Prairie Tale: A Memoir

Melissa became America's sweetheart on the Little House series. She must have had great publicists who kept her from a lot of negative press. Why she decided to tell all in this book is beyond me. First Maureen McCormick and now Melissa Gilbert . . . is it possible to be an actress in Hollywood without becomng a drug-addled slut? Melissa was a beautiful girl who ruined her nose with surgeries, lost her virginity during a "sweet" romance with an older actor (can you say jailbait?), performed while hungover or under the influence, snuck Rob Lowe into her bed regularly then cheated on him to "return the favor," and much much more before the age of 21. I'm not completely comfortable with her willingness to name names. (Except for one show more chiseled actor whose name "sounded like Alan Greenspan." I wish I knew who he is so I can get 83-yr-old Greenspan's image out of my head!) Despite everything, I still see Melissa as charming, friendly, beautiful and someone to be admired. It may have taken her a while to get it together, but she's come through well in the end. show less

This was eye opening. I didn't realize half pint had such a troubled past. I'm not sure she is a great story teller but if you grew up watching Little House and knew about her and Rob Lowe it was interesting. Rob Lowe's autobiography was great and he's a great storyteller but he didn't go into as much detail or as Melissa. This book filled in those gaps. She did drop a lot of names and didn't seem to hold much back when talking about those names. Good for her for being real. FYI she's a bit of a potty mouth. What would ma say?!

Melissa Gilbert is best known for playing Laura Ingalls Wilder in the tv show “Little House on the Prairie”. This is a memoir she has written. She was adopted at about 24 hours old, and was very overprotected by her mother. Despite this, they were quite close. Her parents did divorce, but tried to keep things as normal as possible for the kids; sadly, her father passed away when she was only 11-years old.

As she grew up, she went through a succession of on-again, off-again relationships, her first (that lasted quite a few years) with Rob Lowe. She later married (twice) – her first husband, Bo, was a piece of work, but she had a son with him. There were plenty of bumps along the way with her second husband, Bruce, as well, but they show more love each other and came through. Melissa also battled with alcoholism. (Just looked her up and see there was more to her story after the book was published.)

I quite liked this. I learned a lot about her that I didn’t know. There was a short bit, as she described her time as president of the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) that I was less interested in, due to the business nature of what she was describing. She did, of course, have a wonderful relationship with Michael Landon, which was nice to read about. show less

"Little House on the Prairie" and Melissa Gilbert always bring a childhood friend named Sharon to mind. She liked Melissa so much that she wrote to her during a classroom exercise on letter writing--and she got a signed photo back. Oddly, though, I never thought of Melissa Gilbert as a redhead, so when she would refer to herself that way, it was a bit confusing. I knew the story about her brother Jonathan being on "Little House" and that being his only acting gig; I didn't know he'd cut himself off from their family at some point--that's sad.

The Good: The beginning of the book is written in an engaging style (the last few chapters about SAG etc. not so much so). Melissa is very honest about her struggles and her faults. She balances show more the good things with the bad things that have happened in her life. She also now seems to realize that much of her personal life centered around her being adopted as a child (and feeling as if she needed to earn love or that she could be returned if she wasn't perfect) and around not being able to talk about her feelings during her childhood (which led to stuffing her feelings). She does seem committed to her relationship with Bruce Boxleitner and working through the issues they have--at least as of the time of the writing of this book.

The Bad: Her romantic relationships seem to be very repetitive--just change the name of the guy (Rob Lowe, Bo Brinkman, Bruce Boxleitner). She uses a lot of profanity (something you wouldn't expect based on her prairie image). There's a lot of name dropping. The chronology is sometimes a bit meandering. show less

I really loved Little House. I thoroughly enjoyed Alison Arngrim's "Confessions of a Prairie Bitch". But this book? Name-dropping, party-going boredom and tons of gossip. I felt for the little girl she was, told to hold it all in and pretend to be perfect, but the book itself wasn't worth my time to finish.

Prairie Tale By Melissa Gilbert is the perfect celebrity memoir. This book probably makes my top five memoirs of all time. And that really is saying a lot, as I love, love, love memoirs and read plenty of them. I’m not ashamed to admit I starting crying while reading the forward by Patty (Anna) Duke. And I continued to cry all through this book while reading it. To say I was a huge fan of Little House on The Prairie (both the books and television show) is an understatement. LHOTP was my favorite show as a child, and if you’ve been to my blog before you’ll see that my mom dressed me just like Half Pint. My mother and I only agreed on two things in my life – The Beatles and Little House, so I get weepy just thinking about that show more show and one of the only connections it provided me to my mother.

To find out Melissa Gilbert’s version of what happened off-screen and on set was pretty cool. I knew “Laura” and “Mary” didn’t get along off-screen either, so my only disappointment with this book was that Melissa took the high road and didn’t talk about the trouble between her and Melissa Sue Anderson. She barely mentioned it, but I can understand why. This book is filled with so much celebrity dirt, gossip, and sex talk, there was no need to dig up same lame 35-year-old little girl feud.

Since Ms. Gilbert celebrity grew during the 1970′s and 1980′s, a lot of her history and life story was a bit of a surprise to me. Sure, I knew she dated Rob Lowe, what Teen Beat subscriber wouldn’t know that? However, the amount of people she met, dated, or “DATED” floored me. It was as if every celebrity guy I ever found remotely cute or interesting dated or “DATED” her, or at least wanted to or tried to. I can not believe she passed up George Clooney in favor of her husband Bruce. Why, why, why girl, why? When she described meeting John Travolta on the studio lot lunchroom when he was filming Grease, it was almost as if I was sitting at that table, getting embarrassed right along with her.

Read my full review here:

http://thegirlfromtheghetto.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/prairie-tale-by-melissa-gil... show less

What made me reach for this book sitting on my shelf all of a sudden? Because of what is occurring with her present husband, Timothy Busfield. When this book was published in 2009, she was still married to Bruce Boxleitner.

Even though I watched Little House On The Prairie, and knew a few things about her life in general, I didn't follow her life nor career much. I learned that she and her brother Jonathan (also of LHOP) were adopted and Sara (of Roseanne fame and other things too) is not their biological sibling of course. Nor did I know she was brought up Jewish. She came from a show biz family -- maternal grandparents and her adopted parents too.

I learned a lot about not only her personal life but also the actors/actresses on LHOP and show more their personalities. Melissa Sue Anderson and she didn't get along on the set or off it seems and was very cold and distant and "never let her in" it seems even though she tried of course. Mike Landon was a chain smoker, struggled with, or heavily abused, alcohol during his career, often drinking while working on set though Melissa never went too far into it. (I Googled that part since I was curious). Of course, Mike was like a second father to her, which I knew.

She had quite the tumultuous relationship of 6 years with Rob Lowe and she was very jealous and the women loved him of course. Her second marriage to Bo Brinkman wasn't much better and they divorced after 5 years. Her third marriage to Bruce Boxleitner, was up and down, mostly on his part but that marriage lasted 15 years.

She battled alcoholism for years and has been sober since 2004. One thing that stood out for me that she drank 3 bottles of wine at once.

An overall good memoir to me. show less