About the last she humorously writes, "I've been on the road three times. One general rule is, the farther away the cast gets from home the more they start sleeping around. You fall into bed with people you wouldn't ordinarily throw sticks at. At the same time, you become extremely finicky about whom you eat with. Everybody knew who was sleeping with whom and didn't care, but there were clandestine meetings about where and with whom to eat. 'Psst, meet us on the corner. Were going to O'Reilly's, but don't tell Don!'"
Titled "My First Hundred Years in Show Business," the 224-page tome is available from Overlook. The hardcover contains 36 black-and-white photographs.
"Raised in New Orleans with a social climbing, alcoholic mother, Mary Louise moved to New York City in the late 1950s; lived with her gay brother in the Village; immediately entered the nightclub scene in a legendary revue; and rubbed shoulders with every famous person of that era and since," according to press notes. "'My First Hundred Years in Show Business' gets it all down, story by tantalizing story. Yet as delicious as the anecdotes are–and they truly are—the heart of this book is in its unblinkingly honest depiction of the life of a working actor. In her inimitable voice—wry, admirably unsentimental, mordantly funny—Mary Louise Wilson has crafted a work that is at once a teeming social history of the New York theatre scene of the past fifty years and a thoroughly revealing and superbly entertaining memoir of the extraordinary life of an extraordinary woman and actor."
Mary Louise Wilson's numerous award-winning roles include Vera Joseph in 4000 Miles at Lincoln Center (Obie Award), Big Edie in Grey Gardens (Tony Award), Fraulein Schneider in Cabaret (Tony nomination), Queen Elizabeth in The Beard of Avon (Drama Desk nomination) and Diana Vreeland in Full Gallop (Drama Desk Award), co-authored with Mark Hampton. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and she teaches acting at Tulane University.
For more information visit Overlookpress.com. *
