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Dancing at Ciro's: A Family's Love, Loss, and Scandal on the Sunset Strip
In 1958, young Sheila Weller was living a charmed life with her family in Beverly Hills. Her father was a brilliant and charismatic brain surgeon. Her mother was a movie-magazine writer whose brother owned Hollywood’s most dazzling nightclub, Ciro’s. Then Sheila Weller’s world exploded. After she witnessed her uncle’s frenzied physical assault on her father, a whole store of family secrets and dramas unfolded, rivaling those that transpired in the nightclub’s dressing room and banquettes every night.
Weller has written a deeply felt memoir of her family’s richly accomplished but ultimately tragic life, contrasted with those most glamorous days of Hollywood’s golden era. While vividly describing Lana Turner’s, Frank Sinatra’s, and Sammy Davis Jr.’s evenings---and breakdowns---at Ciro’s, she captures a whole subgroup of American the New York Jews who bounded from Brooklyn to Broadway and finally to Hollywood. They expected that success and proximity to glamour would erase centuries of anxiety and melancholy---but often discovered they’d only found a higher ledge from which to fall.
Weller seamlessly weaves a history of the American nightclub into the saga of an unforgettable family that, while fatally flawed, is never whiny or “dysfunctional.” The dreamy grandeur of Hollywood in the forties and the dark tensions of the fifties come alive through the pages and through the characters, for whom love---and the very idea of family---is almost biblically tested, but never quite extinguished.
Weller has written a deeply felt memoir of her family’s richly accomplished but ultimately tragic life, contrasted with those most glamorous days of Hollywood’s golden era. While vividly describing Lana Turner’s, Frank Sinatra’s, and Sammy Davis Jr.’s evenings---and breakdowns---at Ciro’s, she captures a whole subgroup of American the New York Jews who bounded from Brooklyn to Broadway and finally to Hollywood. They expected that success and proximity to glamour would erase centuries of anxiety and melancholy---but often discovered they’d only found a higher ledge from which to fall.
Weller seamlessly weaves a history of the American nightclub into the saga of an unforgettable family that, while fatally flawed, is never whiny or “dysfunctional.” The dreamy grandeur of Hollywood in the forties and the dark tensions of the fifties come alive through the pages and through the characters, for whom love---and the very idea of family---is almost biblically tested, but never quite extinguished.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
15 people are currently reading
116 people want to read
About the author
Sheila Weller
24 books114 followersSheila Weller is a bestselling author and award-winning magazine journalist specializing in women’s lives, social issues, cultural history, and feminist investigative.
Her seventh book, The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour – and the Triumph of Women in TV News, will be a major release from Penguin-Random House on September 30, 2014.
Her sixth book was the critically acclaimed Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon -- And The Journey of a Generation (2008). A New York Times Bestseller for 8 weeks, it is featured in numerous Women’s Studies programs at major universities, was chosen as one of the Best Books of 2008 by Library Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Amazon.com, and Tina Brown’s DailyBeast. Girls Like Us is in active development as a motion picture with Sony.
Her 2003 family memoir Dancing At Ciro’s “makes a substantial contribution to American social history,” said The Washington Post.
Her four previous books (including the #2 New York Times bestseller Raging Heart) were well-regarded, news-breaking nonfiction accounts of high profile crimes against women and their social and legal implications.
She is a writer for Vanity Fair, has been Senior Contributing Editor of Glamour since 2002, is a former Contributing Editor to New York, a reviewer for The New York Times Book Review, and has written and writes for numerous other magazines for many years.
She has won nine major magazine awards between 1994 and 2012:
She won a record six Newswomen’s Club of New York Front Page Awards.
She won two Exceptional Merit in Media Awards from The National Women’s Political Caucus.
She was one of three winners, for her body of work, for Magazine Feature Writing on a Variety of Subjects in the 2005 National Headliners Award.
She is married to esteemed history writer John Kelly (The Graves Are Walking, about the Irish Famine, and The Great Mortality, about the Black Death).
She lives in New York City and in Berkshire County, Massachusetts.
Her seventh book, The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour – and the Triumph of Women in TV News, will be a major release from Penguin-Random House on September 30, 2014.
Her sixth book was the critically acclaimed Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon -- And The Journey of a Generation (2008). A New York Times Bestseller for 8 weeks, it is featured in numerous Women’s Studies programs at major universities, was chosen as one of the Best Books of 2008 by Library Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Amazon.com, and Tina Brown’s DailyBeast. Girls Like Us is in active development as a motion picture with Sony.
Her 2003 family memoir Dancing At Ciro’s “makes a substantial contribution to American social history,” said The Washington Post.
Her four previous books (including the #2 New York Times bestseller Raging Heart) were well-regarded, news-breaking nonfiction accounts of high profile crimes against women and their social and legal implications.
She is a writer for Vanity Fair, has been Senior Contributing Editor of Glamour since 2002, is a former Contributing Editor to New York, a reviewer for The New York Times Book Review, and has written and writes for numerous other magazines for many years.
She has won nine major magazine awards between 1994 and 2012:
She won a record six Newswomen’s Club of New York Front Page Awards.
She won two Exceptional Merit in Media Awards from The National Women’s Political Caucus.
She was one of three winners, for her body of work, for Magazine Feature Writing on a Variety of Subjects in the 2005 National Headliners Award.
She is married to esteemed history writer John Kelly (The Graves Are Walking, about the Irish Famine, and The Great Mortality, about the Black Death).
She lives in New York City and in Berkshire County, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 19, 2020
I’ve often wondered why people write memoirs. (I also wonder why people read memoirs, but that’s a question for another review). I suppose putting your thoughts down helps you try to figure out your life, at least in parts. The memoir of Sheila Weller, “Dancing at Ciro’s” is best explained by its subtitle, “A Family’s Love, Loss, and Scandal on the Sunset Strip”. Weller’s book is theoretically about Ciro’s, a popular night club in 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s Los Angeles, but is really about much, much more.
Sheila Weller is a noted biographer and writer of non-fiction, including a book about OJ Simpson and Nicole Simpson. In “Ciro’s”, she tells of the ill-fated marriage of her parents. Her father was a charming neurosurgeon who practiced medicine during the day and spent his evenings enjoying nightclubbing. Her mother, a working mother, was making a name for herself writing gossip columns, when not enjoying herself at Ciro’s. Ciro’s happened to be owned and managed by Helen Weller’s brother.
Sheila’s parents probably shouldn’t have married, and how they managed to stay married for as long as they did is at the center of the book. Her father, Danny, was destined for a short life and tried to combine his practice of neurosurgery with some life enhancing “fun”. Since a lot of this “fun” included women who he was not married to, things got dicey at home. Her mother, Helen, wanted different things out of life. And her brother, Herman Hover, owner of Ciro’s, was in the middle of the Weller marriage. The two brothers-in-laws detested each other. This animosity came to a head when Herman physically attacked Danny Weller.
The book is also about Sheila and her younger sister growing up in Beverly Hills. It’s also the story of how her Jewish family made the life altering move from New York to the golden land of California. Weller is a good writer and I’m glad I discovered this book, which was originally published in 2003.
Sheila Weller is a noted biographer and writer of non-fiction, including a book about OJ Simpson and Nicole Simpson. In “Ciro’s”, she tells of the ill-fated marriage of her parents. Her father was a charming neurosurgeon who practiced medicine during the day and spent his evenings enjoying nightclubbing. Her mother, a working mother, was making a name for herself writing gossip columns, when not enjoying herself at Ciro’s. Ciro’s happened to be owned and managed by Helen Weller’s brother.
Sheila’s parents probably shouldn’t have married, and how they managed to stay married for as long as they did is at the center of the book. Her father, Danny, was destined for a short life and tried to combine his practice of neurosurgery with some life enhancing “fun”. Since a lot of this “fun” included women who he was not married to, things got dicey at home. Her mother, Helen, wanted different things out of life. And her brother, Herman Hover, owner of Ciro’s, was in the middle of the Weller marriage. The two brothers-in-laws detested each other. This animosity came to a head when Herman physically attacked Danny Weller.
The book is also about Sheila and her younger sister growing up in Beverly Hills. It’s also the story of how her Jewish family made the life altering move from New York to the golden land of California. Weller is a good writer and I’m glad I discovered this book, which was originally published in 2003.
April 5, 2015
A touching memoir about a horrible moment in one family's life…..by the incomparable Sheila Weller. Every one of her books is a must read.
July 14, 2021
Very difficult to read. The writing is concise and beautiful, but the book collapses from a few recollections of Ciro's to a purely family memoir. I bought the book assuming Ciro's in its glory days would be a little more prominent and was frustrated by this, although the little there is is very good.
Quite frankly as desperately as Sheila Weller tries to find the good in her father it's difficult to see Dr Weller as anything more than a horrible man, the pain he inflicted tainting both the writing and the generations of her family.
Quite frankly as desperately as Sheila Weller tries to find the good in her father it's difficult to see Dr Weller as anything more than a horrible man, the pain he inflicted tainting both the writing and the generations of her family.
March 26, 2024
More like 3 1/2. A story more about dysfunctional family tragedy than 50’s Hollywood. Unfortunately, that’s what it had to be about because it’s a true story and it is what it is. There was humor thrown in from time to time, but it often seemed like the author was trying too hard. Again, given the circumstances, it’s not surprising. What always gets me is how much pain and damage parents can inflict on their children who are the innocent victims of the ‘adults’. That Sheila Weller and her sister grew up to be normal human beings in spite of their entire family is pretty amazing.
March 11, 2020
A harrowing read. See page 312, "desperate overcompensation".
May 12, 2020
Really, really good book. What fantastic writing. I will read Ms Weller’s other books now.
Highly recommend for folks who like this era in LA and Hollywood stories. Very interesting.
Highly recommend for folks who like this era in LA and Hollywood stories. Very interesting.
October 9, 2024
Poor Herman Hover.
May 22, 2015
Maybe it’s because I get it, maybe it’s because I was a daughter seeking approval without success, maybe it was the final goodbye and a vast gulf of silence that still separates this daughter from her father, I’m not sure, but I loved this book, I absolutely loved this book. “Dancing at Ciro’s” by Sheila Weller had me talking to myself and feeling every emotional gut punch as I turned those pages. Aside from being a who’s who of 1940s-1950s Hollywood, very dishy I might add, Shelia shines a flashlight on the cast of characters she calls family and the father who made no secret of his lack of “enthusiasm” for his firstborn daughter. “If this smiley, ridiculous cheerleader wasn’t who I was, then who am I?” When you spend you young life seeking the love and approval, unsuccessfully, from a parent who shapes and defines your being, you fall behind learning who you are. Read how Sheila’s seemingly fairytale world held dark secrets behind closed doors. It’s a real-life survival story made for Hollywood where, in the end, the heroine gets to head off into the sunrise…
May 31, 2009
This book is really a family history. The author tries to make it into something more - first, because her uncle owned Ciro's, a popular 40s-50s nightclub in Hollywood and, second, because her family, both paternal and maternal, were first-generation Jewish Americans who made the move from New York to the West Coast. But it's much more prosaic than that. Just a story about a couple - her parents - who probably should never have married, since they were not well-suited to each other, and who ended up divorced with her father eventually ending up with her uncle's wife. Her mother's family was much more oriented to the entertainment lifestyle and her mother wrote gossip columns. Her father overcame some personal problems to become a neurological surgeon, when neurology was still something of an infant specialty. It's probably not a surprise that their marriage did not last and it's also not much of a surprise that it had a large impact on the author and her sister.
April 5, 2020
Love, loss and scandal - but most of all family
I always find Sheila Weller’s narrative style gripping, whether in books or magazine articles, and this book also hooked me in. Yes, it’s an engrossing story of a particular period in Hollywood, but the family dynamics she lays out with painful tenderness are what carries the book along.
I always find Sheila Weller’s narrative style gripping, whether in books or magazine articles, and this book also hooked me in. Yes, it’s an engrossing story of a particular period in Hollywood, but the family dynamics she lays out with painful tenderness are what carries the book along.
April 21, 2008
This book was ok. I felt like you needed a lesson in early Hollywood history in order to understand all the people the author mentioned. But she wove it in well and tried to make comparisons to modern day stars to help the reader out. Her family story was interesting, but presented in a boring manner at times. They have a CRAZY family story and I felt she told it a bit too conservatively for my taste.
November 5, 2011
I was so bummed out with this book. I loved "Girls Like Us" from Sheila Weller, but this was just depressing. I knew it was going to be a heavy topic to read about but I didn't realize how depressing it would be. Also, at times it went into too much detail of what kind of tumors her dad had studied as nuerosurgeon. I also didn't like how it ended, because it just ended, there was no closure I feel like. Total disappointment.
July 22, 2015
(3.5 stars)
Enjoyed for its film, Hollywood, and Sunset Strip history. The family memoir aspect was a bit muddled and lacked distance - understandable considering the author was writing about her own family and was putting some old demons to rest. Perhaps not the strongest biography, but still an interesting read. (And if you are a student of human nature, there is a lot of grist for the mill here.)
Enjoyed for its film, Hollywood, and Sunset Strip history. The family memoir aspect was a bit muddled and lacked distance - understandable considering the author was writing about her own family and was putting some old demons to rest. Perhaps not the strongest biography, but still an interesting read. (And if you are a student of human nature, there is a lot of grist for the mill here.)
July 7, 2008
I love Sheila Weller's style of writing and after reading Girls Like Us and seeing her speak it was fun to get insight into her own life growing up in Hollywood. Her family is fascinating and it was SO interesting to read all the stories. Definitely recommend it, esp if you lived during the 40s and 50s!
September 11, 2015
A book sale find. I am a magnet for anything related to Hollywood and the glamour era. I did not expect this type of story. What a compelling read this was. Show biz and real regular human life all combined. To live among the Hollywood glitz and try to live a normal life is impossible. I was a bit worn out reading this.
August 17, 2013
Lots of surprises here. More than a Hollywood tell-all, it's a well-written tale of a Jewish family gone west, with a surprising twist toward the end.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews