Odd Woman Out by Melanie Chartoff

Odd Woman Out by Melanie Chartoff

Published by Books Fluent ISBN 9781735268941

Trade paperback, $14.99, 269 pages

I first remember seeing Melanie Chartoff as a beautiful and very funny cast member on ABC's 1980's late night answer to Saturday Night Live called Fridays. She had such a distinctive voice, she made an impression on me.

Her memoir Odd Woman Out: Exposures in Essays and Stories starts off with Indecent Sexposure, a story about her visit to her gynecologist, who writes her a prescription for a "personal messager" (as they call it in the Sharper Image catalogue), and the address of the new Hustler store on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.

Melanie puts on big sunglasses and a trench coat, and tries to be as discreet as possible. It just so happens that Entertainment Tonight is there doing a story on Larry Flynt at the grand opening. She manages to avoid being on television, but she is captured in a photo that ends up in Star magazine on the Worst Dressed page, in her trench coat and sunglasses, identified at the grand opening of the Hustler store. What made it worse is that several people mailed her the clipping, along with congratulations, sort of like @-ing someone on Twitter.

From there, Melanie shares her career ups and downs, love affairs, and anecdotes about Ed Asner (oh, Mr. Grant), Julie Newmar (oh, Catwoman!), being hired at age 14 by Phil Spector after he saw her and her friend go-go dancing at a Bar Mitzvah, interviewing Ben Kingsley while he was on Broadway in A Midnight Summer's Dream and she was an arts critic at her college newpaper, answering fan mail for Richard Hatch when they were both on the soap opera All My Children (he was the hot young star, she had a small recurring role).

Her stage experiences are interesting, particularly her Broadway debut in a very experimental show that ended in a disaster that precursed Spiderman's problematic Broadway run. Melanie took the craft of acting seriously, and you get a real sense of the dedication and heartbreak that it takes to have a life in the arts.

She shares her difficult family life, with a father who was a bully to her, her younger sister and mother. Her mother's story is sad, and it colored her complicated relationship with Melanie. Melanie leaving home and creating a successful life away from her family caused a friction that never melted.

The last few essays share Melanie's delight at finding love and marrying for the first time in her 60s, when she had given up on perhaps ever doing that. She thought she was destined to be the odd woman out in social situations. Her decriptions of the physical limitations of aging with her husband will bring a nod of recognition to middle-aged people everywhere.

Odd Woman Out is not just another celebrity memoir, Melanie Chartoff brings the reader into her head and heart and she shares her life with wit and honesty. She is a wonderful writer, it's clear she spent as much time honing her literary craft as she did making us laugh. I recommend it.

Thanks to Books Forward for providing a copy for a honest review.

Books About Celebrities

Reprinted from the Citizen.

Books by and about celebrities have a built-in audience. People are curious to read more about their favorite stars, how they got to be where they are, who influenced them and yes, even for some good old gossip.

Three recent books by and about celebrities have published, all different and interesting in their own way.

Leslie Bennetts “Last Girl Before Freeway”: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers” is the lone biography here. Bennett covers Rivers’ entire life, where she was Joan Molinsky, to her rise as a stand-up comedienne, her successes and failures, to her eventual death in September of 2014 during what was supposed to be a simple surgical procedure. 

The book is comprehensive, and with a subject such as Rivers, who accomplished so much in her life, it flies by quickly. Joan Molinsky grew up in a household where her doctor-father, a kind and hard-working man, never made enough money for his wife, who feared poverty and always tried to keep up with the Joneses. 

Joan was one of the first successful female stand-up comediennes, and the book is filled with anecdotes from younger female stand-ups who sing the praises of Joan’s generosity, even though Rivers often resented being called a mentor. She always wanted to be hip and relevant, and her fearless stand-up routines, which she continued weekly even up to her death, reflected that.

The early sections of the book rely on material from Rivers’ own writings (she wrote several books, including two memoirs), but once Bennetts interviews people who worked with Rivers, who knew her well, the book gives the reader a better overall picture of this complicated woman.

Rivers was driven, and her many self-reinventions, rising from the ashes of her failed Fox talk show after her very public falling out with Johnny Carson to become not only a successful stand-up comic but also a hugely successful businesswoman designing and selling jewelry in the fledgling QVC network, are an inspiration to anyone who has been knocked down in life.

Actor Bryan Cranston’s “Life in Parts” tells his story of a journeyman actor, where he began as a soap opera actor on “Loving” and became famous as the goofy dad on “Malcolm in the Middle”, and then hit the stratosphere playing high school science teacher-turned-drug-kingpin Walter White on “Breaking Bad”.  

“Life in Parts” recounts his childhood, with a father who wanted to be a successful actor but failed, and then takes you through the life of an actor trying to make it. Cranston is successful because he treats acting as a craft, something to be finely honed. 

He shares stories from his early days on “Loving”, including how he found out he was fired, and there is a little good gossip here. He speaks fondly of his days on “Malcolm in the Middle”, and there are a few chapters on “Breaking Bad”, with some interesting inside information for fans.

For anyone who loves the craft of acting, “Life in Parts” is wonderful book. Cranston has such a reverence for the work of acting, and reading about his process, about how much he cares about doing good work, is fascinating. 

Trevor Noah is best known as the new host of “The Daily Show”, but his book “Born a Crime: Stories From A South Africa Childhood” is about his life growing up as the son of a black African woman and white Swiss man in South Africa. 

Noah is a terrific writer, and he grabs your attention right from the beginning. He grew up when apartheid was ending, after Nelson Mandela was freed from prison, but things didn’t get easier for South Africans right away. There was a strict caste system, and black Africans were pitted against colored Africans, and since Noah was half-white, he didn’t fit in anywhere.

“Born A Crime” gets its title from the fact that it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry, so his parents had to hide their relationship, and Trevor was never allowed to walk next to both of his parents.

The book is a really a love letter to his mom, who pretty much raised Trevor alone, although Trevor spent a lot of time with his grandmother. His stories of childhood are touching, funny and sad.

Anyone who likes a good memoir will enjoy “Born a Crime”. It gives the reader a look at a place many of us are unfamiliar with, yet his story of a mother who worked hard to give her son a better life is universal.

“Last Girl Before Freeway” by Leslie Bennetts-A 

Published by Little Brown

Hardcover, $28, 433 pages

“A Life in Parts” by Bryan Cranston- A-

Published by Scribner

Hardcover, $27, 289 pages

“Born A Crime” by Trevor Noah- A+

Published by Spiegel & Grau

Hardcover, $28, 304 pages

The BEA Roundup 1- The Celebrities (Part 1)- Barbra Streisand's Keynote Address

I know that my roundup of BEA (Book Expo of America) is late, but I hope you will think it worth the wait.

I could not attend many of the early week panels, but I did snag a coveted ticket to the keynote talk with Barbra Streisand interviewed by O Magazine's Gayle King.

It was a coup for BEA to get such a huge name like Streisand, who was promoting her upcoming book My Passion for Design: A Private Tour, which will publish in November. She had a slideshow of a few photos from the book, many of which were taken by Ms. Streisand.

The photos were breathtaking. She has a millhouse, with a huge water mill in front. She brought photos of her Red Barn, which is huge (and gorgeous) as well.

Gayle King seemed very nervous, starting the interview by stating that she had planned on wearing an orange dress until she heard that Streisand hates orange. Streisand told King to NEVER wear orange- or certain shades of yellow. King said that she even had her assistant take out the orange post-it notes that King had placed in her copy of the book she was using as reference on stage. And she changed her orange toenail polish.

I think that King was trying to be funny, but it came off as a little desperate to not incur the wrath of Streisand. (It put me in mind of a literary reference- The Emperor Has No Clothes.) King seemed to fear saying or doing the wrong thing. As the interview progressed, she calmed down.

Streisand has the rap of being a perfectionist, and she did nothing to dissuade the audience from that perception. She spoke of her difficulty in finding architects on the west coast who understood her wish for an east coast-style home in California. She went through several different contractors, including one who tore up a hillside to put in a boulder stairs. Streisand did not want the hillside torn down, and insisted that it was unnecessary in order to create the stairs, no matter what the contractor believed was sound engineering. He was fired.

She stated the importance of the outside garden flowers complimenting the color scheme inside the house. It is an affront to her that someone would have flower colors in their garden that clashed with the inside decor. I said to the woman sitting next to me that I would not want to be Streisand's husband. Her reply: "I wouldn't want to be her daughter-in-law." Funny but true.

She opened up a bit about her childhood and her parents. She clearly idolized her father, who died when she was a toddler, and is less kind about her mother. I get the feeling that if her father had lived, he may have disappointed her as well. Her early years were marked by poverty, and she said that the lack of a couch in her mother's apartment led to her homes today being filled with couches.

Streisand's need for perfection means that this book will be fabulous. It will make a great Christmas gift for people who love design.