The Secrets of Grown-Ups: An Autobiography

It's the autobiography of Vera Caspary, the celebrated novelist and screenwriter. She wrote the novel LAURA, for goodness sake, as well as much of the sprightly dialogue of Mankiewicz' LETTER TO THREE WIVES. Her memoir tells a lot about what it was like for a young, not pretty Jewish girl with a closely knit family, to grow up in the early part of the century and feel the exhilarating effects of the first sexual revolution--that of the 1920s, complete with Volstead Act and Scott FitzGerald. One funny bit is the advice of a hostess during Prohibition: "Gin should never be 'young,' it should be made at least half an hour before being served." Her first writing experiences are horrible ones and it's a wonder she kept at it. She was the editor of DANCE magazine and on the side started writing a play with Winifred Lenihan (the actress who had starred in Shaw's SAINT JOAN). Helen Hayes, then the grande dame of US theater, kept them on the hook for a year and a half by promising to star in the play. Pregnancy took her out of the role for awhile, and after she had her baby, evil Jed Harris gave Helen's mother a mink coat to help him steal her away for another play. By the time Vera and Winifred's play hit the stage, it had been re-written by Broadway loudmouths to make it into a "dirty play," which closed after two weeks. In the 1930s Caspary joined the Communist party, in the spirit of youth, and in the 1950s she came to regret it as she and her husband, IG Goldsmith, were placed on a kind of "graylist," so that afterwards her movie credits are spotty. Still she managed to prevail and write her novels, as well as such entertaining later films as Gene Kelly's LES GIRLS and BACHELOR IN PARADISE with the beloved Bob Hope. (Well, not beloved by Vera). All of this she relates in a wonderully understated way. She was eighty when this book was published 25 years ago. It reads as though a very lovely woman had kept all her joie de vivre and curiosity about life and writing. Hopefully it will return to print.