Judging by this satisfyingly scandalous new memoir, Frank Langella has slept with, been propositioned by, or at least swapped dirty jokes with a breathtaking swath of stars over his illustrious half-century career. Each of the 65 chapters in “Dropped Names” offers a no-holds-barred eulogy somewhere between mash note and carpet-bombing. The collection paints Hollywood and Broadway as teeming with vulgar, neurotic and irresistible company, and Langella as relentlessly affable in the face of nonstop groping by famous people in far-flung locations. He ambles into history and falls into notable beds like some kind of sexy Forrest Gump or beefcake Zelig.
On Cape Cod, Noël Coward hits on him in the presence of President and Mrs. Kennedy. In Arizona, filming a TV remake of “The Mark of Zorro,” Yvonne De Carlo (better known as Lily Munster) plays Langella’s mother by day, and by night treats him “like a pretty girl in the back seat of a convertible on a hot summer night.” In the south of England, on location for “Dracula,” Langella flashes Laurence Olivier through the doorway of their adjoining suites, calling, “Oh professor, see anything you like?” He and Jill Clayburgh come “dangerously close to a tumble,” and backstage they and Raul Julia become “a pulsating Oreo cookie with nothing remotely chaste about where our hands and mouths wandered.” The book’s subtitle should be “Bad Girls Go Everywhere,” although Langella is no girl — as Anthony Perkins rather bluntly attempts to verify one night in a dressing room.
Aside from a little coyness about his intimate relationship with Jackie Onassis, Langella pulls very few punches. Richard Burton is “a crashing bore”; Yul Brynner is paranoid and imperious; Rex Harrison, a “son of a bitch”; Lee Strasberg, “arrogant and insufferable.” Langella is “flattered and somewhat perversely titillated” when Elia Kazan makes a pass at his girlfriend in an effort to break him down, but of Kazan’s other bad behavior, before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he says, “I have always felt that talent such as his doesn’t give you rights.” Langella recalls sitting with his hands folded when Kazan received a standing ovation at the Oscars.
Luckily for others, Langella is as enthusiastic as he is vicious. He celebrates Robert Mitchum’s “carefree, rangy masculinity,” Roger Vadim’s “devotion to physical pleasure,” and Paul Newman’s “original and mesmerizing” beauty (although he does call him “dull” and note that he didn’t have “much of a behind”). Langella saves his highest praise for women of a certain age — that age entitling one to a discount at the movies. Loretta Young in her late 70s was “breathtaking . . . very attractive.” Brooke Astor in her late 90s was “ultrafeminine and alluring” — and in Langella’s company not shy about relating how she lost her virginity. He waxes philosophical about his on-set affair with Rita Hayworth when he was 34. It was her last film. She was 20 years older and suffering from alcoholism and early Alzheimer’s, yet, “in the candle’s light and fire’s glow,” Hayworth “once again becomes the Goddess.” If this memoir doesn’t make the book club of every seniors’ home in America, then there’s something wrong with the Greatest Generation.
While never boring, “Dropped Names” is in places more sketch than oil painting. The ode to Princess Diana, whom Langella never met, is a weak link, as is his opening chapter on Marilyn Monroe, which leads with the generic: “Remember when everything meant so much?” There are a few distracting repetitions, including at least 10 variations on the phrase “minimal makeup.” (Perhaps he’s spent so much time surrounded by stars in greasepaint that whenever he sees a woman’s pores, he exults.) But the book’s stylistic imperfections add to the sense that you’re reading the uncensored diary of an indefatigably social and curious man, a modern-entertainment-industry Samuel Pepys. Narcissistic? Sure. He grants that he was especially “selfish and obstreperous” in his youth. But he’s inspiringly game.
The word “slut” has been invoked in the public discourse as an ugly slur. But Langella’s book celebrates sluttiness as a worthy — even noble — way of life. When Bette Davis wants to have “racy phone conversations . . . rife with foreplay,” he agrees, because how could you not? When Elizabeth Taylor says, “Come on up, baby, and put me to sleep,” who is he to resist? (He does make her chase him first.) By his cheerful debauchery, Langella reveals something certain commentators have obscured: sluts are the best — hungry for experience and generous with themselves in its pursuit. He talks about how joyful it was in his 20s to “throw some scripts, jeans and a few packs of condoms into a bag,” and head out to do plays and bed theater apprentices.
There is so much happy sexuality in this book that reading it is like being flirted with for a whole party by the hottest person in the room. It’s no wonder Langella was invited everywhere.
Ada Calhoun is a co-author (with Tim Gunn) of “Gunn’s Golden Rules,” the author of “Instinctive Parenting” and a frequent contributor to the Book Review
Copyright. 2012. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved
Comments (1)
am not sure that I would need more than this review to get the general gist of Frank’s message. It may have some redeeming cosmic cultural value that I am not aware of, but to devote really scarce time to this tryst, and that tryst, is far to much a spectator sport that is so much less enjoyable than it would be to do the necessary field work, so as to then be able to write a book more finely layered, and subtlety drawn from the true insights into the specific laissons, but also what general conclusions non the human condition in general are revealed to the author