I like Hollywood autobiographies, ghostwritten or not,
because the funny stories are easy to read. The stories might even be true, but
I don’t care as long as they make me laugh. Sometimes, however, there are provocative
nuggets such as this, slapstick king Sennett quoting James Cagney:
It’s the naïve people who become
the true artists. First, they have to be naïve enough to believe in themselves.
Then, a performer – especially an actor or an actress – must be naïve enough to
keep on trying, using his talent, in spite of any kind of discouragement or
double-cross. He doesn’t pay attention to setbacks. In his ingenuousness he
doesn’t know a setback when it smites him. Money doesn’t concern him.
I think parts of this apply to athletes too. Who would be a
quarterback but a guy who assumes he’ll never be hurt and coolly looks past the
linebacker who only wants to tear off his head? To be a hockey goalie, you’d
have to be so naïve as to think “I’m gonna stop that puck even if it
travels at 150 miles an hour. “
Anyway, film buffs, historians of comedy, and Hollywood mavens would enjoy this book, first published in 1954. It’s coarse in places, rubbing our 2013 sensibilities a bit raw, but then so are the transcendent shorts of Roscoe Arbuckle. What would be really be interesting is an edited version of this book, telling us where Sennett is misremembering, misrepresenting, mischaracterizing, and getting it plain wrong, for whatever reason.
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