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My Hollywood: When Both of Us Were Young
Patsy Ruth Miller gives us a fascinating pictorial and written "insider's look of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Share in her stories about Nazimova, Valentino, Lon Chaney, Tom Mix, Clark Cable, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Barrymore, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Gloria Swanson and many others. She appeared in over 60 films and was best remembered for her role as Esmeralda in the 1923, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame".
- GenresBiographyFilmNonfiction
252 pages, Paperback
First published June 8, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 13, 2012
“This book came into being because of the urging, pleading insistence and nagging of a young newspaper man from Tennessee named Jeffrey Carrier.” And so begins Patsy Ruth Miller’s delightful, witty, and down-to-earth Hollywood memoir.
Written in a chatty conversational tone, Patsy gives us a firsthand account of the people and places she has come across over the years. A good deal of her recollections includes well known friends, acquaintances and co-stars such as: Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, literary giant F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Barrymore, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.(whose introduction opens the book), Mary Pickford, Tom Mix, Ronald Colman, William Powel, Clark Gable, Howard Hughes and many, many others. For example, the weekend parties she spent at the famed Hearst Castle as a guest of Marion Davis and publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst during the 1920s. Other guests at these festivities included Charlie Chaplin, Norma Talmadge, and Mayor Jimmy Walker among others.
Equally important are Patsy’s highpoint of her film career and the actors she worked with. For instance, Patsy describes the rapport she develops with her co-stars, Rudolph Valentino and (to a greater degree) Alla Nazimova while filming “Camille” (1921) – Patsy’s first movie. Likewise, there is a chapter on Lon Chaney, who she co-starred with in the classic silent film, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1923) as Esmeralda - the role Ms. Miller is best remembered.
In addition, Ms. Miller describes her many travels abroad. Once, while visiting Tahiti in 1931 with former silent screen actress Lila Lee, Patsy had a terrifying experience which involved Lila’s jealous lover Australian film director John Farrow (father of Mia Farrow). Frankly, she had me scared stiff. Then, there was the time she visited an opium den in Paris and hobnobbed with Parisian criminals. She also speaks of a funny occurrence she experienced in a bar during the sexually notorious Weimar era in the 1920s Berlin and later her impressions of a Berlin under Nazi's rule. These are only samplings of the extraordinary stories you will read about Hollywood, New York, London, and Budapest to Berlin.
Unfortunately, there are few memoirs by silent screen stars; for that reason, this book is enormously valuable. In fact, according to biographer Michael G. Ankerich (who interviewed Miller in “Broken Silence” and claims Pasty’s memoir is his favorite),says film museums around the world requested copies of her book for their libraries after it was first published in 1988 and that Pasty proudly autographed a copy for former president and Mrs. Ronald Reagan.
For those who are looking for a full filmography of her movies you will be pleased to find them at the end of her book by way of title, year, synopses, casts, credits, notes and even vintage reviews. Oh, and I don’t want to forget to mention that there are photos too; plenty of photographs from Ms. Miller’s own splendid collection.
My only criticism (and it’s a minor one) is that Patsy jumps around a tab too much in a few places and that made it a bit vexing to read at times. I presume she wanted to record her thoughts as fast as they came to her, seeing that she was already in her 80s when she reluctantly started her memoirs. Still, that didn’t take any of the enjoyment I had in reading it.
4 1/2 stars
Written in a chatty conversational tone, Patsy gives us a firsthand account of the people and places she has come across over the years. A good deal of her recollections includes well known friends, acquaintances and co-stars such as: Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, literary giant F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Barrymore, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.(whose introduction opens the book), Mary Pickford, Tom Mix, Ronald Colman, William Powel, Clark Gable, Howard Hughes and many, many others. For example, the weekend parties she spent at the famed Hearst Castle as a guest of Marion Davis and publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst during the 1920s. Other guests at these festivities included Charlie Chaplin, Norma Talmadge, and Mayor Jimmy Walker among others.
Equally important are Patsy’s highpoint of her film career and the actors she worked with. For instance, Patsy describes the rapport she develops with her co-stars, Rudolph Valentino and (to a greater degree) Alla Nazimova while filming “Camille” (1921) – Patsy’s first movie. Likewise, there is a chapter on Lon Chaney, who she co-starred with in the classic silent film, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1923) as Esmeralda - the role Ms. Miller is best remembered.
In addition, Ms. Miller describes her many travels abroad. Once, while visiting Tahiti in 1931 with former silent screen actress Lila Lee, Patsy had a terrifying experience which involved Lila’s jealous lover Australian film director John Farrow (father of Mia Farrow). Frankly, she had me scared stiff. Then, there was the time she visited an opium den in Paris and hobnobbed with Parisian criminals. She also speaks of a funny occurrence she experienced in a bar during the sexually notorious Weimar era in the 1920s Berlin and later her impressions of a Berlin under Nazi's rule. These are only samplings of the extraordinary stories you will read about Hollywood, New York, London, and Budapest to Berlin.
Unfortunately, there are few memoirs by silent screen stars; for that reason, this book is enormously valuable. In fact, according to biographer Michael G. Ankerich (who interviewed Miller in “Broken Silence” and claims Pasty’s memoir is his favorite),says film museums around the world requested copies of her book for their libraries after it was first published in 1988 and that Pasty proudly autographed a copy for former president and Mrs. Ronald Reagan.
For those who are looking for a full filmography of her movies you will be pleased to find them at the end of her book by way of title, year, synopses, casts, credits, notes and even vintage reviews. Oh, and I don’t want to forget to mention that there are photos too; plenty of photographs from Ms. Miller’s own splendid collection.
My only criticism (and it’s a minor one) is that Patsy jumps around a tab too much in a few places and that made it a bit vexing to read at times. I presume she wanted to record her thoughts as fast as they came to her, seeing that she was already in her 80s when she reluctantly started her memoirs. Still, that didn’t take any of the enjoyment I had in reading it.
4 1/2 stars
February 7, 2020
Patsy Ruth Miller is a forgotten name today, one of the many starlets of the silent screen whose career was pleasant but not particularly memorable, both because of the little cultural impact she made and because of the current availability of her films. However, her career lasted for many years and she associated with some names that have survived the decades. Her existence in the industry at such a fascinating time makes her story worth reading, but her conversational way of storytelling makes it better than average.
The book begins at the beginning, but isn't always chronological. Miller spends a good deal of time talking about one of her earliest mentors, diva actress Alla Nazimova. As a Nazimova fan I found this to be exciting and revealing. She is characterized as a high-maintenence, exotic woman who threw temper tantrums at will and whose home was the subject of much gossip. Here we see her as a normal woman who used temperament to get what she wanted in an era when women had to be creative to achieve power.
Miller's stories about Tahiti evoke laughter and nostalgia for a time when a trip to an exotic island really was isolated and immersive, before the prevalence of resorts, air travel, and the westernization of foreign cultures.
There are moments where Miller comes across as very much a product of her time. In an era where drug education is pushed in schools when children are still in single digits, her opinion on drugs is comical. Miller advocates shooting all convicted drug dealers, but then goes on to say that if one had to do drugs, one could do worse than opium, because then all of the users would be complacent and sleepy. If only she had done her research and found that drug users usually commit crimes when they're sober in hopes of scoring their next fix. She also describes the Japanese interment camps during WWII as if they were happy vacation homes.
One problem with the ease of reading this book is its size. This is not the kind of book you can carry to the dentist's office. It is large and heavy and therefore it took me forever to read it, although I enjoyed it when I did.
The book begins at the beginning, but isn't always chronological. Miller spends a good deal of time talking about one of her earliest mentors, diva actress Alla Nazimova. As a Nazimova fan I found this to be exciting and revealing. She is characterized as a high-maintenence, exotic woman who threw temper tantrums at will and whose home was the subject of much gossip. Here we see her as a normal woman who used temperament to get what she wanted in an era when women had to be creative to achieve power.
Miller's stories about Tahiti evoke laughter and nostalgia for a time when a trip to an exotic island really was isolated and immersive, before the prevalence of resorts, air travel, and the westernization of foreign cultures.
There are moments where Miller comes across as very much a product of her time. In an era where drug education is pushed in schools when children are still in single digits, her opinion on drugs is comical. Miller advocates shooting all convicted drug dealers, but then goes on to say that if one had to do drugs, one could do worse than opium, because then all of the users would be complacent and sleepy. If only she had done her research and found that drug users usually commit crimes when they're sober in hopes of scoring their next fix. She also describes the Japanese interment camps during WWII as if they were happy vacation homes.
One problem with the ease of reading this book is its size. This is not the kind of book you can carry to the dentist's office. It is large and heavy and therefore it took me forever to read it, although I enjoyed it when I did.
March 8, 2023
Fun read, some nice first person anecdotes and pics from her private collection. Watch out for her defense of japanese american internment camps. This is the right book for deep dive scholars of the era, but not for passing travelers.
July 29, 2022
Ardent classic cinephile that I am, my kinda book. Filled with great anecdotes, including, e.g., a powerful tale re the young Alla Nazimova, also Mischa Auer. But PLEASE, the next person who publishes this: LARGER typeface -- this facsimile edition was reduced in size for the page and can be physically painful to read. Also: Ms. Miller's disquisitions on world affairs and science can be reminiscent of those of certain other film actors, i.e., ignorant and naive. For God's sake, Franz Werfel wrote "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh," NOT Talbot Mundy. I was also concerned by the author's attempt to justify Japanese internment in WWII with secondhand tales of alleged espionage: These passages cry out for footnoted corroboration.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews