Hollywood Director/Writer/Producer Tay Garnett's hilarious memoir gives a first-person account of his 50+ roller-coaster years in Tinseltown. This delightful yarn begins with Garnett's dubious beginnings as a circus acrobat, a brief career, culminating in a barefooted chase where 16-year-old Garnett's one goal is to avoid pummeling by an angry - and much bigger - athlete. Both Tay and the pursuing brute are clad in leopardskin leotards, as they race through the streets of Los Angeles. Tay's memoir then takes us through his training as a World War I Naval Air pilot and the flight accident, which resulted in a damaged knee and a lifelong limp. It goes on to cover his movie beginnings as a title-writer for the Mack Sennett studios where he worked and played with the full roster of Silent Screen legends as well as other writers of the day, including the talented, young Frank Capra. He gives away trade-secrets of the writers working in Sennett's "Snake Pit," including the time they bribed the contractor during a stairway renovation to make one step just slightly higher than the others, thereby setting a trap to alert them of the arrival of the "Old Man."Tay's rough-and-tumble life included both adventures and misadventures. (As an example of the latter, he and producer-friend Bob Fellows were once kidnapped by the Chicago Mob!) Garnett worked at all the major studios and had professional, as well as personal, relationships with the biggest stars of the day. He assumes full responsibility for introducing Marlene Dietrich and John Wayne, an introduction with dual results: a box-office smash ("7 Sinners") and a famous liaison that proved less than beneficial for the Duke's marriage. Garnett, himself, married and later divorced the female lead of the original "Hunchback of Notre Dame," Patsy Ruth (aka, "Ratsy Puth") Miller. Years later, he married actress Helga Moray, with whom he toured the world aboard his private yacht, the "Athene." His final marriage was to the young actress, Mari Aldon, with whom he had his only daughter.In between marriages, Garnett frolicked with the leading-lovelies of the day including Jean Harlow, Joan Bennett, Lana Turner, Loretta Young, Greer Garson, and Rhonda Fleming. His drinking-buddies included Clark Gable, Broderick Crawford, David Niven, Lesley Howard, Spencer Tracy and Henry Fonda. Garnett's colorful tale is also rife with multiple firings, re-hirings and legendary battles with studio moguls such as Cecil B. De Mille, Darryl Zanuck, Irving Thalberg, and Sam Goldwyn.Tay Garnett's career boasted major screen credits on more than 40 feature films, including "China Seas," starring Jean Harlow, Clark Gable and Wallace Beery, "Valley of Decision," with Gregory Peck and Greer Garson, "Bataan," with Robert Taylor, Lloyd Nolan and Desi Arnaz, "One Minute to Zero," with Robert Mitchum and Ann Blyth and the film for which he is probably best known, the film-noir classic, "The Postman Always Rings Twice," starring John Garfield and Lana Turner. Tay shares with us the story of the screenplay he wrote for "One Way Passage" and the Oscar it received that was awarded to another writer...In this warm and wonderful book, Tay Garnett gives us a close-up shot of a bygone era and the guys and "dames" that animated it. He shares with us the highlights of his own life and the stories of the people, places and experiences that marked him.Here is the story of a talented man who, throughout a lifetime voyage of both spectacular successes and resounding failures, manages to maintain a steady course of courage, integrity and humor. He inspires us to do the same by urging us, when the going gets tough, to Light Our Torches and Pull Up Our Tights!