Elaine Stritch: The End of Pretend, a new memoir chronicling the life and career of late Tony and Emmy Award winner Elaine Stritch, will be published by author John Bell in August.
Created from a series of interviews with Stritch, spanning 2009 through her final 14 months in Birmingham, Michigan, The End of Pretend is told primarily through Stritch’s own words. The star of Company and Sail Away recalls working with Noël Coward, Edward Albee, and Stephen Sondheim as well as her time in London working in theatre and television.
Stritch also shares thoughts and stories about such artists as Agnes DeMille, Rock Hudson, Marlon Brando, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters, Richard Rodgers, Mary Tyler Moore, Bill Cosby, Harold Prince, James Gandolfini, Liz Smith, Irving Berlin, Gower Champion, Ethel Merman, Meryl Streep, and Rosie O'Donnell, among others.
“A lot of people think I’m difficult because I’m direct and I tell it like it is, but the thing you have to know is that telling the truth off stage builds courage for truthfulness on stage–and vice versa,” Stritch told Bell.
The memoir also takes readers into Stritch’s personal life, including her marriage to John Bay, as well as her battle with alcoholism, facing the end of her career, and leaving New York as her health declined.
Elaine Stritch: The End of Pretend will be available on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble.
