Just Outside the Spotlight: Growing Up with Eileen Heckart

"Mommie Dearest" this ain't. Instead, it's a love letter from a son to his mom...written with all the heart, humour and candor that made up their relationship. The reader is lucky that Mr. Yankee is willing to share so much. Each chapter is written almost like a monologue or anecdote you might hear him tell in his own living room. I couldn't read the book fast enough, although I certainly didn't want it to end, either! It was really as if I were being entertained right in the Heckart homestead. Whether or not you are aware of the late great Ms. Heckart's work, you will enjoy this gossipy memoire that is long on love without ever being sappy or self indulgent.

Luke Yankee has written a fine show business biography, but with a unique universality that will appeal to anyone interested in family dynamics. Written with love, sensitivity, humor, warmth and a wisdom born of experience (and therapy), Yankee goes to both the light and dark places to tell his story. We come to know the author, his family and most particularly his mother, actress Eileen Heckart. Some stories are laugh-out-loud hilarious. Some are open-mouth shocking. Some break your heart. Some offer encouragement to carry on through rough times. Perhaps the book should have been titled "Tough Cookie," because Eileen Heckart was a tough, act-then-think, cigarette-smoking, opinionated actress and mother. Yankee acknowledges all this. After all, he experienced it first hand. But he also understood his mother as a vulnerable, loving, intelligent, passionate woman. There isn't a single uninteresting page in the book. It's greatest sadness is that in the end Eileen Heckart dies (am I giving something away here?) and we feel like we're losing a friend whom we love and know well, warts and all. Highly recommended.

"Just Outside the Spotlight" is an amusing, revealing book that courses through the life of Eileen Heckart, discussing the idiosyncracies and attributes of those around her, with whom she shared life behind the scenes of the theatre experience. Luke Yankee succinctly portrays his mother as the consummate professional, her story shows her passion for life, which permeates through her "tough love" approach to caring for her family, her art and her beliefs. It is absolutely marvelous to read such an honest work!!

I received this book on Friday and so enjoyed it, I finished it in less than two days! Not only is it a loving tribute to a phenomenal actress (full of all the dish we love to read!), but a really important story of family dynamics and the pressures of stardom. ALSO-and this is important-helped me see why Ms. Heckart was such a good actress. In addition to her talent, she believed in her craft and supported her fellow artists (imagine arranging for your understudy to have a performance!). Her son Luke was lucky to have this wonderful 'broad' as a mother, confidant and teacher and I was lucky to get to know them both through this book.

I found Luke Yankee's "Just Outside the Spotlight: : Growing Up With Eileen Heckart" compulsively readable. This is far from your typical "Star Bio." Luke Yankee, son of stage and screen legend Eileen Heckart, could have gone the easy route with just anecdote after anecdote of growing up surrounded by Broadway and Hollywood royalty. While the book is full of unforgettable stories of mixing drinks for Ethel Merman as a pre-teen and the like,"Just Outside the Spotlight: : Growing Up With Eileen Heckart" is so much more than that. Yankee gives a sensitive no holds barred account of his life coming from such a colorful world. While the book gives a wonderful and fitting tribute to his mother, it is also an extremely candid look at the challenges a child can face coming from such an extrodinary background. Both hilarious and touching, this is a story that will appeal not only to fans of Heckert and show business, but to anyone who has gone through the bittersweet experience of growing up.