A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London, and New York Author: Visit Amazon's Anjelica Huston Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1451656297 | Format: PDF
A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London, and New York Description
From Publishers Weekly
Actress Huston achieves some moments of ringing clarity in this memoir of her youth, especially as regards her famous director father, John Huston, whom she was both terrified and in awe of (people considered him a lion, a leader, the pirate they wished they had the audacity to be). The daughter of his fourth wife, the dancer Ricki Soma (who was much younger than him), Anjelica Huston and her older brother, Tony, were raised in a remote 110-acre estate in West Country, Ireland, called St. Clerans, where being homeschooled; being visited by famous, quirky people; riding horses amid wildly romantic scenery; and playing dress-up filled her youth. Her father was frequently absent on far-flung shoots, and her exotic mother was out of her element. With her parents' separation, Anjelica moved between Ireland and London, where her mother lived and where Anjelica went to school in the 1960s. She gradually embraced an acting career, appearing in her father's A Walk with Love and Death, though without confidence. After the death of her mother in 1969, Huston slipped into a more comfortable role of modeling and serving as the muse for the troubled, brilliant (and much older) fashion photographer Bob Richardson over four tortured years. Huston ends her brave account by describing her complex relationship with her father. (Nov.)
From Booklist
With her high cheekbones and piercing dark eyes, Huston was fated for success as a fashion model. As the daughter and granddaughter of film and stage royalty, she was also assured a career as an actress. How she fulfilled those dual destinies is the subject of the first in a planned two-volume memoir in which Huston delves into her past in stunning detail. Growing up on a sprawling Irish estate, Huston was in thrall to her famous director father John Huston’s larger-than-life escapades and demands. As a teenager coming of age in London in the late 1960s, Huston fell under the spell of her passionately artistic prima-ballerina mother, Enrica Soma, who died just as Huston was coming into her own. Following that tragedy, the peripatetic Huston moved to New York where she captured the eye and captivated the attention of the day’s leading fashion photographers, including the famously mercurial Bob Richardson. As a multitalented contributor to her family’s theatrical legacy, Huston candidly reveals the heady and heartbreaking realities of life in that misconceived stratosphere. --Carol Haggas
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- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (November 19, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1451656297
- ISBN-13: 978-1451656299
- Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Walter Huston is probably best known for his wonderful performance as the old-timer in the 1948 classic, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed and written by his son, John Huston. That movie went on to win the father a best supporting actor Oscar and the son two Oscars for best screenplay and best director. Thirty-seven years later Walter Huston's granddaughter, Anjelica, would go on to win a best supporting actress Oscar for her fierce performance as a mob boss's daughter in Prizzi's Honor, a film directed by her father, John Huston. Clearly this astonishingly talented and creative family's story needed to be told, and Anjelica Huston does just that in her exquisitely written, though often meandering memoir, A Story Lately Told.
The book covers the childhood and adolescence of Anjelica in Ireland, London, and New York (the second part of the memoir will be published in 2014). Her recollections of Ireland present a kaleidoscope of images: a charmed childhood filled with doting servants, a beautiful and loving mother, a menagerie of animals, and days spent roaming the green Irish countryside with her brother. The only imperfection in this idyllic life is the strained relationship between her mother, who sacrificed a career as a prima ballerina to marry and have children, and her father, a demanding, flamboyant, and charming womanizer. The remainder of the book recounts her less idyllic life in London and New York--including her parent's divorce, her mother's sudden death, her modeling career, and her rocky love affair with photographer, Bob Richardson.
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