Throughout her illustrious career, from her 1950s star-making Broadway debut as an understudy in Pajama Game to leading roles in acclaimed films like Some Came Running and The Apartment, Shirley MacLaine has diligently chronicled her life\u2019s journey. Her bestselling memoirs, beginning with Don\u2019t Fall Off the Mountain (1970) and including Out on a Limb (1983), have documented her professional ascent and approach to living a fully independent, well-traveled life as a modern woman. Now in her 90s, MacLaine revisits her experiences through a collection of personal photographs and extended captions, serving as a visual narrative thread. In mostly laudatory terms, her memoir showcases MacLaine\u2019s connections with luminaries from various spheres of her personal, political, spiritual, and show business life. Such reflections include her long, unconventional marriage to businessman Steve Parker, her Rat Pack associations (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.), and her encounters with U.S. presidents and controversial political figures like Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro. Of the latter, she notes, \u201cCastro and I had two days together. He was open, funny, and curious, especially about the Kennedys, and did not come on to me as Barbara Walters suggested he would.\u201d On the flip side, MacLaine occasionally dishes a few subtle asides: Jerry Lewis was \u201coverpowering and controlling, and I didn\u2019t think he was funny,\u201d director Herbert Ross \u201cwas an arrogant guy, very full of himself,\u201d and of her Terms of Endearment co-star she simply comments, \u201cI did not enjoy Debra Winger.\u201d MacLaine\u2019s images and captions cumulatively reflect an enviable, well-lived existence, offering glimpses into her world travels, family, friends, and various love affairs. An engaging but lightly written exploration, the scant narrative may appeal primarily to her devoted fans.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Throughout her illustrious career, from her 1950s star-making Broadway debut as an understudy in Pajama Game to leading roles in acclaimed films like Some Came Running and The Apartment, Shirley MacLaine has diligently chronicled her life\u2019s journey. Her bestselling memoirs, beginning with Don\u2019t Fall Off the Mountain (1970) and including Out on a Limb (1983), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}