Thank Heaven: A Memoir

It's hard to believe that Leslie Caron is 78 now, even if her star-making turn as Lise Bouvier, Gene Kelly's unattainable object of desire in  An American in Paris  was nearly six decades ago. There was a lilting quality to her wide Cheshire grin and gamine screen presence that begged comparison with her most comparable contemporary, Audrey Hepburn. According to Caron, their professional paths only crossed in the casting of the title role of  Gigi , which Hepburn coveted but lost to Caron (Hepburn rebounded by getting cast opposite Fred Astaire in another classic musical,  Funny Face ). Regardless, neither actress led the charmed life that their screen counterparts would lead you to believe, and the French-American actress corroborates this with her sophisticated, reflective autobiography.Caron represents one of the last remaining bridges to the golden era of MGM musicals, and as such, her eminently readable albeit often cursory book is sprinkled with legendary names beginning with Gene Kelly, who saw her in the Ballet des Champs-Elysées' 1948 production of "La Recontre", a performance he remembered vividly two years later when he returned to Paris in search of a dancing unknown to introduce in  An American in Paris  (replacing a pregnant Cyd Charisse). However, her sparkling talent apparently hid a mass of insecurities developed as a child growing up in privilege in pre-WWII Paris with a French chemist father and a disapproving American mother to whom nothing she did was ever good enough. Instead of being able to celebrate her bicultural heritage, Caron felt alienated from both worlds and further isolated by the outbreak of war.She was prepared by her dancer mother to become a ballerina, even calling herself Caronova (like Pavlova), but Hollywood beckoned and her talent blossomed along with two subsequent Oscar nominations, one as a street urchin in  Lili  and the other as a pregnant single woman in  The L-Shaped Room . Her career is distinguished to say the least. Caron not only danced with Kelly and Astaire (in  Daddy Long Legs ) but also Nureyev and Baryshnikov. However, her honest yet discreet accounts of her romantic relationships, including three marriages and divorces, are just as engaging, especially when in the mid-1960's, she embarked on a long affair with Warren Beatty whom she portrays as both attentive and narcissistic. She also hobnobbed with the likes of Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, Jean Renoir and François Truffaut, and yet doesn't shy away from the controversies and bad decisions in her life.Caron maintains an elegant diplomacy about those whom she obviously disliked (David Niven, Kirk Douglas) and those who remained enigmatic to her (Cary Grant, Henry Fonda). The actress kept her life full with two children, while battling alcoholism and crippling depression, exacerbated by the suicide of her mother. She is quite candid about her vigilant attendance at weekly AA meetings. When the actress couldn't get enough work in the early 1990's, she opened a small hotel and restaurant in Burgundy, which sadly just closed in September due to the recession. Above it all, Caron has survived it all to tell her story with no regrets.

My friend the novelist Bruce Benderson author of Pacific Agony has been trmupeting this book far and wide, and he has never steered me wrong yet, so I opened my Amazon account and ordered it pronto. I have to say that it is one of the most evocative movie star memoirs I have ever read.Growing up during World War II in a middleclass family left open to the privations of war, little Leslie learned how to dance as a way of escaping the strange dreams of her mother, one of the oddest characters in all of nonfiction. The mother seemed to want to live Leslie's life for her: brother Aimery seemed to escape Maman's iron will due to his gender. Caron brings us backstage into her life of early stardom as one of Roland Petit's principal dancers: it is here that Gene Kelly apparently saw her and clapped his hands and voila! Caron and Maman were in Hollywood as the "guests" of MGM. As always, memoirs of the final days of Louis B Mayer's MGM are always welcome, they are so bizarre and the men and women who passed through his rule came out the other end utterly changed (some for the better, of course). The collapse of the studio system took its toll on their identities, and Caron seemed to want to put away her toe shoes, and study heavy dramatics under the tutelage of Jean and Dido Renoir, Christopher Isherwood, and the British wunderkind Peter Hall whom she eventually married.Mistake! Well, not so bad a mistake as her first husband, a wealthy eccentric from the Hormel family. Cultural differences and Hormel pride prevented Leslie until too late from discovering that her handsome bridegroom was a grade A nut! Peter Hall just comes across as small minded, jealous and cruel, and yet now Caron can say she did love him and he did give her two wonderful children. Outside of that--pfui! She made a huge impression in the early 60s reinventing herself as the unmarried mother in a "kitchen sink" drama THE L-SHAPED ROOM, and then she met Warren Beatty and it was Peter Hall who? Beatty brought her back to Hollywood and for a brief period they were the most glamorous couple in town. He poured cold water over her dreams however by laying stress on the fact that she could not be Bonnie to his Clyde (in the 1967 Arthur Penn movie) not because she was French, but because she was so old! Tut tut, and the next thing she knew he had replaced her with a Bolshoi ballerina, then Julie Christie.Throughout, Caron's natural delicacy and humor battles with a newfound urge to tell her life the way it was really lived. Every page has some La Rochefaucauldian pensee on love, on death; and yet every page has some hot gossip about some star of the past one has just barely heard of. I never wanted it to end! Thank you, Bruce Benderson! And thanks Leslie Caron.

Caron's "memoir" is as charming as she is. The book is fast reading, most of it very interesting. If the reader does not know the people she is referring to, it can be boring. Some parts are written very well, those that describe, in depth, the life and personalities of people she was seriously involved with on a professional level. Other parts read more like "name dropping" and I think this is because she wants to put into this short memoir a lifetime of people and memories, and sometimes you feel like she is doing a "rush" job. The book is extremely "politically correct" and she is very careful to restrain herself from both ugly gossip and badmouthing anyone. As I said, she is a very charming woman, at least from the impression one gets from her professional work, her manners and her the way she writes.What is so enjoyable about the book is to discover her childhood, her sufferings during the war years, the nature of her family (a sweet French, pharmicist father and a neurotic mother who indeed takes her own life at some point), her early start in Hollywood and her development personally and professionally through the years. She may look like a little "gamin" but she was and is a strong, determined woman.I personally felt that her decision to leave dance and concentrate on acting (although she was not a terribly "bad" actress) was a mistake because she really was a dancer and a beautiful one at that but, on the other hand, dancing has a short life span.In short, I highly recommend this book for those who love know and love Leslie Caron and of course are curious about where she came fromand where she went.

I thoroughly enjoyed Leslie Caron's memoir "Thank Heaven". Her writing style is wonderful - she writes with honesty, is never boring, and reminds one of the glory days in Hollywood of film making. Most of her memoir, although deeply personal, is set around her own connections to well known celebrities, many of whom are familiar to the reader today. Without any nasty comments, Caron leaves the reader with her concept of those who are dear to her, and also those who are less endearing. This is a gift. I was touched by her honesty but rarely saddened by it, as she reveals herself (and others) with tolerance, optimism,and her own inimitable sense of humour. Simply a beautifully written book, to be kept for a wonderful re-read down the road. Thank you, Ma.Caron.

really not happy this book arived damaged

Let me get this straight, I love biographies, and I was curious about this one. I am not a huge fan of hers, but I like some of her films well enough. I bought this book almost a month ago, and I am still trying to finish it. The more I read, the less I like her. Boring is a word that comes to mind, and I do not care for the way she writes, or how she talks about certain people. The only part that was interesting, was the beginning.Would I recommend it, or buy it again? Most certainly not.

This is a lovely book for anyone interested in Leslie Caron and her work, as I am. While most of it is concerned with her movie career of course, the first chapters on life in France before and during the war were an eye-opener to me. I thoroughly recommend this work to anyone who enjoys autobiographies. A poignant tale of love. Thank you Leslie.

Well written but she doesn’t give much away