liberties -- one or two, if, well, surprising.Since we're dealing with the dead, no one comes out of this without a final curtain, and few if any, comedies. While these read as terrific anecdotes, in the postscript Langella reminds you that living is not a dramatic art work. Life vibrates, has rhythms, in the moment. There's the final surprise of this book. It's got a philosophic theme: transience.

Frank Langella's memoir referencing actors, celebrities, and noteworthy people as he has known and interacted with them over the years is compelling, introspective, and searing. Langella rarely holds back his true feelings, but more so than his crafty and sometimes biting opinions on these people, it's the book's legendary scope of Langella's extraordinary life that mark it as something special. The man has truly utilized the spaces in his life; he has lived fully and immensely.

Wow, this was an unexpected surprise. I can't even remember how I happened to come across this book; it's unexpectedly interesting in the way that Langella gets to the heart of his encounters which he describes in a series of vignettes involving the rich and the famous. There is a depth that comes with age, as he has outlived almost all of the people featured here. One finds out who were jerks, who were really witty or fun, and a lot about how some of these people ended up in the last years of their lives. The stories are chatty and gossipy and insightful. Yul Brenner doesn't come off well and Rita Hayworth's latter days seem sad. His acquaintance with Jackie Kennedy shows her to be a complicated, private woman who probably suffered from ptsd. This should be a no-brainer, but I think that for people who were born after the assassination and only remember the barrage of gossip about her, it is easy to forget what she actually went through. Loretta Young comes across as exhibiting cheap and tacky behavior, though that might just be my interpretation. I thought that he was going to be another Elia Kazan apologist, just another suck-up who gives him a free pass because he has offered them jobs, but no Mr. Langella calls him out for his ratting people out to the HUAC. His take on Marlon Brando was that he was exceptional until he "dissolved into a self-indulgent, lazy, bore." Not only funny, this seemed dead on.Langella dispenses with his autobiographical information and just jumps right in to the reason (most likely) that people read celebrity memoirs, to get the dish on other celebrities from someone with inside information. His own wives, girlfriends, and children get cursory mention, and not even by name. Possibly to keep the privacy of those who are still living. Or maybe because he thought that readers would be more interested in what Arthur Miller was like than what he did for his child's fifth birthday. I applaud this. There are some idiosyncratic characters mentioned, and some of the snippets are gems. Some are laugh out loud funny. Though many are sad as they deal with end of life stories and the plight of aging actors. To some it up, this book contains no filler, just interesting anecdotes. It is an insider's view that humanizes 'legends'. Langella portrays his life as one filled with fun, friends, and laughs; though there are some regrets which consist mainly of not having had more time with friends who are no longer here.

The New York Times Books Review editor Pamela Paul recently recommended Frank Langella’s Dropped Names on the NYTBR podcast, and she was not wrong. The elegant actor is a fine writer with delicious stories to tell about the actors, directors, writers, government figures, and socialites he has known. The book’s chronology is based on the how long the individual under discussion has been deceased, so it begins with Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy and ends with Elizabeth Taylor and Bunny Mellon. Langella does not shy away from disparaging those he found unpleasant or pompous (Yul Brynner, Rex Harrison), and he is effusive in his praise of others (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Raul Julia). Langella had deep friendships with some of his subjects (Anne Bancroft, Jill Clayburgh) and brief or less complex relationships with others (Bette Davis, Paul Newman). Regardless of the nature of the relationships, Langella writes with honesty, including self-deprecation, and an actor’s sense of empathy. Perhaps the most affecting chapters deal with movie stars whom Langella came to know long after their glory days (Rita Hayworth, Laurence Olivier). Each chapter in Dropped Names offers anecdotes that will forever color a reader’s understanding of its subject.

I don't usually read auto-biographies, and I have never before read anything autobiographical by any actor. I made an exception with this book by Frank Langella, because he is someone I recently discovered and I felt intrigued about him and because I like the concept of his book: a collection of short chapters about the people, more or less well known, he has met during his life.Some reviews, like the one by the New York Times, can be misleading. This is not a book about his sexual conquests, as it has been suggested. This is a far more interesting book: this is a book about failure.Mr Langella has met plenty of successful people, but he has also met with lots of actors whose early promise never materialised. Or actors whose early promise did materialise for a while but it was eventually ruined by the self-destructiveness, neediness, lack of emotional control, reality-denying narcissism and overwhelming emotional immaturity that seem to fall like a plague over many people in the acting community.And even the successful ones are interesting for what they have in themselves of failure. One of the most interesting chapters is about the very successful playwright Arthur Miller. The chapter is focused in Langella attempt to put to stage on of Miller's less successful plays, "After the fall", where the main character is based in Miller himself. Miller is unable to see how the character that reflects him is a person no one in the audience likes. He obviously likes himself, and has everybody in the play say all the time he is such a great person. He is not, and that's obvious by everyone except the character and Mr Miller. Langella, at the end, and after plenty of negotiating with Miller, manages to get the author's agreement to have the character slapped at the end of the play. Miller didn't really understand why it was necessary. "Because someone has to", Langella said. That was great. Miller was slapped enough during his time with Marilyn, I suspect, but he may have chosen not to think too much it when constructing his idealized fictional persona. Good of him to manage that and to be able to describe it for us in his book.His chapter about Elizabeth Taylor is painful to read. He dated her 10 years before her death. She was someone who couldn't remember a time in her life when she was not famous and who spent the last years of her life confined in a mansion full of tones (quite likely, literally tones) of clothing items, jewels and bottles of astringent lotion (she was promoting them and had to have them at home as a part of her contract, apparently), and no human contacts able to give her any type of emotional fulfilment.Langella writes superbly, not as a stylist (he is good, but not outstanding), but as a dissector of human souls. He must be a good actor.

Rita Hayworth dancing by candlelight in a small Mexican village; Elizabeth Taylor devouring homemade pasta and tenderly wrapping him in her pashmina scarf; streaking for Sir Laurence Olivier in a drafty English castle; terrifying a dozing Jackie Onassis; carrying an unconscious Montgomery Clift to safety on a dark New York City street. Captured forever in a unique memoir, Frank Langella's myriad encounters with some of the past century's most famous human beings are profoundly affecting, funny, wicked, sometimes shocking, and utterly irresistible. With sharp wit and a perceptive eye, Mr. Langella takes us with him into the private worlds and privileged lives of movie stars, presidents, royalty, literary lions, the social elite, and the greats of the Broadway stage. What, for instance, was Jack Kennedy doing on that coffee table? Why did the Queen Mother need Mr. Langella's help? When was Paul Mellon going to pay him money owed? How did Brooke Astor lose her virginity? Why was Robert Mitchum singing Gilbert & Sullivan patter songs at top volume, and what did Marilyn Monroe say to him that helped change the course of his life? Dropped Names is a sizzling platter of stellar vignettes— pungent, indeed, but poignant as well. He opens telling of a chance Manhattan encounter with Marilyn Monroe in 1953, and ends with the wealthy Bunny Mellon, whose motto was "Nothing should be noticed." Through these shared experiences, we learn something, too, of Mr. Langella's personal journey from the age of fifteen to the present day. Dropped Names is, like its subjects, absolutely riveting and unforgettable. Frank Langella has been a professional actor for over five decades and hopes to carry on for several more. He began performing as a boy in his hometown of Bayonne, New Jersey, and currently resides in New York City. This is his first book.

O. M. G. This book was even more amazing than I could have wished. Truly, truly a delight all the way through. I was expecting a traditional memoir, and before I read it, I complained loudly about the lack of a photo insert--what kind of a useless celebrity memoir doesn't have a photo insert? Then I started reading, and discovered that this is literally what the title says: each chapter is about a famous dead person who once was a part of Frank Langella's life, for either a brief or extended time, and his impressions of or a funny/sad/bitchy anecdote about him or her. Montgomery Clift, Robert Mitchum, Noel Coward, Brooke Astor, Raul Julia, Elizabeth Taylor, and many, many more. I had no idea Langella had lived such a wondrous, rarefied life. His early-twenties friendship with the daughter of socialite Bunny Mellon (The only figure in the book who still walks among us, but at 102, it's only a matter of time.) led him to a world of private planes and beach weekends with Jackie Onassis; his later friendship with Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks meant weekends on Fire Island or dinners in their respective apartments. There are so many tales told out of school here that it was thrilling for a fan of old Hollywood such as I. I wonder if the widows, widowers, and children of the people herein are furious for the stories revealed, and if Langella deliberately set out to burn bridges. Langella comes across as a pompous old ham, of the Larry Olivier/calling people "Dear Boy"/kissing on both cheeks school; I don't mean this as an insult, either, but a genuine compliment. I have followed his career since I was a young girl and saw him as "Dracula," now I love him more than ever. My criticisms of this book are the lack of pictures, and the cover design, which resembles nothing so much as one of those "Cover to be Unveiled Later" mockups.

Frank Langella as an actor is one of those guys who doesn't go in for a lot of rigmarole; he just does the job. I happen to think he does it quite well--check out the 1979 version of Dracula, or The Ninth Gate, where he stood out well against Johnny Depp's scenery chewing performance if you don't know what I'm talking about.On to the book review, though (one gets the impression Mr. L. wouldn't stand for too much ass kissing about his accomplishments, "Get it done." he might say.)As a memoir, this is adequate. There are some details about his life, how he started in acting as a theater apprentice, how he eschewed the Actor's Studio way of acting in favor of Stella Adler, how he met JFK as a young man, his friendships with people like Raul Julia, Alan Bates, a few people he didn't care for, such as Rex Harrison, he tells it like it was. There were some details about ladies he dated that seemed like too much information--not salacious details, just stuff that seemed a little unflattering.This is more of a remembrance of the more famous and the slightly less famous people Frank has known, basically, it does what it says on the tin. Again, don't look to this for overly salacious dish, but do appreciate the way he reveals his own character and values in the way he speaks about friends and the not so friendly.If you're a fan like I am, this book is highly recommended.