Rue McClanahan (1934–2010)

I'd like to thank everyone who helped make this award possible. The rest of you will be in the book.
Rue McClanahan's Emmy Award Acceptance Speech, 1987

Let me preface this by saying that it's deeply satisfying to wake up to a Mooch aler ...more I'd like to thank everyone who helped make this award possible. The rest of you will be in the book.
Rue McClanahan's Emmy Award Acceptance Speech, 1987

Let me preface this by saying that it's deeply satisfying to wake up to a Mooch alert - an email show more telling you in so many words that a book on your wishlist is now waiting for a new home. I really enjoy Bookmooch and I wish more of the books I wanted were given up by other people. I really urge you to give it a try - I got rid of titles I no longer cared for and I'm receiving books I'm interested in in exchange.

Rue McClanahan, as you may know, is most famous for her role as the scandalous Southern belle Blanche Devereaux in one of my favourite TV shows, The Golden Girls. She passed away last June and there's always something slightly peculiar reading someone else's life after their death. But what a life that was! I found My First Five Husbands... and the Ones Who Got Away to be a truly inspirational account of an ambitious, disarmingly funny woman who did everything from waitressing in her underwear to acting on Broadway. She met lovely people and terrible ones whom she ended up marrying but learned a lot from everyone.
The book is interesting and written in a friendly manner, which I greatly enjoyed. It's more Rue talking to a pal and exchanging gossip than Someone Famous cashing on their fame. Rue worked from day one and never stopped - she says at some point that she saw other people whose ambition in life was to marry into money but her wish had always been to earn it. Her life really deserved its own book - she accomplished so much and did got everything she wanted in the end.
I dreaded her chapter narrating her days filming The Golden Girls, I didn't want my superlative opinion of the show and its stars to be tarnished - while she reveals that the set wasn't the idyllic place I imagined it to be (somehow I thought such wonderful women with such a wonderful script could only have been best friends all along), it remains special and I can now add a very nice anecdote in my collection of Golden Girls gossip - one involving no less than The Men of Blanche's Boudoir, a scrapbook Blanche puts together with nude pics of her lovers that she offers to her housemates and which remains to this day one of my favourite scenes of the series.

I truly enjoyed this book, which was one hell of a ride. Turns out Rue wasn't very different from Blanche, though Blanche got truly lucky in her choice of men. At the beginning of the book, Rue explains that she devised a system to rate her lovers' performance in bed, ranging from A to F. I have a feeling Blanche got a life filled with As. Now let that be something to look forward to ;)

Rose: Is it possible to love two men at the same time?
Blanche (not missing a beat): Set the scene - have we been drinking? show less

"My dear reader, whatever else you may take away from this book, please hold fast to this idea: Be careful, careful, cafeul whom you marry."

Unfortunately six times isn't always a charm; the back cover of this blurb published in 2007 states she's finally found her soul mate and figured it out, yet on Wiki it lists they separated in 2009. Ah, well! I was happy to hear she tried out the single non-married life for the rest of her years, hopefully this helped find more internal peace. I think it show more did.

This book is very honest. That's not to say I wasnt' annoyed or disappointed in some of her choices. It does get frustrating seeing the attempts and naivity with men who treated her horribly, and the things she did wrong with the good ones. Sometimes her peppiness got a little draining - other times inspiring. Sometimes her sense of self-worth was a little off putting in both directions. But you know what? Honesty. She said it like it was, like she thought, and like she lived. She didn't use the book to dish out bad things about celebrities. She kept the Golden Girls portions very brief. She mentioned a few things but refused to mention others and I get overall it was an outstanding time, but you did a get a feel and a read between the lines when she allowed it.

"Not all important people are famous, and not all famous people are important."

Every autobiography reads differently. Some focus just on their work, some more their personal life. She focuses on all of it, with bigger details of personal stuff - her house, her dreams, her son, her mother, her grief, her childhood -- and of course her men. She is definitely the type of woman who cannot stand being alone and even states it as a bleakness and outright panic. Some people are like this - I am not, but I can appreciate the difference as a real psychological trait. She details her journey with therapy over the years to deal with this. Again, honesty, even with abortion.

I cried in this book about four timies through grief. Since she tells her entire life I found the ending of some in it so long very sad and she does not shy away with sharing the tragedies and the grief. It helps that she, or whoever wrote this, used beautiful words and quality writing style. She ends with her new journeys and her diagnosis of breast cancer, which we know eventually returns with a vengeance, which was also sad but again that honesty of actual life.

I struggled with rating. It's hard to rate memoirs actually. I don't go with just straight out "enjoyment" ratings like I do with fiction. Sometimes some of the tangents were less interesting, sometimes it was all over the place, but this fits her actual life and personality I feel. I am giving a five star for heart, soul, honesty, enthusiasm, hope, passion, and a full life lived and shared. Not perfection, but none of us are.

"A writer friend of mine says there's no such thing as happy endings, only happy intervals and inevitable conclusions, and that an author must choose whether to follow a story to its inevitable conclusion or draw the curtain at a happy interval." show less

I'd like to thank everyone who helped make this award possible. The rest of you will be in the book.
Rue McClanahan's Emmy Award Acceptance Speech, 1987

Let me preface this by saying that it's deeply satisfying to wake up to a Mooch alert - an email telling you in so many words that a book on your wishlist is now waiting for a new home. I really enjoy Bookmooch and I wish more of the books I wanted were given up by other people. I really urge you to give it a try - I got rid of titles I no show more longer cared for and I'm receiving books I'm interested in in exchange.

Rue McClanahan, as you may know, is most famous for her role as the scandalous Southern belle Blanche Devereaux in one of my favourite TV shows, The Golden Girls. She passed away last June and there's always something slightly peculiar reading someone else's life after their death. But what a life that was! I found My First Five Husbands... and the Ones Who Got Away to be a truly inspirational account of an ambitious, disarmingly funny woman who did everything from waitressing in her underwear to acting on Broadway. She met lovely people and terrible ones whom she ended up marrying but learned a lot from everyone.
The book is interesting and written in a friendly manner, which I greatly enjoyed. It's more Rue talking to a pal and exchanging gossip than Someone Famous cashing on their fame. Rue worked from day one and never stopped - she says at some point that she saw other people whose ambition in life was to marry into money but her wish had always been to earn it. Her life really deserved its own book - she accomplished so much and did got everything she wanted in the end.
I dreaded her chapter narrating her days filming The Golden Girls, I didn't want my superlative opinion of the show and its stars to be tarnished - while she reveals that the set wasn't the idyllic place I imagined it to be (somehow I thought such wonderful women with such a wonderful script could only have been best friends all along), it remains special and I can now add a very nice anecdote in my collection of Golden Girls gossip - one involving no less than The Men of Blanche's Boudoir, a scrapbook Blanche puts together with nude pics of her lovers that she offers to her housemates and which remains to this day one of my favourite scenes of the series.

I truly enjoyed this book, which was one hell of a ride. Turns out Rue wasn't very different from Blanche, though Blanche got truly lucky in her choice of men. At the beginning of the book, Rue explains that she devised a system to rate her lovers' performance in bed, ranging from A to F. I have a feeling Blanche got a life filled with As. Now let that be something to look forward to ;)

Rose: Is it possible to love two men at the same time?
Blanche (not missing a beat): Set the scene - have we been drinking? show less

Funny, insightful, and above all, honest. It's worth a read both as the story of a woman who somehow landed on her feet, and as the story of a seasoned performer with a lot of hilarious behind-the-scenes stories about some of her roles. Golden Girls fans in particular will want to pick this one up.