Product Description

Don't let that tanned, handsome, charming surface fool you. Beneath the bronzed façade is a mischievous mind with a wicked wit. George Hamilton doesn't miss a thing. With a front row seat for classic Hollywood's biggest secrets and scandals, George has the intelligence, heart, and unflappable spirit to tell his story, and the story of Tinseltown's heyday, with great good humor and delicious candor -- as only he can. From Where the Boys Are to Dancing with the Stars; from Mary Pickford to Elizabeth Taylor; from smalltown Arkansas to the capitals of Europe -- it's all here, and George has lived to tell and to laugh about it.

As the child of a Dartmouth-educated bandleader father and a glamorous Southern debutante mother whose marriage crumbled early on, George had a childhood filled with misadventures and challenges that his mother always seemed able to turn from tragedy to comedy. Her idea of changing the family's fortunes involved a trip cross-country with three sons and a poodle in a Lincoln Continental, making stops along the way to search for husband/father number three. And she was quick to recognize that George's potential success lay in Hollywood.

George starved nobly for his art in the late 1950s, but was soon starring in major motion pictures directed by the likes of Vincente Minnelli and Louis Malle. He has forgotten more about Hollywood than most movie experts will ever know and shares intimate and hugely entertaining stories of his friendships with Cary Grant; Brigitte Bardot; Robert Mitchum; Merle Oberon; Mae West; Sammy Davis, Jr.; and Judy Garland -- not to mention Lyndon B. Johnson and Elvis's Colonel Tom Parker as well as the King himself -- among others. The world is Hamilton's oyster, and this ultimate insider is ready to share it with us. So fasten your seat belt. We'll tell you when it's safe to move about the cabin again.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #94926 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781416545071
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Hamilton's acting image—a rich, preppy, Eastern WASP with a year-round suntan—is a far cry from his just folks childhood in the Arkansas town where he was born in 1939. Hamilton gives credit for this transformation, in this gossipy tell-all, to his charismatic divorced mother, Teeny, and inventive half-brother Bill, who taught him how to create the illusion of glamour on a budget. Hamilton also attended military and boarding schools, where a flair for comedy helped him adjust to his new surroundings. Once in Hollywood in 1959 and with a contract to star in Vincente Minnelli's Home from the Hill, Harrison acclimated to a life of jet-setting, detailing his risqué dating exploits and romances with Lynda Bird Johnson and Elizabeth Taylor. Hamilton is a witty raconteur and has a gift for capturing the flair of his mother, while exhibiting a genuine sense of humor about himself. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"[T]he reigning mood of this book...is self-deprecating good humor. And its stories are star-studded and wild..."-- Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"Hamilton is a witty raconteur, and has...a genuine sense of humor about himself." -- Publishers Weekly

"Charming...hilarious..."-- Vanity Fair

"[Hamilton] is smarter, edgier and sexier than one might expect. And he lives to entertain you!"-- Liz Smith, New York Post

"Juicy...self-deprecating and witty."-- The Los Angeles Times

"Flashy and funny, with flamboyance to burn, just like Hamilton."-- Kirkus Reviews

About the Author
George Hamilton received a seven-year-contract from MGM in 1958 and went on to star with legends Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, Olivia de Havilland, and Natalie Wood.  He later starred in the classic comedy Love at First Bite as well as The Godfather: Part III and Broadway's Chicago. He lives in Los Angeles and Palm Beach.

William Stadiem is the coauthor of the New York Times bestsellers Mr. S and Marilyn Monroe Confidential.

Customer Reviews

By George
What an enjoyable read! Unlike the all-too-typical angst-ridden star autobiography, George Hamilton (with collaborator William Stadiem) delivers the goods in the same breezy, self-effacing and irreverant tone that has kept his career afloat for nearly fifty years while most of his similarly pretty-faced contemporaries have long drifted out of public memory. Who cares if most people would be hard pressed to name three of his films? What a raconteur!

Impossible to know if this is the real Hamilton but this frequently LOL page-turner expertly maintains the sly persona (sort of a cross between Cary Grant. . . and Seventies-era Burt Reynolds, but with class) he has honed over the years, pulling no punches (yep, there's plenty of dirt--his take on working with Lana Turner is hilarious) yet without ever coming across as mean-spirited.

To avoid sounding like a shill reviewer from someone in the star's (or ghost writer's) camp, I will point out one major flaw: The book is too damn short!

I want to go out to lunch with this guy and hear about the stuff he doesn't even bother to mention. Hell, I'll even spring for the tanning butter!

Georgian Elegance
I only bought George Hamilton's memoir, DON'T MIND IF IF I DO, because I had finished Tony Curtis' new memoir and I was shocked at how distasteful Tony seemed. I was curious, then, to compare his report with a report by one of his cohorts, though Hamilton is about 15 years younger than Curtis.

I knew next to nothing about George Hamilton when I started this book, other than that during those times I had seen him on television, he had appeared to be clever and charming, self-deprecating and funny. It turns out that Hamilton is all of these things and more.

Though he never complains, he has had a sad life, albeit in a very luxurious way. His mother was so involved in her own hedonistic pleasures that George and his brother David barely managed to get conventional educations; George never even graduated from high school.

Yet his mother connived to live in America's finest communities, including Beverly Hills, Beacon Hill in Boston, Beekman Place and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and, most of all, Palm Beach. Being raised in these environments of privileged entitlement gave George an outlook that can only be termed exotic.

George sounds, amazingly, like a loving and unquestioning son. As soon as he was able, he took over the support of his mother and his older half-brother. He views his life with humor and his family with obvious affection, though he probably would have been better served to have hidden from them and not left a forwarding address.

Most of his life has been a series of near-misses, from his romance with Lynda Bird Johnson (which, even all of these years later, still strikes a chord of implausibility) to his single attempt at marriage. Yet he examines all of his adventures with acceptance and good humor.

This is not a typical Hollywood biography, in that it is not as peopled with movie stars as it might have been if he had had a larger career. At the same time, it is filled with folks with whom mere movie stars don't get to hobnob: English nobility, dethroned royalty, Arab gunrunners, Southern gentlemen, Mafia dons, everyday billionaires, leading American military men, Presidents (plural) and Senators, best-selling authors, society bandleaders, Asian dictators....

There is a whole other memoir in what George, ever the gentleman, chooses not to reveal. He doesn't kiss and tell, and he has kissed some very famous women. One can draw any conclusion one wishes.

All in all, George Hamilton has led quite a life.

The pacing of this book is not as tight as it could be and the flow of the narrative often is choppy. In the early pages, where his collaborator is first catching on to his rhythm, the tone is strained. George's father barely is mentioned after the details of his parents' divorce, other than for his death, and there is a brother who is mentioned even less. While there probably was a surfeit of material from which to choose, these faults lie with his co-writer, rather than with George.

George seems to be a man whose generosity of spirit and loving attitudes add up to a genuinely nice person--a genuinely nice person who has led a distinctive and fascinating existence. His story is well worth reading.

OH George!
This tasty and sophisticated fast paced book is surely a keeper! It's filled with lot of 'over the top' interesting peaks (a LOT kiss 'n tell?) and memories of George's unbelievable star-kissed life, sufferings and all. It's quite a lusty look into the life of someone blessed to 'do it his way'! You feel you're right there all along the way and the book opens up thought of the lives of others you've never dreamed of.
Right on, George, WOO HOO!