Stephen Randall (1)

Pretty good set of interviews with various Mr. and Ms. Bigs: Bette Davis, Mae West, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali, Marlon Brando, etc.

There's not too much here that's terribly startling, but there are lots of interesting moments: Dylan babbles incoherently about...something (interviewer Nat Hentoff charitably characterizes Dylan's ramblings as "surrealistic," which is pretty funny); Sinatra rails against organized religion (which was probably pretty shocking in the mid-1960s); show more Howard Cosell is every bit as egocentric as you think he was; Mae West is even more egocentric than you thought she was; Ali, well, doesn't seem like a terribly nice person on a whole bunch of levels -- at the time of these interviews, at least, he was, not to put too fine a point on it, a racist and sexist asshole. And it turns out Bette Davis was a pretty rock solid feminist. No surprise, I suppose, but it's still pretty startling to read her say that she thinks every woman should read The Female Eunuch. Go Bette! Lawrence Grobel's interview of Brando is a standout, as Grobel's interviews so often are. show less