Synopses & Reviews
An elegant, witty, frank, touching, and deeply personal account of the loves both great and fleeting in the life of one of America's most celebrated and fabled women.
Born to great wealth yet kept a virtual prisoner by the custody battle that raged between her proper aunt and her self-absorbed, beautiful mother, Gloria Vanderbilt grew up in a special world. Stunningly beautiful herself, yet insecure and with a touch of wildness, she set out at a very early age to find romance. And find it she did. There were love affairs with Howard Hughes, Bill Paley, and Frank Sinatra, to name a few, and one-night stands, which she writes about with delicacy and humor, including one with the young Marlon Brando. There were marriages to men as diverse as Pat De Cicco, who abused her; the legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski, who kept his innermost secrets from her; film director Sidney Lumet; and finally writer Wyatt Cooper, the love of her life.
Now, in an irresistible memoir that is at once ruthlessly forthright, supremely stylish, full of fascinating details, and deeply touching, Gloria Vanderbilt writes at last about the subject on which she has hitherto been silent: the men in her life, why she loved them, and what each affair or marriage meant to her. This is the candid and captivating account of a life that has kept gossip writers speculating for years, as well as Gloria's own intimate description of growing up, living, marrying, and loving in the glare of the limelight and becoming, despite a family as famous and wealthy as America has ever produced, not only her own person but an artist, a designer, a businesswoman, and a writer of rare distinction.
Review
Dominick Dunne
Gloria Vanderbilt's romance memoir, It Seemed Important at the Time, is, at various points in her extraordinarily famous life, explicitly romantic, wildly revealing, and bravely honest.
Table of Contents
Contents Like a pack of tarot cards haphazardly thrown out on a table --
pick one, turn it over, turn the page...
Preface
Romance
The Scarlet Sting of Scandal
Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolves
The Great Thing
Wedded Bliss...
Happy Birthday
My Mummy -- Later
Much, Much Later...
Fantasia with Stokowski
Breakfast at Tiffany's with the Tiny Terror
Bill Paley and the Tiny Terror
Dinner Chez Brando
There's That Phone Call...
Miracle and Me
King Arthur and Lady Guinevere
A Red Rose
Of Pink Tongues and How Serious and Sincere It All Was
Fortune Cookies
Over the Rainbow at Ten Gracie Square
Fast Forward...
Le Divorce
Once There Was a Couple...
Rock Bottom
The Fantast
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Another Part of the Forest
Substitutes
Hazel Kelly
Someone Like You
Fun
Quite by Chance
What Are You Going to Wear?
Long Distance
Epilogue
Photography Credits