A Way of Life, Like Any Other
This spare, compelling book was originally published in 1977 and is reissued now with an introduction by Seamus Heaney. A fictionalized account of O’Brien’s childhood in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s (he was the son of actors George O’Brien and Marguerite Churchill), it is an unsentimental, yet never mean-spirited, look at two individuals who probably should not have married and had a child, though that union provided rich comic rewards.
O’Brien provides ample evidence of his parents’ eccentricities. His mother was an egotistical alcoholic who liked to converse with him while she was in the bath. His father, a former Naval man as well as actor, pined away for her after the divorce, living with her mother and calling his son “Salty.” O’Brien’s descriptions of his grandmother’s refusal to adhere to his father’s Naval regime are hysterical. As a son, he was no saint, often playing one parent off the other and moving in with a friend’s family when he simply tires of living with his father and grandmother, but we never fail to empathize with him and his parents. It’s also a wonderful snapshot of Hollywood and its excesses and unreality: O’Brien’s friend, Jerry, shares his director father’s girlfriend, while Jerry’s mother gets $25,000 annually as her gambling allowance. The only sigh of disappointment I gave was at the length; I would have loved to read more.
