Life Itself!: An Autobiography [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

The exclamatory trill of the title alone, Life Itself!, suggests an exuberance to Elaine Dundy's mostly jaunty memoirs but also an insecurity. One of three Brimberg sisters from a wealthy New York Jewish background, her grand father, a Latvian immigrant, had invented a type of screw that made his fortune. Elaine's designs, however, were more on screwball fun. Drawn to the stage, she left America for Paris and wrote The Dud Avocado, published to popular acclaim in 1958, which described her salad days as a rich young socialite in the French capital. Fascinated with the sassy, vivacious actresses of pre-war Hollywood and their witty, charming, suave leading-men, along came Kenneth Tynan, enfant terrible of 1950s English critical journalism. He carried a fearsome, bullying swagger reminiscent of Dundy's violent and abusive father. While she wanted to be a character created by Tennessee Williams, she fell in love with men written by "Papa" Hemingway. So she married Tynan.

Life Itself! is most intriguing in its depiction of Dundy's relationship with Tynan, though the details of his sado-masochistic "Oxford practices" have been well documented elsewhere, in his second wife Kathleen Tynan's The Life of Kenneth Tynan. Life with Ken, a Barbie in her flurry of frocks and socialising, saw Dundy circulate with a gilded cast of associates, rarely dull and never unknown: Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Cyril Connolly, Marilyn Monroe, Henry Green and Gore Vidal make frequent appearances, as she commiserates with the wives of Peters Brook and Ustinov how hard it is for actresses with illustrious partners to find work. Once the heart stops bleeding, what redeems passages of flapper frippery are when the screwball wit kicks in, or she pauses to allow her writing the space it cries out for, and justifies when allowed. When she finally left Tynan, after a brutal attack and serial psychological sadism, she produced mediocre plays, reasonable journalism, fuelled by the pills and booze which nearly ended her life. Rescued by electro-therapy and a discovered love of Elvis (of whom she wrote a respected biography, Elvis and Gladys), one hopes she is allowed to live out her days in California with peaceful reflections and calmer syntax. --David Vincent

“Summer reading should be like summer wines; light, refreshing, insouciant. Life Itself! is all that and more.

Elaine Dundy has written her autobiography. It’s an absolute treat, by turns jaunty, pleasingly self-knowing and unexpectedly moving.”

“Dundy has a superb memory for detail,”

“A wonderfully entertaining confession. Her autobiography depicts her anarchic pursuit of pleasure with unflinching candor”

“what makes this book such a breath of fresh air is its complete lack of self pity.”

Elaine Dundy, a New Yorker born in the 1930s, is the author of "The Dud Avocado", based on a year she spent in Paris. Here she presents her memoirs which begin in classy apartments on Park Lane before the Crash, include a wild and funny time as an actress in Paris and London, and reveal all about her disastrous marriage to theatre critic Kenneth Tynan. Her literary and theatrical circle - which included Peter Finch (about whom she later wrote a biography) and Tennesse Williams, Hemingway and Gore Vidal - is presented along with poignant remembrances of growing up in America in the 40s, and a literary and theatrical life in Paris and London.

London Reviews for Life Itself! By Elaine Dundy

“Summer reading should be like summer wines; light, refreshing, insouciant. Life Itself! is all that and more. Written by a woman who had the good fortune to mingle with the most outrageous figures in 1950s theatreland; and the misfortune to marry one of them (the critic Kenneth Tynan), it will rank as one of the most perceptive Showbiz memoirs penned. Monroe and Miller, Olivier and Leigh, Hemingway and Welles all are presented in pungent vignettes. “Richard Morrison The Times July 27: Summer Reading Choices

Elaine Dundy, the author of The Dud Avocado – part of the Holy Trinity of female comfort reads (the others being Nancy Mitford’s, The Pursuit of Love, and Dodie Smith’s, I Capture the Castle)—has written her autobiography. It’s an absolute treat, by turns jaunty, pleasingly self-knowing and unexpectedly moving.” The Tynans’ “tragicomic, delirious union, makes for gripping reading.” India Knight, Sunday Times June 24, 2001

“Dundy has a superb memory for detail,” Kate Kellaway, Observer, June 2001

“A wonderfully entertaining confession. Her autobiography depicts her anarchic pursuit of pleasure with unflinching candor” Patrick Skene Catling, Irish Times, June 23rd 2001

A memoir that is “fast moving, unaffected,” and “immensely likable” Jeremy Lewis, Literary Review June 2001

“The author is so amiable with her bounce, her enthusiasm and her optimism.” Writes Lynn Barber, Daily Telegraph, June 2001, “but what makes this book such a breath of fresh air is its complete lack of self pity.”

Life Itself! Was also on You Must Read, Sunday Times list and Daily Mail Critic’s Choice.

Elaine Dundy was born in New York. As an actress she worked in Paris and London and then became a writer. She has written plays, biographies and novels including the bestselling THE DUD AVOCADO, her first novel. She lives in Los Angeles.