Is this really "the definitive biography"? It's certainly the best in a very disappointing field since O'Toole's death. Notably absent amongst the people interviewed as original sources: any of O'Toole's surviving family, including ex-wife Sian Phillilps (mother of his two daughters) or ex-partner Karen Brown (mother of his late-life son). So this is definitely not the "authorized" biography, which can be a good or a bad thing. In this case, I think it has been detrimental to any real understanding of O'Toole's family life (Sian Phillips' autobiography is a useful corrective for the years when they were married).

I was dubious when I saw Robert Sellers to be the author, because he has also written books with such unpromising titles as "Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, and Oliver Reed" and "Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down: How One Generation of British Actors Changed the World". In other words, he gives every appearance of being one of those bloke-ish biographers who delight in chronicling promiscuity and drunkenness, as if they were something necessarily associated with great talent and in some way admirable. Mind you, to be fair, if you're going to write about Peter O'Toole, you're going to have to address both of those major factors in his life and career. But I was pleasantly surprised at the relative absence of celebratory adjectives about the alcoholism that most certainly contributed to O'Toole's dreadful health in the second part of the career (not to mention his very poor reputation amongst landlords and other property owners).

The sources for this book are chiefly gossipy minor players in the entertainment world, most of whom doubtless have dined out on their O'Toole stories for some time, so we must take into account the natural human tendencies to embellish and generalize. The other people involved in the best anecdotes are by and large gone from us, and can't issue any refutations (if indeed they would wish to). But in addition to O'Toole's mischief, drinking, and occasional completely thoughtless cruelty, I found that there was also a ring of truth - through repetition from different sources - in the accounts of his deep thoughtfulness about his craft, his extensive and intelligent reading, and a generosity that could be as extravagant as his narcissism. As I think I remarked in my review of "Hellraisers", O'Toole still comes off, like Burton, as someone you could see wanting to associate with, as opposed to some of the nastier drunks in his circle of contemporaries. (And lest anyone wonder, it does seem that he dabbled in drugs as well.)

Sellers puts to rest the old controversy of where O'Toole was born, Ireland or England, by digging up the actual birth certificate from Leeds. But he does also acknowledge throughout that O'Toole became Irish, almost by dint of wishing so very much to be Irish (he always claimed himself that he did not actually know one way or the other).

The book has a decent apparatus (index, bibliography, list of film and theatre credits), and there are citations at the end for most paragraphs, though since most of said citations are to "author's interview with X", there's really not much verification that can be done. Sellers also took the time to view the historical record in the form of TV talk show utterances (now much more available to us through youtube), and he relies relatively little on previous biographical work as far as I can see, although Sian Phillips is of course fairly heavily cited.

"Better than expected" doesn't seem like particularly high praise, but in fact I'm quite pleased to give this book a place on my shelves. Since O'Toole will unfortunately never continue his slim, whimsical, fascinating autobiographical efforts into the most riveting years of his career, we must rely on the more prosaic expressions (and perhaps more reliable memories?) of the people around him who may not have been his nearest and dearest, but for that very reason may have been reliable observers.

Recommended to fans of O'Toole and people who enjoy anecdotal biography about London and Hollywood in the mid to late 20th century.

This biography of Richard Burton is, I would guess, highly unreliable as to details. Although Michael Munn, the author, was indeed in the entertainment business in minor capacities, I very much doubt he had the kind of access to Burton himself (or to his circle) that would allow him to quote, apparently verbatim, whole stretches of actual conversation so very focused and illuminating about Burton's life. My suspicion that in fact Munn was paraphrasing cribbed versions of secondary sources was confirmed when I compared his account of an incident involving John Gielgud with Sheridan Morley's Gielgud biography, and discovered word-for word-borrowings but written as if told to the author directly by Burton (the tip-off was the idiosyncratic phrase "idiot boards"). That said, Munn does seem to have had some access to Burton (though not perhaps in the chummy way he claims), as well as to some of the more notorious gossips in Hollywood like Roddy McDowall. He also actually gives us a bibliography of sorts, though only a "selected" one; so I suspect he did his reading.

This, then, was a quick read with a hefty dose of salt, reliable for at least the bare outlines of Burton's career, and likely also a pretty good reflection of the gossip about Burton over the years. It's not a very happy tale. Indeed, given whatever illness of the mind (or brain) he was suffering from, as well as his lifelong alcoholism, what strikes me about Burton is not the brevity of his working life but the fact that he managed to get as much good work done as he did.

I was relieved to read that despite his reputation of having slept with every leading lady he had, Julie Andrews (who shared the stage with him in "Camelot") was notoriously proof against his boozy charms.

There's got to be at least one better biography out there, and I remember hearing that Burton's own diaries have been published, so I may come back to him at some point. I'm really far more interested in Peter O'Toole (upon the subject of whom this particular book was pretty light, though apparently they were quite good friends), but reading this book has at least revived in me the desire to go back and watch "Becket" again.

"Do not consider this an autobiography. I have neither the time nor the skill to write one," warns Dame Judi right at the beginning of her introductory remarks. She points to the 1998 biography by John Miller, and it is that same John Miller who has the "as told to" credit on this book. That said, "And Furthermore" is chatty and not obviously ghost-written in tone, and the assistance to its celebrated author seems to have been chiefly rendered in keeping names, dates and projects straight. Unlike a later-in-life memoir with a similar title, Lauren Bacall's "And Then Some," this book does not confine itself just to the years since the last biographical outing, but instead covers off, in an orderly and comprehensive, if fairly superficial way, all of Judi Dench's long life. There is a solid emphasis on her performing rather than her personal or emotional life, though of course she talks a bit about major events like the passing of her much-loved husband, Michael Williams. The narrative is mostly anecdotal, sometimes funny but not exclusively so, and very generous to her co-workers in theatre, film and television. She also reveals a somewhat surprising penchant for misbehaving on stage or set - practical jokes and the like.

Dench, if she is generally apt to suppress criticism of other people, makes no secret of her dislike for certain material. She loathes "The Merchant of Venice," for instance. And even at the distance of more than 40 years, she has no hesitation in pronouncing a minor play from French, "Content to Whisper," "the most terrible play known to man."

The names are not so much dropped as just wonderfully, gloriously omnipresent. Judi Dench has worked with everyone from Gielgud onwards. She can say of two productions of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "What was so uncanny for me was hearing Rachael Stirling as Helena, the part her mother Diana Rigg had played with the RSC when we did it before." She knows and has worked with all the British classical actors who have crossed over to Hollywood celebrity - Ian McKellen, Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Irons, Kenneth Branagh, Daniel Craig, you name 'em. A little to my surprise, she also has a solid resume in musicals; she was only prevented by a rehearsal injury from being in the original London cast of "Cats" and she played big houses in "Cabaret" and "A Little Night Music."

Judi's right though, in a way. This is an autobiographical work, but it's not "the autobiography" or "the biography." Like many actors, she shies away from analyzing or even watching her own work. And, likeably enough, she doesn't indulge in a lot of introspection, at least not for public consumption. I shall probably end up trying Miller's 1998 biography in hopes for more insights to add on top of this entirely amiable work.

Oh yes, there's a decent collection of photos from her collection too, including some in colour. Definitely a keeper.

Morton is a professional biographer with a specialty in gangland true crime, so Lola Montez is a little bit out of his wheelhouse, but perhaps not very much so! He gives full credit to Bruce Seymour's fundamental work, based on archival material, from a decade before this was published. I was curious to see how Morton would make the subject his own.

The subtitle gives a bit of a clue: Morton has spread his contextual net quite a bit wider, and that includes giving more biographical detail than Seymour on the various men that passed through Lola's eventful life. In addition, he also picks up historical detail about a place or person from before or after Montez' encounter with them: for instance, we get a few pages on the subject of Jane Digby, the English adventuress who preceded Lola in Ludwig I's affections. We also get a bit more illustrative detail on social and physical conditions in Californian and Australian gold country. The last chapter is a follow-up on the fate of Lola's supporting cast, plus a survey of Montez in popular culture (novels, theatre, film, even ballet) after her death, which I found an interesting and useful addition. He recommends "The Heavenly Sinner" by Thomas Everett Harré as probably the best novelization.

The second way I'd say Morton distinguishes himself from Seymour is in his very extensive use of contemporary newspapers, a source he's probably extremely comfortable in because of his true crime specialty. So we get a good feel of how the average English-speaking newspaper-reader saw Lola over the course of her life (and from her obituaries), since he has clearly tracked pretty much every reference to her in all the English-language papers in Britain, the U.S. and Australia. I suspect he did not feel similarly comfortable in the other European languages.

Finally, Morton's narrative tone is quite a bit more spritely than Seymour's. I can't imagine the latter writing, "Throughout her life Lola appears to have believed men's hearts were situated somewhere below the fourth waistcoat button." He's not above inserting an adjective or adverb into an otherwise bald statement of fact to support a cynical reading of the situation. While by no means in the same league of trashiness of some of the modern celebrity biographies I've read - Morton gives us notes, bibliography, and index, and a highly restrained use of the exclamation mark - this work is in tone aimed far more at the casual reader. (That, by the way, is not any sort of criticism of Seymour's prose, which I found highly readable also).

While I'm not sorry to have read the two different and well-researched takes on Lola Montez' bizarre life, that's about enough Lola for me now.

After reading a novelization of this interesting woman's life, I was moved to find an actual biography. In fact, my public library has two: this is the earlier (1995), and clearly the result of an impressive amount of original research. Seymour appears to have had no difficulty with the multilingual nature of his archival sources (few would argue that the most interesting period of Montez' life, as well as the best-documented by letters, was when she was the mistress of King Ludwig of Bavaria; she also spent periods of time in French-speaking Europe, and she posed as Spanish, which meant she had at least some command of the Spanish language). I enjoyed Seymour's measured but lively discussion of all phases of the life of Montez (aka Eliza Gilbert, aka the Countess of Landsfelt, aka any number of other occasional names).

At the end of this account, I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for Lola. She was celebrated during her life for her physical beauty, for an apparently ungovernable temper, and for a blithe disregard for "middle-class morality", as Alfred Doolittle would say. What becomes rather clear is that she earned all of this reputation before she was thirty, making far more than most women would have of the very limited opportunities she was offered by her birth (illegitimate) and upbringing (peripatetic, without secure financial resources, and with little or no care or love from her nearest surviving relative, her mother). It was apparently in her 30s that she grew up quite a bit, discovering that she had more reliable talents - decent acting, and quite good public speaking - than the limited quasi-dancing and scandalous acquisition of rich lovers that had sustained her as a younger woman. She also, apparently sincerely, turned to religion, of the Protestant variety. Her near monomania on the subject of Jesuit plots against her is one of the less attractive features of the story, and one I do not fully understand, though it appears to be very much intertwined in European politics of the day. Seymour downplays the influence she claimed to have had over the liberalization of Bavaria during the time when she was Ludwig's mistress, which was also the time of the 1848 revolutionary movements across Europe.

Though she may have grown up a bit when she went to America, according to Seymour's sources, Lola did not by any means stop trading on her scandalous status; either completely deliberately (she is perhaps the first woman ever to be photographed holding a cigarette, in New York in 1851) or by her continuing failure to control her temper (her Australian acting tour was only one of the occasions on which she created an incident by taking a riding whip to someone). More troublingly, even as she developed a reputation for being very generous with both money and time to humble people, she was also capable of downright mean behaviour, such as assembling an American acting company to go to Australia, and then dumping them completely after their first engagement, leaving them to find their own way home. Unfortunately, she also appears to have remained an inveterate liar throughout her life, although Seymour's quotations suggest she may have become self-aware about that towards the end.

Though he documents Montez' affiction by migraines throughout her life, Seymour does not give a medical diagnosis of what carried Lola off at the age of 39. According to Wikipedia, it was syphilis.

I am impressed with Seymour. He's not an academic (the writing of this volume was financed by his extensive winnings on Jeopardy) but he has the instincts of one, and he got this book published in a nice edition by Yale University Press. He also had the grace to donate all his research materials to a University library so that others could delve even deeper. Good for him.