Haywire

by Brooke Hayward

The daughter of successful Hollywood agent and Broadway producer Leland Hayward and actress Margaret Sullavan recalls the glamour, wealth, and talent that marked the lives of members of her extraordinary family and reveals the events that led to destroyed marriages, mental breakdown, and suicide

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Biography Memoir, Film, Autobiography, Media Tie In

325 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Brooke Hayward (born July 5, 1937) is an American actress and writer.

Born in Los Angeles, Hayward is the eldest, and only surviving, child from the marriage of former agent turned film, television, and stage producer Leland Hayward and actress Margaret Sullavan. Hayward's autobiography, Haywire, was based on her experiences as a child with two world-famous and iconic parents. Margaret Sullavan died of an accidental drug overdose on January 1, 1960, aged 50. Nine months after her mother's death, Hayward's sister Bridget, aged 21, was herself found dead from an overdose. Hayward's younger brother, Bill, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on March 9, 2008.

Debuting in Burt Balaban's 1961 film, Mad Dog Coll, Hayward had a brief acting career. She made a memorable performance in the Twilight Zone episode "The Masks" in March 1964. Also, she played a seaship captain's daughter in one Bonanza episode. Over the next 30 years, Hayward appeared in a handful of screen roles. Her last screen appearance was in a small role in John Guare's 1993 film adaptation of Six Degrees of Separation, with Stockard Channing, Donald Sutherland, and Will Smith.

In 1977, Hayward wrote Haywire, a childhood memoir that expounded on her family, the mental breakdown of her mother and sister, and her own personal demons.

(this and more from Wikipedia --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooke_H... )

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir just goes to prove that being born with a silver spoon in your mouth doesn't guarantee that your life will be smooth or free from grief. Brooke Hayward is the only surviving offspring of the union of wealthy producer Leland Hayward and actress Margaret Sullavan. The Hayward kids had nothing but the best...cars, schools, clothes, multiple residences, nannies. They rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous all over the world. Money, however, does not buy happiness and most of the family was in psychiatric care or institutionalized from time to time. It struck me as significant that the family members who received the least psychiatric care were the ones who ultimately lived the longest.

Brooke Hayward has written a very compelling account of her family's ups and downs. It may not be relevant to some younger readers as most of the films discussed are current and consequently many may never have seen a performance by Margaret Sullavan (whose name must be the most frequently misspelled in Hollywood history) or any of Brooke Hayward's few performances. The writing in this I found to be quite good, thereby justifying all the money expended on that high-toned education.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was just recently re-released. I read it when it first came out and I was a kid. I now know I didn't understand half of it. It is such a tragic story of a "dream" family. Who wouldn't have wanted to grow up in the 1930's and 40's in Hollywood with your mother a famous movie star and your father one of the biggest power players? Three out of the five in that family killed themselves or were presumed to have killed themselves. But Brooke Hayward is such a terrific writer that this reads like a novel. One of my favorite books.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the quote at the end "I wept for my family, all if us, my beautiful, idyllic, lost family. I wept for our excesses, our delusions and inconsistencies; ...that we had let such extraordinary care be subverted into extraordinary carelessness. We'd been careless with the best of our many resources: each other. It was as though we had taken for granted the fact that there would be more where we had come from too; another chance, another summer, another Brooke, Bridget or Bill."

[Syl · Rating 5 out of 5]

read this when first came out and was completely drawn in. Very good book

[Michael Llewellyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brooke Hayward's memoir, Haywire, caused a sensation when it appeared in 1977. There had never been quite such a frank account of family dysfunction, certainly not from such a famous source. Daughter of celebrated producer Leland Hayward and stage/screen actress Margaret Sullavan, Hayward grew up in a privileged world edged with tension and teeming with dark secrets. Dramatis personae in this compelling tale of survival and redemption include Henry, Jane and Peter Fonda, Pamela Churchill, Jimmy Stewart, Josh Logan, Slim Keith, Truman Capote, Diana Vreeland and many more. Hayward reveals childhood memories so rich and warm you want to wrap yourself in them, but pulls no punches in describing her mother's rollercoaster mental woes and the suicides of her only two siblings, Bridget and Tom. Nowadays almost everyone knows someone on medication for bipolarism, depression or whatnot. Such was not the case 46 years ago, and it's a tribute to Hayward's writing skills and honesty that the book still packs a wallop. This 2010 edition includes a new introduction by Buck Henry and an epilogue by the author.

[Graceann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brooke Hayward is the eldest daughter of Hollywood royalty, and this is her story of growing up in a family that is rich with talent, intellect and sadness. Her mother was Margaret Sullavan, a brilliant actress much loved by many, and married by four, including Henry Fonda, William Wyler, and Brooke's father, super-agent and producer Leland Hayward. He was the "Toscanini of the Telephone," and she was so entrancing that Ogden Nash wrote a poem about her.

Reading this, I was reminded that wealth doesn't shield people from problems; they have the same problems that we do, but in nicer homes. Some of the things that Margaret Sullavan said to her children - the martyred speeches and the strict rules that are guaranteed to incite the opposite of the behavior she sought - could have come from my own mother's mouth. Leland Hayward's belief that money and expensive gifts made everything better, no matter that the things that matter - communication chief among them - were awful, is something I've seen in every family I've ever been close to, my own included.

Brooke swirls a bit outside of the problems that her family suffers, but she is not unscathed. Her mother, sister and brother all spend time in in-patient psychiatric care, and her parents have nine marriages between them. By the time she is 30 she has been married twice (with a third marriage to come) and has three children. Nobody here seems to have managed to emerge from the maelstrom a truly, completely healthy person. The tragic thing here is that Brooke seems aware of it, but she also seems powerless to change it, even for herself.

[Elizabeth Periale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hayward’s memoir tells what it was like for her growing up in the golden age of Hollywood, where she grew up with the Fondas as playmates while her parents were hanging out with Jimmy Stewart and other Hollywood types. And of course it all went horribly wrong. Here is an excerpt from my review:

Brooke’s mother was film and stage actress Margaret Sullavan, best-known for her roles in The Shop Around the Corner and The Good Fairy. Her father was Hollywood and Broadway agent Leland Hayward. Sullavan cultivated a sweet, slightly mannered, screen presence. But looking at the bare facts of her life she was a bit of a siren, even femme fatale. She married Henry Fonda (for two months), director William Wyler (two years), and also had a relationship with Broadway producer Jed Harris before marrying big-shot agent Hayward. While she was simultaneously “dating” Harris and Hayward, so was her acting rival Katherine Hepburn. The two actresses were vying for the same parts and same men, not necessarily in that order. Her affair with Harris apparently broke up her marriage to Fonda, “I couldn’t believe my wife and that son-of-a-bitch were in bed together. But I knew they were. And that just destroyed me, completely destroyed me.”
…

It’s actually more awful to me to think that Brooke felt her family started to fall apart after the divorce — that the good times in their lives were the hazy memories she has of her childhood when her parents were still together — and completely wound up in their careers and each other and ignoring their children. She has nostalgia for a family that never really existed, except in Life magazine publicity photos. …

My full review:

http://xoxoxoe.blogspot.com/2011/04/l...

[Kim Fay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a gift in more ways than one. Gift #1: My friend Janet sent it to me. Gift #2: It reminded me how significant a memoir can be. Publicity positions this book as a Hollywood memoir (you know the kind, lots of name-dropping and gossip), but that really undermines what Hayward accomplished. She is a good writer. And even though her parents were a famous agent and the actress Margaret Sullavan, and the best family friends were the Fondas (Hayward's mom was briefly married to Henry Fonda), this is a story about family, and about grief. As a young woman, Hayward loses both her mother and her sister, and this book is her attempt to figure out how such a "golden" family came to such tragedy. She is honest to the point of brutal (even with herself), and I like that she lets others speak in her book as well by including remembrances from those who knew her family. This is also a time capsule of life in L.A. in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. A time when the city was a much different place, and fame was a much different creature.

[Doriana Bisegna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has followed me around for 30 years. I finally decided to buy it and read it and I am glad that I did. This is old Hollywood i.e. the days of Henry Fonda, Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart told by Brooke Hayward (the daughter of Leland Hayward and Margaret Sullavan). While this newly attained knowledge will not change my life in any way, I was still happy to have read it and learnt about how mental illness was handled by parents and the general public back in the 60's and 70's. Have we ever come a loooong way!!

[Mary Tuley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extremely interesting group of people, but I've always been glad that I don't know any of them.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this as a companion piece to the Mark Rozzo book "Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles". I wanted to figure out why Brooke stayed married to Dennis for as long as she did. I know it was the 1960's and women tended to put up more with awful behavior but jeez, not leaving a guy after he breaks your nose or after he chases you & your young children around the neighborhood with a loaded gun....what's up with that?

I think what's up with that is Brooke suffered after her parents divorce and she didn't want to do that to her kids. Or maybe the relationship with Dennis felt comfortable to her because she was used to pacifying her narcissistic parents? She definitely filled the cliched role of the oldest child, being responsible and feeling protective of her younger siblings.

I've read a lot of books about old Hollywood so found the childhood stories she told fascinating. I like to read Goodreads reviews of books before writing my own review and noted that one of the big complaints of Haywire's one and two star reviews is that Brooke was rich and wrote about an exclusive lifestyle and about famous people. Uh.....why would you read this book if you didn't want to hear about famous people and a luxury lifestyle? What did they think the book was going to be about? It's like buying a book about baseball and then giving it a bad review because it's about baseball. Brooke was writing the truth about her life which includes things like having Jimmy Stewart as your godfather, Jane Fonda as your best friend and living in beautiful houses in wealthy neighborhoods.

I found her story to be quite moving. For all the wealth and fame surrounding her, Brooke had a pretty miserable childhood and youth. I thought her brother Bill put it nicely when he expressed the desire to have grown up in one house, going to public school and having a consistent stable home life. None of which happened to them. I was shocked that both Bill and Bridget were shunted off to mental hospitals for typical teenage behavior. It was upsetting and led to their tragic suicides. The chapter towards the end of the book when BIll and Brooke are discussing suicide and Bill mentions that he would shoot himself if he were going to commit suicide and then googling him and finding out that that indeed is how he ended up killing himself....so so sad. Ugh.

I've read several memoirs by children of Hollywood stars (children of Lana Turner, Bing Crosby, Henry Fonda, Joan Crawford, John Huston, Eddie Fisher, Debbi Reynolds, Ryan O'Neal etc) and the one common thread - besides the famous parent of course - is that they all had miserable childhoods. Brooke's memoir is sadly more of the same.

My one quibble about the book is that I there were more photographs included.

[Jan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a memoir by Brooke Hayward, the privileged daughter of actress Margaret Sullavan and producer Leland Hayward. I wanted to read this book because I love a couple of Margaret Sullavan's movies and I was curious about her life and family. The book is written in kind of stream-of-consciousness style that jumps around a bit--clearly, she was not a professional writer. She writes about the New York crowd of rich and famous in a way that reminds me of how bloggers describe the Washington DC insiders as "The Villagers." She reminds me of Dominick Dunne and Joan Didion the way she name-drops, but I like it so far for the Hollywood Insider aspect.

Postscript: Brooke Hayward was certainly part of the elite and she knew it. I stand by my previous assessment of this book, and if you are interested in the early lives of the Henry Fonda family, you might like it. Otherwise, don't bother.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book because I have thing about famous dysfunctional families. This one was def. crazy. The author writes about her family in a poignant and lyrical way that reminds me of how Fitzgerald would have written if he had been a member of this family. Her insights into her mother, father, brother and the torturous, ill-fated relationship between her sister and mother are stunning. They still hold true if you think about other families you know. Both her mother and sister ended up committing suicide within a year of each other. One of the most tragic stories I've ever read about train-wreck families. The one exception to that would be Edie Sedgwick's story and her even sicker family.

[Jen Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

When this book came out in the late '70s I'm sure it was quite sensational - a daughter of a famous family airing all their dirty linen, even before Mommie Dearest came out. So, I'm sure this was a revelation at the time. However, now that these memoirs are de rigueur and many, more shocking stories have come out, this just doesn't seem to leap off the page. Plus the fact that I wasn't living during the time the Hayward family was supposedly so famous, I think, dims the effect of how crazy their behind-the-scenes life really was in contrast to the "perfect American magazine family" that was protrayed to the public. The parents really were odd people who just allowed their oddities to fuck up their children. End of story.

[Susan Daly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dear Group,

I read this book ages ago when it was first published in hardback. I felt as if I was reading my life story, only without the fame.

I gave it to my Mother to read as well and she also said this book sounded exactly like my life. This is my Mother talking!!!

Brooke Hayward had a fabulously interesting life. Oh, the truth she tells. This is one of the very first memoirs I can remember reading.

Ms. Hayward was ahead of her time when it came to writing memoirs, and this is one nearest and dearest to my heart.

Get a copy, you'll be glad you did, I promise!

Bye for now,

Susan

[Dale Stonehouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book I owned 30 years ago but never read. This reissue was done very nicely in form and content. After reading books by/about her 2nd husband Dennis Hopper, stepmother Nancy Hawks Hayward Keith, pals Jill Schary (Robinson) and Jane Fonda, among others, there were many connections I knew about and some I did not. The style is true to the 70s, more detailed and emotional than the same account today might be. The new epilogue is a very short update, more would have been appreciated. Not mentioned is the likely possibility that Bridget Fonda is named for Brooke's sister, as Peter Fonda says he was secretly in love with her before her death.

[Graceann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may be the most dysfunctional family I've ever read about, but it was so interesting to be a fly on the wall for this memoir.

[Jill Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brooke Hayward's memoir, "Haywire" is back in print this year - 2011. Originally published in 1977, Hayward - who is related by marriage to almost every big name in Hollywood from the 1920's to the 1980's - was the daughter of actress Margaret Sullavan and agent/producer Leland Hayward. The book's title "Haywire" came from Leland Hayward's cable address, "Haywire". Hayward and Sullavan were married for ten years and had three children, Brooke, her younger sister, Bridget, and their younger brother Bill. That Hayward family of five - with the beautiful sun-kissed children and the beyond beautiful parents - that "golden" family - survived as a unit for ten years before Leland and Maggie divorced.

Divorce for the parents was nothing new. Leland Hayward eventually married five times - the last time to Pam Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman - and Margaret had four husbands in total, including a brief marriage to Henry Fonda.
They both appeared to be "high maintenance" - not surprising in successful Hollywood folk - but two high maintenance people can't fulfill the emotional needs of the other. With the parents' divorce, the children were moved from Los Angeles to the Connecticut suburb of Greenwich, where Margaret settled down with her fourth - and final - husband, a British businessman.

Their parents' divorce began troubled times for the children, particularly Bridget and Bill. But could the emotional troubles be totally attributed to the divorce? Or are some people born with fragile coping mechanisms? Certainly the Hayward household before the divorce had been an eccentric one. Did the parting of the parents and the subsequent two-house upbringing exacerbate or bring on the sad mental problems of the two youngest? From Brooke's memoir I could see that the three children were deeply loved by both parents but perhaps those parents didn't know how to handle children-with-problems. Parenting is not easy at best, and I would think much harder for the peripatetic parents who are often tending their own needs. Maggie did provide the children with their home base in Greenwich, but the children were sent away to school at relatively early ages.

It's never easy to know what happens behind closed doors, but Brooke Hayward has done an amazing job of writing about her parents and her siblings with love and grace and a sense of wonderment. That "wonderment" can be seen in the picture of the family - pre-breakup - on the pages preceding Chapter 3. It's a picture taken of Leland, Maggie, and the three kids, holding hands as the run together into the Pacific ocean. The abject beauty of the five and their seeming joy of being there, together and holding hands, is one of the most beautiful - and saddest - pictures of a family I've ever seen.

I thought Hayward's book was excellent when I read it in 1977, and I have the same view of it in 2011. One of the best - if not THE best - memoir I've ever read.

[Sheila Shaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was really depressing overall, but very well written.

[Lynette Lark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Politicians. Movie stars. True story. Pamela Harriman.

[Lindsay Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brooke Hayward's mother was actress Margaret Sullavan. Her father was producer/agent Leland Hayward. Her family was dysfunctional before that was a thing. This book came out before Mommie Dearest, and was an eyeopener for a lot of people.
The Haywards should have led a charmed life, but instead, there were multiple divorces and marriages, two probable suicides (and a third, brother Bill, long after the book was written), and multiple commitments to mental institutions. It's certainly not as shocking as it would have been when it was published in 1977, but it's still sad. Bridget Hayward had epilepsy, swore her sister to secrecy, and later may have killed herself. I'm sure she had other issues, but sad to think that epilepsy was considered so horrible and shameful. Sad also that all the mental institutions didn't do much good. Money, beauty, and fame were all for naught.
The writing is non-linear and sort of enhanced stream of consciousness. It is also limited by what the author knows. She wasn't living with her mother or her sister at the time of their deaths and doesn't know exactly what happened. She was away from her father and brother for long stretches of time as well. There is name-dropping in the style of Joan Didion and Dominick Dunne. Still, it was an interesting look at a way of life from the past. When Brooke Hayward was growing up, it appeared she led a charmed life. Now days, we know better.

[Srfotog · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best memoir I've ever read and I just read it again after reading it the first time in 1977. Again, I couldn't put it down and stayed up very late for two nights until I finished it again.

There's something about it that reminds me of Henry Miller's writings. Despite all the tragedy and real horror, there's a sense of hope and even humor throughout the book that keeps one mesmerized as if the answer to all will be evident. What is evident is the strength and bravery that Brooke Hayward sustains throughout her lifetime. She is a great writer, describing the good times with eloquent descriptions and interpretations. They seem to balance the tragedy that follows. In a way it is a map of how to survive and I really love the book. I will probably read it again one day.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have been meaning to read this ever since reading Slim Keith's memoir where it was mentioned (Brooke & her siblings were Slim's stepchildren while she was married to Leland Hayward). Brooke is a wonderful writer, and she has the gift of placing you, with her, then & there, in whatever she is writing about. And she has quite a story to tell. Talented, brilliant & successful parents, each at the top of their respective games, whether Hollywood or Broadway, who had beautiful & talented children. And the tragedies that gradually befell them all. Heartbreaking. I was very moved. Especially by her relationship with her charismatic but remote father. It rang such a chord.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in two days. Very sad family saga. The last page of the book is a wonderful wrap up of what went wrong with this family. Very interesting facts of old Hollywood in the late 30's and 40's........$$$$ may have contributed to the problems. but mental illness was there and took its toll. The last half of the book went very fast. The first half was a bit more detail than I wanted with stories from childhood that were routine though extremely privileged. This is not a book of drug abuse and alcoholism. Their dysfunction was on another level.

[Erin Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

I kept waiting to be interested in this book, but the further I got into it, the more annoyed I became with it. Brooke Hayward has undoubtedly had a lot of tragedies in her life, but reading about these tragic events in between her her descriptions of boarding schools in Switzerland, attending Vassar, and her famous friends (the Fondas, amongst others), made the ultimate message of the book seem lost in translation. It never seemed to have a big point or climax, either.

[Kacey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone that confuses easily or is a little ocd about things being organized, like me. It jumps all over the place and has random paragraphs from family friends just stuck in with no organization. I'm not saying it's bad, it just needs patience. It's so tragic and Brooke must be an incredibly strong woman to keep going and write her memoir after all of her loss.

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this a long time ago, probably in the back of a station wagon on a less than delightful family vacation.

Divorced parents, dysfunctional family relationships, although rather mild by today's standards. A slice of life in the fast lane of a Hollywood producer and his Broadway star wife and their children.

[Virginia Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written, moving memoir of a childhood among he Hollywood elite by the daughter of actress Margaret Sulliavan an Leland Hayward, Hollywood agent supreme and a man whom Katherine Hepburn called "the most wonderful man in the whole world". But their life of wealth and happiness with nannies and ponies was also marked by mental illness, suicide and tragedy.

[Marianne Fanning · Rating 2 out of 5]

Brutal to get through. Classic story of a totally dysfunctional Hollywood family. Difficult to read because the writer was all over the place. Margaret Sullavan was a famous actress but it was back in the '40s and '50's so its hard to relate to.

[Ginny · Rating 5 out of 5]

stunning. Deeply moving account of a Hollywood family which disintegrated and resulted in the suicide of two of the three children. I read the original hardback version and I am keen to read it again.