Dust jacket "The inimitable Pearl is in rare form in TALKING TO MYSELF. This is a free-swinging book that follows literally its title though it will be an unusual reader who doesn't decide pretty soon that Miss Bailey is talking to him too. Crammed with anecdotes and with highly independent opinions about contemporary life, this book at first seems, however lively, to have little unity. But the further one reads, the clearer it becomes that there is a hidden order to the whole work. Miss Bailey discusses with obvious delight, sometimes with passion and sometimes with humor, the state of the nation, the American family, the conflict between the generations, the entertainment world and the perils of fame,and the perennial themes of birth and love and hate and death. She is often uproariously funny, she is full of compassion, and at times strikes profoundly into the human soul...."
American actress and singer. After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946. She won a Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968. In 1986, she won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance as a fairy godmother in the ABC Afterschool Special, Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale. Her rendition of "Takes Two to Tango" hit the top ten in 1952.
While she has an entertaining voice, this book was all over and lacked any focus or idea of why she felt the need to write. There were moments that came alive, but most stories fell flat.