Conversations In The Raw

by Rex Reed

For over two decades, the art of the interview was very nearly the sole province of Rex Reed, the Master of the Celebrity Profile. In Conversations in the Raw, the second of his four best-selling celebrity profile collections, he turns his focus on cult legends such as Bette Davis and Jean Seberg , international superstars such as Simone Signoret, screen idols such as Ingrid Bergman and Paul Newman. and, as always, Reed's unerring choices of newcomers who just might make it big such as Jon Voight just finishing his work on Midnight Cowboy. Writer Tom Wolfe has said about Reed: “Rex Reed…raised the celebrity interview to a new level through his frankness and his eye for social detail. He has also been a master at capturing a story line in the interview situation itself.”

Along with Wolfe, Truman Capote, Kenneth Tynan, and Harry Crews, Rex Reed achieved a literary reputation for a genre, the celebrity profile, once relegated to gossip journalists who as often as not wrote studio-approved fantasies of the lives of the stars.

Devault-Graves Digital Editions has reissued Rex Reed’s quartet of best-selling profile anthologies: Do You Sleep In the Nude?, Conversations in the Raw, Valentines & Vitriol, and People Are Crazy Here. Virtually anyone who was anyone during the 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s in the movie and theater world are captured for the ages in these books. When asked why he no longer writes celebrity profiles, Mr. Reed answered simply: “The movie stars of today are no longer interesting.”
But when they were, Rex Reed was there to file them away for history. It is to the reader’s pleasure to rediscover them.

Included in Conversations in the Raw are profiles of: Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, Myrna Loy, Simone Signoret, Patricia Neal, Oskar Werner, Paul Newman, Joseph Losey, Omar Sharif, Albert Finney, Jean Seberg, Leslie Caron, Burt Bacharach, George Sanders, James Earl Jones, Oliver Reed, Jon Voight, and many more.

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Rex Taylor Reed is an American film critic and former co-host of the syndicated television show At the Movies. He currently writes the column "On the Town with Rex Reed" for The New York Observer.

Reviews

[Chelsea K · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful second collection of Rex Reed's essays (following DO YOU SLEEP IN THE NUDE?), published in 1969, it collects previously published pieces from The New York Times, Women's Wear Daily, Holiday, This Week, Playbill and Cosmopolitan magazine.

There are profiles/interviews with Bette Davis, Ruth Gordon, Jane Wyman, Indred Bergman, Myra Loy, Uta Hagen, Simone Signoret, Patricia Neal, Zoe Caldwell, Oskar Werner, Colleen Dewhurst, Irene Papas, Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward, Joseph Losey, Omar Sharif, Albert Finney, Jean Seberg, Mart Crowley, Leslie Caron, Burt Bacharach, George Sanders, James Earl Jones, China Machado (editor of Harper's Bazaar), Oliver Reed, Jon Voight, Carol White, Leonard Whiting & Olivia Hussey, and Patty Duke. He also goes on the sets of several films to give abehind-the-scenes look at their making: PAINT YOUR WAGON, THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, Francius Foird Coppola's YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW. And there are overviews of the (1968) 40th annual Academy Awards, the (1968) 25th annual Golden Globes, Mickey Mouse's 40th birthday party, and life in Malibu, California.

A great time capsule of film writing.

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book #2 of Rex Reed's books of interviews with famous people written in 1969, last night it was Jean Seberg and I remembered that she committed suicide in France so I looked it up and this cheery little pixie I just read about..killed herself less than ten years after the interview. That is the problem with reading these kinds of books 50 years after they were written and 90% of the people interviewed are dead and you know the when and why and how of their lives after the interview...kinda sad.