What do you think?
Rate this book
Heyday: An autobiography
From the jacket In Heyday, Dore Schary recalls twenty-seven tempestuous, fruitful, kaleidoscopic years in Hollywood and his meteoric rise through the ranks from aspiring screenwriter to virtuoso producer, executive and ultimately head of the biggest and most powerful Hollywood motion picture studio of the era, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
- GenresNonfictionMedia Tie In
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
2 people are currently reading
16 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 13, 2015
Okay, I admit I am biased here. Schary was my grandmother Jane's uncle, and he was good friends with my grandfather Ted's uncle, who appears several times in this book, Bill Goetz. With that said, I find his accounts of the business aspects of Hollywood, especially the people of the time and place, to be absolutely fascinating. I knew Louis B. Mayer was a difficult guy, for instance, but it really hits home when you see how he treated Dore. And the presentation of Howard Hughes is fascinating--a lonely, insecure man whom Schary did not trust but with whom he was honest.
Schary is political and I am not of the same persuasion but he is reasonable in what he presents and it is hard to disagree with his position on the blacklists, which is that political convictions are substantially less important than talent and hard work. I find the interplay between his politics and his work to be quite interesting, and I think it's an important addition to the book, so I do not fault him for putting it in.
Schary is political and I am not of the same persuasion but he is reasonable in what he presents and it is hard to disagree with his position on the blacklists, which is that political convictions are substantially less important than talent and hard work. I find the interplay between his politics and his work to be quite interesting, and I think it's an important addition to the book, so I do not fault him for putting it in.
November 18, 2025
I'm a sucker for books about old Hollywood so imagine my pleasure when I stumbled across this out of print memoir from Dore Schary, who headed MGM in the 1950s after Mayer retired. Schary was also a producer and a screenwriter and playwright. I recognized his name from Brooke Hayward's memoir. Brooke was close friends with Schary's oldest daughter. Hollywood back then was very incestuous. Because of the studio system, everyone involved in the industry lived in Hollywood and socialized together in a way that no longer happens. Once you start reading Hollywood memoirs set during the 1920-50s you begin to see the same names over and over. I guess that is true of any closed social set you read about, whether it is English nobility or the French Impressionists or Beat writers. The same set of people appear in all the books about the era.
The memoir started off so strong, I was loving it. Schary had a classic Horatio Alger rags-to-riches life. I mean, it was uncanny how his life arc resembled that of a fictional trope. Born in the slums to Russian immigrant parents, Schary worked a variety of jobs. His family struggled a lot and even more so when the Depression hit. Besides his regular jobs he did for money like working at the YMCA and as a waiter, Schary was a writer and an actor. He worked summers, including one at Grossinger's(!) which I recently read a history of. That was fun to read about. Schary must have been very personable and charismatic. He was a consummate networker and it was his social skills that led to him being hired on a short contract as a screenwriter. Obviously, his talent as a writer and hard work factored in. He hit the trifecta of talent, hard work and luck. You need all three in order to be as successful as he was.
The beginning of the film industry reminds me a lot of the beginning of the tech industry. It was a new field and was wide open to those savvy enough to see the possibilities. Unlike more established career paths that would gatekeep who was allowed to work, the film industry had no barriers. If you had the skills and the gumption, you could win big. That's a big reason so many Jewish men worked in early film, they weren't barred from doing so.
Out of the six screenwriters hired and sent out to Hollywood, only Schary had his contracted renewed. It's honestly amazing that in 19 years, he went from a bottom of the rung temporary writer to literally running the largest film studio. That deserves a WOW. Schary comes across as both a workaholic and a brilliant social networker. His work trajectory shows a path of everything going great. Even when he was fired, he would land on his feet due to the contacts he had fostered and the work ethic he had developed.
The reader learns very little about his home life. This reflects his actual life, I would assume. There aren't enough hours in the day for Schary to have the career he had and ALSO be a hands on dad and husband. I have ordered his daughter's memoir so am looking forward to learning about the dark side of this choice. I know from Brooke's memoir that Schary's oldest daughter was gang raped as a teen and subsequently developed an alcohol addiction. Her memoir is not going to be a light-hearted look at growing up in Hollywood. None of the memoirs I have read of the children of successful Hollywood players have shown a happy childhood. With great success comes selfishness and self-focus. You can't give 100% to your career and nothing to your kids and expect them to turn out ok. Of course in this memoir, published in 1979, Schary only gives the positive highlights of how his kids are. I didn't expect anything more than that.
The final part of the book drags, as it does with the majority of memoirs I have read. Once you get within 10 years of current day life, a memoir starts to peter out. The memoirist is too close to events to be able to write well about them. You need more time to pass in order to better understand and summarize what was happening.
Schary spends way too much time writing about his political volunteering and committee memberships. I get that to a certain degree he needs to mention them, especially because of the McCarthy witch hunts going on in the 1950s. It was a crazy era, the blacklist and the censorship issues. However, he really was beating a dead horse, going on and on about it for chapters.
I also didn't need to hear a blow by blow account of him getting a play produced after he left MGM. I would have preferred more details about the movies he worked on. I enjoyed those parts of the book the most.
I enjoyed that Schary dished the dirt to a certain degree about various celebs. Aww, Elizabeth Taylor was such a good friend! She really had your back if she liked you. She was a great support to Monty Clift. No surprise learning about Spencer Tracy being an alcoholic. It was good to learn that he wasn't a vicious drunk the way Mario Lanzo was. WOW. He was a complete tool. The stories Schary told! That poor actress he abused.
This is the type of memoir you will either love because you already have a deep interest in the subject matter or it's a book that would put you to sleep, it's so boring. It was worth the read for me because it added to my knowledge of the era. I certainly wouldn't rank it as one of my top old Hollywood books.
The memoir started off so strong, I was loving it. Schary had a classic Horatio Alger rags-to-riches life. I mean, it was uncanny how his life arc resembled that of a fictional trope. Born in the slums to Russian immigrant parents, Schary worked a variety of jobs. His family struggled a lot and even more so when the Depression hit. Besides his regular jobs he did for money like working at the YMCA and as a waiter, Schary was a writer and an actor. He worked summers, including one at Grossinger's(!) which I recently read a history of. That was fun to read about. Schary must have been very personable and charismatic. He was a consummate networker and it was his social skills that led to him being hired on a short contract as a screenwriter. Obviously, his talent as a writer and hard work factored in. He hit the trifecta of talent, hard work and luck. You need all three in order to be as successful as he was.
The beginning of the film industry reminds me a lot of the beginning of the tech industry. It was a new field and was wide open to those savvy enough to see the possibilities. Unlike more established career paths that would gatekeep who was allowed to work, the film industry had no barriers. If you had the skills and the gumption, you could win big. That's a big reason so many Jewish men worked in early film, they weren't barred from doing so.
Out of the six screenwriters hired and sent out to Hollywood, only Schary had his contracted renewed. It's honestly amazing that in 19 years, he went from a bottom of the rung temporary writer to literally running the largest film studio. That deserves a WOW. Schary comes across as both a workaholic and a brilliant social networker. His work trajectory shows a path of everything going great. Even when he was fired, he would land on his feet due to the contacts he had fostered and the work ethic he had developed.
The reader learns very little about his home life. This reflects his actual life, I would assume. There aren't enough hours in the day for Schary to have the career he had and ALSO be a hands on dad and husband. I have ordered his daughter's memoir so am looking forward to learning about the dark side of this choice. I know from Brooke's memoir that Schary's oldest daughter was gang raped as a teen and subsequently developed an alcohol addiction. Her memoir is not going to be a light-hearted look at growing up in Hollywood. None of the memoirs I have read of the children of successful Hollywood players have shown a happy childhood. With great success comes selfishness and self-focus. You can't give 100% to your career and nothing to your kids and expect them to turn out ok. Of course in this memoir, published in 1979, Schary only gives the positive highlights of how his kids are. I didn't expect anything more than that.
The final part of the book drags, as it does with the majority of memoirs I have read. Once you get within 10 years of current day life, a memoir starts to peter out. The memoirist is too close to events to be able to write well about them. You need more time to pass in order to better understand and summarize what was happening.
Schary spends way too much time writing about his political volunteering and committee memberships. I get that to a certain degree he needs to mention them, especially because of the McCarthy witch hunts going on in the 1950s. It was a crazy era, the blacklist and the censorship issues. However, he really was beating a dead horse, going on and on about it for chapters.
I also didn't need to hear a blow by blow account of him getting a play produced after he left MGM. I would have preferred more details about the movies he worked on. I enjoyed those parts of the book the most.
I enjoyed that Schary dished the dirt to a certain degree about various celebs. Aww, Elizabeth Taylor was such a good friend! She really had your back if she liked you. She was a great support to Monty Clift. No surprise learning about Spencer Tracy being an alcoholic. It was good to learn that he wasn't a vicious drunk the way Mario Lanzo was. WOW. He was a complete tool. The stories Schary told! That poor actress he abused.
This is the type of memoir you will either love because you already have a deep interest in the subject matter or it's a book that would put you to sleep, it's so boring. It was worth the read for me because it added to my knowledge of the era. I certainly wouldn't rank it as one of my top old Hollywood books.
June 11, 2015
Dore Schary was very famous in Hollywood, Growing up in Ca I have read a lot about Hollywood. He was a mover and a shaker making motion motion. In I Love Lucy he makes a guest appearance as himself. Very interesting book about movies got made in the 1950's.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews